THE DOCTOR,
&c.
CHAPTER VII. A. I.
A FAMILY PARTY AT A NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOUR'S.
| Good Sir, reject it not, although it bring Appearances of some fantastic thing At first unfolding! GEORGE WITHER TO THE KING. |
I was in the fourth night of the story of the Doctor and his horse, and had broken it off, not like Scheherezade because it was time to get up, but because it was time to go to bed. It was at thirty-five minutes after ten o'clock, on the 20th of July in the year of our Lord 1813. I finished my glass of punch, tinkled the spoon against its side, as if making music to my meditations, and having my eyes fixed upon the Bhow Begum, who was sitting opposite to me at the head of her own table, I said, “It ought to be written in a Book!”
There had been a heavy thunder-storm in the afternoon; and though the thermometer had fallen from 78 to 70, still the atmosphere was charged. If that mysterious power by which the nerves convey sensation and make their impulses obeyed, be (as experiments seem to indicate) identical with the galvanic fluid; and if the galvanic and electric fluids be the same (as philosophers have more than surmised;) and if the lungs (according to a happy hypothesis) elaborate for us from the light of heaven this pabulum of the brain, and material essence, or essential matter of genius,—it may be that the ethereal fire which I had inhaled so largely during the day produced the bright conception, or at least impregnated and quickened the latent seed. The punch, reader, had no share in it.
I had spoken as it were abstractedly, and the look which accompanied the words was rather cogitative than regardant. The Bhow Begum laid down her snuff-box and replied, entering into the feeling, as well as echoing the words, “It ought to be written in a book,—certainly it ought.”
They may talk as they will of the dead languages. Our auxiliary verbs give us a power which the ancients, with all their varieties of mood, and inflections of tense, never could attain. “It must be written in a book,” said I, encouraged by her manner. The mood was the same, the tense was the same; but the gradation of meaning was marked in a way which a Greek or Latin grammarian might have envied as well as admired.
“Pshaw! nonsense! stuff!” said my wife's eldest sister, who was sitting at the right hand of the Bhow Begum; “I say write it in a book indeed!” My wife's youngest sister was sitting diagonally opposite to the last speaker: she lifted up her eyes and smiled. It was a smile which expressed the same opinion as the late vituperative tones; there was as much of incredulity in it; but more of wonder and less of vehemence.
My wife was at my left hand, making a cap for her youngest daughter, and with her tortoiseshell-paper work-box before her. I turned towards her and repeated the words, “It must be written in a book!” But I smiled while I was speaking, and was conscious of that sort of meaning in my eyes, which calls out contradiction for the pleasure of sporting with it.
“Write it in a book?” she replied, “I am sure you wo'nt!” and she looked at me with a frown. Poets have written much upon their ladies' frowns, but I do not remember that they have ever described the thing with much accuracy. When my wife frowns two perpendicular wrinkles, each three quarters of an inch in length, are formed in the forehead, the base of each resting upon the top of the nose, and equi-distant from each other. The poets have also attributed dreadful effects to the frown of those whom they love. I cannot say that I ever experienced any thing very formidable in my wife's. At present she knew her eyes would give the lie to it if they looked at me steadily for a moment; so they wheeled to the left about quick, off at a tangent, in a direction to the Bhow Begum, and then she smiled. She could not prevent the smile; but she tried to make it scornful.
My wife's nephew was sitting diagonally with her, and opposite his mother, on the left hand of the Bhow Begum. “Oh!” he exclaimed, “it ought to be written in a book! it will be a glorious book! write it, uncle, I beseech you!” My wife's nephew is a sensible lad. He reads my writings, likes my stories, admires my singing, and thinks as I do in politics:—a youth of parts and considerable promise.
“He will write it!” said the Bhow Begum, taking up her snuff-box, and accompanying the words with a nod of satisfaction and encouragement. “He will never be so foolish!” said my wife. My wife's eldest sister rejoined, “he is foolish enough for any thing.”
CHAPTER VI. A. I.
SHEWING THAT AN AUTHOR MAY MORE EASILY BE KEPT AWAKE BY HIS OWN IMAGINATIONS THAN PUT TO SLEEP BY THEM HIMSELF, WHATEVER MAY BE THEIR EFFECT UPON HIS READERS.
Thou sleepest worse than if a mouse should be forced to take up her lodging in a cat's ear: a little infant that breeds its teeth, should it lie with thee, would cry out as if thou wert the more unquiet bedfellow.
WEBSTER.
When I ought to have been asleep the “unborn pages crowded on my soul.” The Chapters ante-initial and post-initial appeared in delightful prospect “long drawn out:” the beginning, the middle and the end were evolved before me: the whole spread itself forth, and then the parts unravelled themselves and danced the hays. The very types rose in judgment against me, as if to persecute me for the tasks which during so many years I had imposed upon them. Capitals and small letters, pica and long-primer, brevier and bourgeois, english and nonpareil, minion and pearl, Romans and Italics, black-letter and red, past over my inward sight. The notes of admiration!!! stood straight up in view as I lay on the one side; and when I turned on the other to avoid them, the notes of interrogation cocked up their hump-backs??? Then came to recollection the various incidents of the eventful tale. “Visions of glory spare my aching sight!” The various personages, like spectral faces in a fit of the vapours, stared at me through my eyelids. The Doctor oppressed me like an incubus; and for the Horse,—he became a perfect night-mare. “Leave me, leave me to repose!”
Twelve by the kitchen clock!—still restless!—One! O Doctor, for one of thy comfortable composing draughts!—Two! here's a case of insomnolence! I, who in summer close my lids as instinctively as the daisy when the sun goes down; and who in winter could hybernate as well as Bruin, were I but provided with as much fat to support me during the season, and keep the wick of existence burning:—I, who, if my pedigree were properly made out, should be found to have descended from one of the Seven Sleepers, and from the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood!
I put my arms out of bed. I turned the pillow for the sake of applying a cold surface to my cheek. I stretched my feet into the cold corner. I listened to the river, and to the ticking of my watch. I thought of all sleepy sounds and all soporific things: the flow of water, the humming of bees, the motion of a boat, the waving of a field of corn, the nodding of a mandarine's head on the chimney-piece, a horse in a mill, the opera, Mr. Humdrum's conversation, Mr. Proser's poems, Mr. Laxative's speeches, Mr. Lengthy's sermons. I tried the device of my own childhood, and fancied that the bed revolved with me round and round. Still the Doctor visited me as perseveringly as if I had been his best patient; and, call up what thoughts I would to keep him off, the Horse charged through them all.
At last Morpheus reminded me of Dr. Torpedo's divinity lectures, where the voice, the manner, the matter, even the very atmosphere, and the streamy candle-light were all alike somnific;—where he who by strong effort lifted up his head, and forced open the reluctant eyes, never failed to see all around him fast asleep. Lettuces, cowslip-wine, poppy-syrup, mandragora, hop-pillows, spiders'-web pills, and the whole tribe of narcotics, up to bang and the black drop, would have failed: but this was irresistible; and thus twenty years after date I found benefit from having attended the course.
CHAPTER V. A. I.
SOMETHING CONCERNING THE PHILOSOPHY OF DREAMS, AND THE AUTHOR'S EXPERIENCE IN AERIAL HORSEMANSHIP.
| If a dream should come in now to make you afear'd, With a windmill on his head and bells at his beard, Would you straight wear your spectacles here at your toes, And your boots on your brows and your spurs on your nose? BEN JONSON. |
The wise ancients held that dreams are from Jove. Virgil hath told us from what gate of the infernal regions they go out, but at which of the five entrances of the town of Mansoul they get in John Bunyan hath not explained. Some have conceited that unembodied spirits have access to us during sleep, and impress upon the passive faculty, by divine permission, presentiments of those things whereof it is fitting that we should be thus dimly forewarned. This opinion is held by Baxter, and to this also doth Bishop Newton incline. The old atomists supposed that the likenesses or spectres of corporeal things, (exuviæ scilicet rerum, vel effluvia, as they are called by Vaninus, when he takes advantage of them to explain the Fata Morgana) the atomists I say, supposed that these spectral forms which are constantly emitted from all bodies,
Omne genus quoniam passim simulacra feruntur1
assail the soul when she ought to be at rest; according to which theory all the lathered faces that are created every morning in the looking-glass, and all the smiling ones that my Lord Simper and Mr. Smallwit contemplate there with so much satisfaction during the day, must at this moment be floating up and down the world. Others again opine, as if in contradiction to those who pretend life to be a dream, that dreams are realities, and that sleep sets the soul free like a bird from a cage. John Henderson saw the spirit of a slumbering cat pass from her in pursuit of a visionary mouse;—(I know not whether he would have admitted the fact as an argument for materialism); and the soul of Hans Engelbrecht not only went to hell, but brought back from it a stench which proved to all the bystanders that it had been there.—Faugh!
1 Lucretius.
Whether then my spirit that night found its way out at the nose, (for I sleep with my mouth shut) and actually sallied out seeking adventures; or whether the spectrum of the Horse floated into my chamber; or some benevolent genius or dæmon assumed the well-known and welcome form; or whether the dream were merely a dream,—
| si fuè en espiritu, ò fuè en cuerpo, no sè; que yo solo sè, que no lo sè;2 |
so however it was that in the visions of the night I mounted Nobs. Tell me not of Astolfo's hippogriff, or Pacolet's wooden steed; nor
| Of that wonderous horse of brass Whereon the Tartar King did pass; |
nor of Alborak, who was the best beast for a night-journey that ever man bestrode. Tell me not even of Pegasus! I have ridden him many a time; by day and by night have I ridden him; high and low, far and wide, round the earth, and about it, and over it, and under it. I know all his earth-paces, and his sky-paces. I have tried him at a walk, at an amble, at a trot, at a canter, at a hand-gallop, at full gallop and at full speed. I have proved him in the manége with single turns and the manége with double turns, his bounds, his curvets, his pirouettes, and his pistes, his croupade and his balotade, his gallop-galliard and his capriole. I have been on him when he has glided through the sky with wings outstretched and motionless, like a kite or a summer cloud; I have bestrode him when he went up like a bittern with a strong spiral flight, round, round and round, and upward, upward, upward, circling and rising still; and again when he has gone full sail, or full fly, with his tail as straight as a comet's behind him. But for a hobby or a night horse, Pegasus is nothing to Nobs.
2 Calderon.
Where did we go on that memorable night? What did we see?—What did we do?—Or rather what did we not see! and what did we not perform!
CHAPTER IV. A. I.
A CONVERSATION AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE.
Tel condamne mon coq-à-l'âne qui un jour en justifiera le bon sens.
LA PRETIEUSE.
I went down to breakfast as usual overflowing with joyous thoughts. For mirth and for music the skylark is but a type of me. I warbled a few wood notes wild, and then full of the unborn work, addressed myself to my wife's eldest sister, and asked if she would permit me to dedicate the Book to her. “What book?” she replied. “The History,” said I, “of Dr. Daniel Dove of Doncaster, and his Horse Nobs.” She answered, “No indeed! I will have no such nonsense dedicated to me!”—and with that she drew up her upper lip, and the lower region of the nose. I turned to my wife's youngest sister: “Shall I have the pleasure of dedicating it to you?” She raised her eyes, inclined her head forwards with a smile of negation, and begged leave to decline the honour. “Commandante,” said I, to my wife and Commandress, “shall I dedicate it then to you?” My Commandante made answer, “not unless you have something better to dedicate.”
“So Ladies!” said I; “the stone which the builders rejected,”—and then looking at my wife's youngest sister—“Oh, it will be such a book!” The manner and the tone were so much in earnest that they arrested the bread and butter on the way to her mouth; and she exclaimed, with her eyes full of wonder and incredulity at the same time, “Why you never can be serious?” “Not serious?” said I; “why I have done nothing but think of it and dream of it the whole night.” “He told me so,” rejoined my Commandante, “the first thing in the morning.” “Ah Stupey!” cried my wife's eldest sister, accompanying the compliment with a protrusion of the head, and an extension of the lips, which disclosed not only the whole remaining row of teeth, but the chasms that had been made in it by the tooth drawer; hiatus valde lacrymabiles.
“Two volumes,” said I, “and this in the title-page!” So taking out my pencil, I drew upon the back of a letter the mysterious monogram, erudite in its appearance as the digamma of Mr. A. F. Valpy.
It past from hand to hand. “Why he is not in earnest?” said my wife's youngest sister. “He never can be,” replied my wife. And yet beginning to think that peradventure I was, she looked at me with a quick turn of the eye,—“a pretty subject indeed for you to employ your time upon! You,—vema whehaha yohu almad otenba twandri athancod!” I have thought proper to translate this part of my Commandante's speech into the Garamna tongue.
CHAPTER III. A. I.
THE UTILITY OF POCKETS. A COMPLIMENT PROPERLY RECEIVED.
La tasca è propria cosa da Christiani.
BENEDETTO VARCHI.
My eldest daughter had finished her Latin lessons, and my son had finished his Greek; and I was sitting at my desk, pen in hand, and in mouth at the same time, (a substitute for biting the nails which I recommend to all onygophagists;) when the Bhow Begum came in with her black velvet reticule, suspended as usual from her arm by its silver chain.
Now of all the inventions of the Tailor (who is of all artists the most inventive) I hold the pocket to be the most commodious, and saving the fig leaf, the most indispensible. Birds have their craw; ruminating beasts their first or ante-stomach; the monkey has his cheek, the opossum her pouch; and, so necessary is some convenience of this kind for the human animal, that the savage who cares not for clothing makes for himself a pocket if he can. The Hindoo carries his snuff-box in his turban. Some of the inhabitants of Congo make a secret fob in their wooly toupet, of which as P. Labat says, the worst use they make is—to carry poison in it. The Matolas, a long haired race who border upon the Caffres, form their locks into a sort of hollow cylinder in which they bear about their little implements; certes a more sensible bag than such as is worn at court. The New Zealander is less ingenious; he makes a large opening in his ear, and carries his knife in it. The Ogres, who are worse than savages, and whose ignorance and brutality is in proportion to their bulk, are said, upon the authority of tradition, when they have picked up a stray traveller or two more than they require for their supper, to lodge them in a hollow tooth as a place of security till breakfast; whence it may be inferred that they are not liable to tooth ache, and that they make no use of tooth-picks. Ogres, Savages, Beasts and Birds all require something to serve the purpose of a pocket. Thus much for the necessity of the thing. Touching its antiquity much might be said; for it would not be difficult to show, with that little assistance from the auxiliaries must and have and been which enabled Whitaker of Manchester to write whole quartos of hypothetical history in the potential mood, that pockets are coeval with clothing: and, as erudite men have maintained that language and even letters are of divine origin, there might with like reason be a conclusion drawn from the twenty-first verse of the third chapter of the book of Genesis, which it would not be easy to impugn. Moreover Nature herself shows us the utility, the importance, nay the indispensability, or, to take a hint from the pure language of our diplomatists, the sinequanonniness of pockets. There is but one organ which is common to all animals whatsoever: some are without eyes, many without noses; some have no heads, others no tails; some neither one nor the other; some there are who have no brains, others very pappy ones; some no hearts, others very bad ones; but all have a stomach,—and what is the stomach but a live inside pocket? Hath not Van Helmont said of it, “saccus vel pera est, ut ciborum olla?”
Dr. Towers used to have his coat pockets made of capacity to hold a quarto volume—a wise custom; but requiring stout cloth, good buckram, and strong thread well waxed. I do not so greatly commend the humour of Dr. Ingenhouz, whose coat was lined with pockets of all sizes, wherein, in his latter years, when science had become to him as a plaything, he carried about various materials for chemical experiments: among the rest so many compositions for fulminating powders in glass tubes, separated only by a cork in the middle of the tube, that, if any person had unhappily given him a blow with a stick, he might have blown up himself and the Doctor too. For myself, four coat pockets of the ordinary dimensions content me; in these a sufficiency of conveniences may be carried, and that sufficiency methodically arranged. For mark me, gentle or ungentle Reader! there is nothing like method in pockets, as well as in composition: and what orderly and methodical man would have his pocket-handkerchief, and his pocket-book, and the key of his door (if he be a batchelor living in chambers) and his knife, and his loose pence and half-pence, and the letters which peradventure he might just have received, or peradventure he may intend to drop in the post-office, two-penny or general, as he passes by, and his snuff, if he be accustomed so to regale his olfactory conduits, or his tobacco-box, if he prefer the masticable to the pulverized weed; or his box of lozenges if he should be troubled with a tickling cough; and the sugar-plumbs and the gingerbread nuts which he may be carrying home to his own children, or to any other small men and women upon whose hearts he may have a design;—who I say would like to have all this in chaos and confusion, one lying upon the other, and the thing which is wanted first fated alway to be undermost!—(Mr. Wilberforce knows the inconvenience;—) the snuff working its way out to the gingerbread, the sugar-plumbs insinuating themselves into the folds of the pocket-handkerchief, the pence grinding the lozenges to dust for the benefit of the pocket-book, and the door key busily employed in unlocking the letters?
Now, forasmuch as the commutation of female pockets for the reticule leadeth to inconveniences like this, (not to mention that the very name of commutation ought to be held in abhorrence by all who hold day-light and fresh air essential to the comfort and salubrity of dwelling-houses,) I abominate that bag of the Bhow Begum, notwithstanding the beauty of the silver chain upon the black velvet. And perceiving at this time that the clasp of its silver setting was broken, so that the mouth of the bag was gaping pitiably, like a sick or defunct oyster, I congratulated her as she came in upon this farther proof of the commodiousness of the invention; for here, in the country, there is no workman who can mend that clasp, and the bag must therefore either be laid aside, or used in that deplorable state.
When the Bhow Begum had seated herself I told her how my proffered dedication had been thrice rejected with scorn, and repeating the offer I looked for a more gracious reply. But, as if scorn had been the influenza of the female mind that morning, she answered, “No; indeed she would not have it after it had been refused by every body else.” “Nay, nay,” said I; “it is as much in your character to accept, as it was in their's to refuse.” While I was speaking she took a pinch of snuff; the nasal titillation co-operated with my speech, for when any one of the senses is pleased, the rest are not likely to continue out of humour. “Well,” she replied, “I will have it dedicated to me, because I shall delight in the book.” And she powdered the carpet with tobacco dust as she spake.
CHAPTER II. A. I.
CONCERNING DEDICATIONS, PRINTERS TYPES AND IMPERIAL INK.
Il y aura des clefs, et des ouvertures de mes secrets.
LA PRETIEUSE.
Monsieur Dellon, having been in the Inquisition at Goa, dedicated an account of that tribunal, and of his own sufferings to Mademoiselle Du Cambout de Coislin, in these words:
Mademoiselle
J'aurois tort de me plaindre des rigueurs de l'Inquisition, et des mauvais traitemens que j'ay éprouvez de la part de ses ministres, puisqu'en me fournissant la matiére de cet ouvrage, ils m'ont procuré l'avantage de vous le dedier.
This is the book which that good man Claudius Buchanan with so much propriety put into the hands of the Grand Inquisitor of India, when he paid him a visit at the Inquisition, and asked him his opinion of the accuracy of the relation upon the spot!
The Frenchman's compliment may truly be said to have been far-fetched and dearly bought. Heaven forefend that I should either go so far for one, or purchase it at such a price!
A dedication has oftentimes cost the unhappy author a greater consumption of thumb and finger-nail than the whole book besides, and all varieties of matter and manner have been resorted to. Mine must be so far in character with the delectable history which it introduces that it shall be unlike all which have ever gone before it. I knew a man, (one he was who would have been an ornament to his country if methodism and madness had not combined to overthrow a bright and creative intellect) who, in one of his insaner moods, printed a sheet and a half of muddy rhapsodies with the title of the “Standard of God Displayed:” and he prefaced it by saying that the price of a perfect book, upon a perfect subject, ought to be a perfect sum in a perfect coin; that is to say one guinea. Now as Dr. Daniel Dove was a perfect Doctor, and his horse Nobs was a perfect horse, and as I humbly hope their history will be a perfect history, so ought the Dedication thereunto to be perfect in its kind. Perfect therefore it shall be, as far as kalotypography can make it. For though it would be hopeless to exceed all former Dedications in the turn of a compliment or of a sentence, in the turn of the letters it is possible to exceed them all. It was once my fortune to employ a printer who had a love for his art; and having a taste that way myself, we discussed the merits of a new font one day when I happened to call in upon him. I objected to the angular inclination of a capital italic A which stood upon its pins as if it were starting aghast from the next letter on the left, and was about to tumble upon that to the right; in which case down would go the rest of the word, like a row of soldiers which children make with cards. My printer was too deeply enamoured with the beauties of his font, to have either ear or eye for its defects; and hastily waiving that point he called my attention to a capital R in the same line, which cocked up its tail just as if it had been nicked; that cock of the tail had fascinated him. “Look Sir,” said he, while his eyes glistened with all the ardour of an amateur; “look at that turn!—that's sweet, Sir!” and drawing off the hand with the forefinger of which he had indicated it, he described in the air the turn that had delighted him, in a sort of heroic flourish, his head with a diminished axis, like the inner stile of a Pentegraph, following the movement. I have never seen that R since without remembering him. ** *** ** **** ** *** ******** ** *** ***** ******* ** *******, *** ********* *****, ***, *** ** *** ******* ***** ** **********, *** *** *******. He who can read the stars, may read in them the secret which he seeketh.
But the turns of my Dedication to the Bhow Begum shall not be trusted to the letter founders, a set of men remarkable for involving their craft in such mystery that no one ever taught it to another, every one who has practised it having been obliged either surreptitiously to obtain the secret, or to invent a method for himself. It shall be in the old English letter, not only because that alphabet hath in its curves and angles, its frettings and redundant lines, a sort of picturesque similitude with Gothic architecture, but also because in its breadth and beauty it will display the colour of the ink to most advantage. For the Dedication shall not be printed in black after the ordinary fashion, nor in white like the Sermon upon the Excise Laws, nor in red after the mode of Mr. Dibdin's half titles, but in the colour of that imperial encaustic ink, which by the laws of the Roman Empire it was death for any but the Roman Emperor himself to use. We Britons live in a free country, wherein every man may use what coloured ink seemeth good to him, and put as much gall in it as he pleases, or any other ingredient whatsoever. Moreover this is an imperial age, in which to say nothing of M. Ingelby the Emperor of the Conjurors, we have seen no fewer than four new Emperors. He of Russia who did not think the old title of Peter the Great good enough for him: he of France, for whom any name but that of Tyrant or Murderer is too good; he of Austria who took up one imperial appellation to cover over the humiliating manner in which he laid another down; and he of Hayti, who if he be wise will order all public business to be carried on in the talkee-talkee tongue, and make it high treason for any person to speak or write French in his dominions. We also must dub our old Parliament imperial forsooth! that we may not be behindhand with the age. Then we have Imperial Dining Tables! Imperial Oil for nourishing the hair! Imperial Liquid for Boot Tops! Yea, and, by all the Cæsars deified and damnified, Imperial Blacking! For my part I love to go with the stream, so I will have an Imperial Dedication.
Behold it Reader. Therein is mystery.
CHAPTER I. A. I.
NO BOOK CAN BE COMPLETE WITHOUT A PREFACE.
| I see no cause but men may pick their teeth, Though Brutus with a sword did kill himself. TAYLOR, THE WATER POET. |
Who was the Inventor of Prefaces? I shall be obliged to the immortal Mr. Urban, (immortal, because like the king in law he never dies) if he will propound this question for me in his Magazine, that great lumber-room wherein small ware of all kinds has been laid up higgledy-piggledy by half-penny-worths or farthing-worths at a time for fourscore years, till like broken glass, rags, or rubbish it has acquired value by mere accumulation. To send a book like this into the world without a Preface would be as impossible as it is to appear at Court without a bag at the head and a sword at the tail, for as the perfection of dress must be shown at Court, so in this history should the perfection of histories be exhibited. The book must be omni genere absolutum; it must prove and exemplify the perfectibility of books: yea with all imaginable respect for the “Delicate Investigation,” which I leave in undisputed possession of an appellation so exquisitely appropriate, I conceive that the title of THE BOOK, as a popular designation κατ᾿ εξοχην, should be transferred from the edifying report of that Inquiry, to the present unique, unrivalled and unrivalable production;—a production the like whereof hath not been, is not, and will not be. Here however let me warn my Greek and Arabian translators how they render the word, that if they offend the Mufti or the Patriarch, the offence as well as the danger may be theirs: I wash my hands of both. I write in plain English, innocently and in the simplicity of my heart: what may be made of it in heathen languages concerns not me.
ANTE-PREFACE.
I here present thee with a hive of bees, laden some with wax, and some with honey. Fear not to approach! There are no Wasps, there are no Hornets here. If some wanton Bee should chance to buzz about thine ears, stand thy ground and hold thy hands: there's none will sting thee if thou strike not first. If any do, she hath honey in her bag will cure thee too.
QUARLES.
Prefaces, said Charles Blount, Gent., who committed suicide because the law would not allow him to marry his brother's widow,—(a law, be it remarked in passing, which is not sanctioned by reason, and which instead of being in conformity with scripture, is in direct opposition to it, being in fact the mere device of a corrupt and greedy church)—“Prefaces,” said this flippant, ill-opinioned and unhappy man, “ever were, and still are but of two sorts, let other modes and fashions vary as they please. Let the profane long peruke succeed the godly cropt hair; the cravat, the ruff; presbytery, popery; and popery presbytery again, yet still the author keeps to his old and wonted method of prefacing; when at the beginning of his book he enters, either with a halter about his neck, submitting himself to his reader's mercy whether he shall be hanged, or no; or else in a huffing manner he appears with the halter in his hand, and threatens to hang his reader, if he gives him not his good word. This with the excitement of some friends to his undertaking, and some few apologies for want of time, books, and the like, are the constant and usual shams of all scribblers as well ancient as modern.”—This was not true then, nor is it now; but when he proceeds to say, “for my part I enter the lists upon another score,”—so say I with him; and my Preface shall say the rest.
PREFACE.
Oh for a quill plucked from a Seraph's wing!
YOUNG.
So the Poet exclaimed; and his exclamation may be quoted as one example more of the vanity of human wishes; for in order to get a Seraph's quill it would be necessary, according to Mrs. Glasse's excellent item in her directions for roasting a hare, to begin by catching a Seraph. A quill from a Seraph's wing is, I confess, above my ambition; but one from a Peacock's tail was within my reach; and be it known unto all people, nations and languages, that with a Peacock's quill this Preface hath been penned—literally—truly, and bona-fidely speaking. And this is to write, as the learned old Pasquier says, pavonesquement, which in latin minted for the nonce may be rendered pavonicè and in English peacockically or peacockishly, whichever the reader may like best. That such a pen has verily and indeed been used upon this occasion I affirm. I affirm it upon the word of a true man; and here is a Captain of his Majesty's Navy at my elbow, who himself made the pen, and who, if evidence were required to the fact, would attest it by as round an oath as ever rolled over a right English tongue. Nor will the time easily escape his remembrance, the bells being at this moment ringing, June 4, 1814, to celebrate the King's birthday, and the public notification that peace has been concluded with France.
I have oftentimes had the happiness of seeing due commendation bestowed by gentle critics, unknown admirers and partial friends upon my pen, which has been married to all amiable epithets:—classical, fine, powerful, tender, touching, pathetic, strong, fanciful, daring, elegant, sublime, beautiful. I have read these epithets with that proper satisfaction which when thus applied they could not fail to impart, and sometimes qualified the pride which they inspired by looking at the faithful old tool of the Muses beside me, worn to the stump in their service: the one end mended up to the quick in that spirit of œconomy which becomes a son of the Lackland family, and shortened at the other by the gradual and alternate processes of burning and biting, till a scant inch only is left above the finger place. Philemon Holland was but a type of me in this respect. Indeed I may be allowed to say that I have improved upon his practice, or at least that I get more out of a pen than he did, for in the engraved title-page to his Cyrupædia, where there appears the Portrait of the Interpres marked by a great D inclosing the Greek letter Φ (which I presume designates Doctor Philemon) ætatis suæ 80. A°. 1632, it may be plainly seen that he used his pen only at one end. Peradventure he delighted not, as I do, in the mitigated ammoniac odour.
But thou, O gentle reader, who in the exercise of thy sound judgment and natural benignity wilt praise this Preface, thou mayest with perfect propriety bestow the richest epithets upon the pen wherewith its immortal words were first clothed in material forms. Beautiful, elegant, fine, splendid, fanciful, will be to the very letter of truth: versatile it is as the wildest wit; flexible as the most monkey-like talent; and shouldst thou call it tender, I will whisper in thine ear—that it is only too soft. Yet softness may be suitable; for of my numerous readers one half will probably be soft by sex, and of the other half a very considerable proportion soft by nature. Soft therefore be the Pen and soft the strain.
I have drawn up the window-blinds (though sunshine at this time acts like snuff upon the mucous membrane of my nose) in order that the light may fall upon this excellent Poet's wand as I wave it to and fro, making cuts five and six of the broad-sword exercise. Every feather of its fringe is now lit up by the sun; the hues of green and gold and amethyst are all brought forth; and that predominant lustre which can only be likened to some rich metallic oxyd; and that spot of deepest purple, the pupil of an eye for whose glorious hue neither metals nor flowers nor precious stones afford a resemblance: its likeness is only to be found in animated life, in birds and insects whom nature seems to have formed when she was most prodigal of beauty: I have seen it indeed upon the sea, but it has been in some quiet bay when the reflection of the land combined with the sky and the ocean to produce it.
And what can be more emblematic of the work which I am beginning than the splendid instrument wherewith the Preface is traced? What could more happily typify the combination of parts each perfect in itself when separately considered, yet all connected into one harmonious whole; the story running through like the stem or back-bone, which the episodes and digressions fringe like so many featherlets, leading up to that catastrophe, the gem or eye-star, for which the whole was formed, and in which all terminate.
They who are versed in the doctrine of sympathies and the arcana of correspondences as revealed to the Swedish Emanuel, will doubtless admire the instinct or inspiration which directed my choice to the pavonian Pen. The example should be followed by all consumers of ink and quill. Then would the lover borrow a feather from the turtle dove. The lawyer would have a large assortment of kite, hawk, buzzard and vulture: his clients may use pigeon or gull. Poets according to their varieties. Mr. —— the Tom Tit. Mr. —— the Water-wagtail. Mr. —— the Crow. Mr. —— the Mocking-bird. Mr. —— the Magpie. Mr. —— the Sky-lark. Mr. —— the Eagle. Mr. —— the Swan. Lord —— the Black Swan. Critics some the Owl, others the Butcher Bird. Your challenger must indite with one from the wing of a game cock: he who takes advantage of a privileged situation to offer the wrong and shrink from the atonement will find a white feather. Your dealers in public and private scandal, whether Jacobins or Anti-Jacobins, the pimps and pandars of a profligate press should use none but duck feathers, and those of the dirtiest that can be found in the purlieus of Pimlico or St. George's Fields. But for the Editor of the Edinburgh Review, whether he dictates in morals or in taste, or displays his peculiar talent in political prophecy, he must continue to use goose quills. Stick to the goose Mr. Jeffrey, while you live stick to the Goose!
INITIAL CHAPTER.
᾿Εξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα.
HOMER.
They who remember the year 1800 will remember also the great controversy whether it was the beginning of a century, or the end of one; a controversy in which all Magazines, all Newspapers, and all persons took part. Now as it has been deemed expedient to divide this work, or to speak more emphatically this Opus, or more emphatically still this Ergon, into Chapters Ante-Initial and Post-Initial, a dispute of the same nature might arise among the commentators in after ages, if especial care were not now taken to mark distinctly the beginning. This therefore is the Initial Chapter, neither Ante nor Post, but standing between both; the point of initiation, the goal of the Antes, the starting place of the Posts; the mark at which the former end their career, and from whence the latter take their departure.