The wretched old woman hurried upstairs, and brought him down a half-sovereign out of her private hoard, trembling like an aspen leaf, and departed.
"So—scotched, but not killed. You'll gossip and lie too. Never trust a laudanum-drinker. You'll see me, by the eye of imagination, committing all the seven deadly sins; and by the tongue of inspiration go forth and proclaim the same at the town-head. I can't kill you, and I can't cure you, so I must endure you. What said old Goethe, in all the German I ever cared to recollect:—
"'Der Wallfisch hat doch seine Laus;
Muss auch die meine haben.'
"Now, then, for Mrs. Penberthy's draughts. I wonder how that pretty schoolmistress goes on. If she were but honest, now, and had fifty thousand pounds—why then, she wouldn't marry me; and so why now, I wouldn't marry she,—as my native Berkshire grammar would render it."
CHAPTER VII.
LA CORDIFIAMMA.
This chapter shall begin, good reader, with one of those startling bursts of "illustration," with which our most popular preachers are wont now to astonish and edify their hearers, and after starting with them at the opening of the sermon from the north-pole, the Crystal Palace, or the nearest cabbage-garden, float them safe, upon the gushing stream of oratory, to the safe and well-known shores of doctrinal commonplace, lost in admiration at the skill of the good man who can thus make all roads lead, if not to heaven, at least to strong language about its opposite. True, the logical sequence of their periods may be, like that of the coming one, somewhat questionable, reminding one at moments of Fluellen's comparison between Macedon and Monmouth, Henry the Fifth and Alexander: but, in the logic of the pulpit, all's well that ends well, and the end must needs sanctify the means. There is, of course, some connection or other between all things in heaven and earth, or how would the universe hold together? And if one has not time to find out the true connection, what is left but to invent the best one can for oneself? Thus argues, probably, the popular preacher, and fills his pews, proving thereby clearly the excellence of his method. So argue also, probably, the popular poets, to whose "luxuriant fancy" everything suggests anything, and thought plays leap-frog with thought down one page and up the next, till one fancies at moments that they had got permission from the higher powers, before looking at the universe, to stir it all up a few times with a spoon. It is notorious, of course, that poets and preachers alike pride themselves upon this method of astonishing; that the former call it, "seeing the infinite in the finite;" the latter—"pressing secular matters into the service of the sanctuary," and other pretty phrases which, for reverence' sake, shall be omitted. No doubt they have their reasons and their reward. The style takes; the style pays; and what more would you have? Let them go on rejoicing, in spite of the cynical pedants in the Saturday Review, who dare to accuse (will it be believed?) these luminaries of the age of talking merely irreverent nonsense. Meanwhile, so evident is the success (sole test of merit) which has attended the new method, that it is worth while trying whether it will not be as taking in the novel as it is in the chapel; and therefore the reader is requested to pay special attention to the following paragraph, modelled carefully after the exordiums of a famous Irish preacher, now drawing crowded houses at the West End of Town. As thus;—"It is the pleasant month of May, when, as in old Chaucer's time, the—
"Smale foules maken melodie,
That slepen alle night with open eye
So priketh hem nature in their corages.
Then longen folk to goe on pilgrimages,
And specially from every shire's end
Of Englelond, to Exeter-hall they wend,"
till the low places of the Strand blossom with white cravats, those lilies of the valley, types of meekness and humility, at least in the pious palmer—and why not of similar virtues in the undertaker, the concert-singer, the groom, the tavern-waiter, the croupier at the gaming-table, and Frederick Augustus Lord Scoutbush, who, white-cravated like the rest, is just getting into his cab at the door of the Never-mind-what Theatre, to spend an hour at Kensington before sauntering in to Lady M——'s ball?
Why not, I ask, at least in the case of little Scoutbush? For Guardsman though he be, coming from a theatre and going to a ball, there is meekness and humility in him at this moment, as well as in the average of the white-cravated gentlemen who trotted along that same pavement about eleven o'clock this forenoon. Why should not his white cravat, like theirs, be held symbolic of that fact? However, Scoutbush belongs rather to the former than the latter of Chaucer's categories; for a "smale foule" he is, a little bird-like fellow, who maketh melodie also, and warbles like a cock-robin; we cannot liken him to any more dignified songster. Moreover, he will sleep all night with open eye; for he will not be in bed till five to-morrow morning; and pricked he is, and that sorely, in his courage; for he is as much in love as his little nature can be, with the new actress, La Signora Cordifiamma, of the Never-mind-what Theatre.