"4th of March, a minute past 12.
"Dear Madame,
"Now dead men's ghosts are getting out of their graves, and there comes the ghost of a doctor in a white sheet to wait upon you. Your Tokay is got into my head and your love into my heart, and they both join to club their thanks for the pleasantest day I have spent these seven years; and to my comfort I find a man may be in love, and be happy, provided he does not go to book for it. I could have trusted till the morning to show my gratitude, but the Tokay wou'd have evaporated, and then I might have had nothing to talk of but an ache in my head and pain in my heart. Bacchus and Cupid should always be together, for the young gentleman is very apt to be silly when he's alone by himself; but when old toss-pot is with him, if he pretends to fall a whining, he hits him a cursed knock on the pate, and says: 'Drink about, you....' 'No, Bacchus, don't be in a passion. Upon my soul you have knocked out one of my eyes!' 'Eyes, ye scroundrel? Why, you have never had one since you were born.... Apollo would have couched you, but your mother said no; for then, says she, "he can never be blamed for his shot, any more than the people that are shot at." She knew 'twould bring grist to her mill; for what with those who pretended they were in love and were not so, and those who were really so and wouldn't own it, I shall find rantum scantum work at Cyprus, Paphos, and Cythera. Some will come to acquire what they never had, and others to get rid of what they find very troublesome, and I shall mind none of 'em.' You see how the goddess foresaw and predicted my misfortunes. She knew I was a sincere votary, and that I was a martyr to her serene influence. Then how could you use me so like an Hyrcanian tygress, and be such an infidel to misery; that though I hate you mortally, I wish you may feel but one poor half-quarter-of-an-hour before you slip your breath—how shall I rejoice at your horrid agonies? Nec enim lex justior ulla Quam necis artifices arte perire suâ—Remember Me.
"My ills have disturbed my brain, and the revival of old ideas has set it a-boyling, that, till I have skim'd off the froth, I can't pretend to say a word for myself; and by the time I have cleared off the scum, the little grudge that is left may be burnt to the bottom of the pot.
"My mortal injuries have turned my mind,
And I could hate myself for being blind
But why should I thus rave of eyes and looks?
All I have felt is fancy—all from Books.
I stole my charmers from the cuts of Quarles,
And my dear Clarissa from the grand Sir Charles.
But if his mam or Cupid live above,
Who have revenge in store for injured love,
O Venus, send dire ruin on her head,
Strike the Destroyer, lay the Victress dead;
Kill the Triumphress, and avenge my wrong
In height of pomp, while she is warm and young.
Grant I may stand and dart her with my eyes
While in the fiercest pangs of life she lies,
Pursue her sportive soul and shoot it as it flies,
And cry with joy—There Montague lies flat,
Who wronged my passion with her barbarous Chat,
And was as cruel as a Cat to Rat,
As cat to rat—ay, ay, as cat to rat.
And when you got her up into your house,
Clinch yr, fair fist, and give her such a souse:
There, Hussy, take you that for all your Prate,
Your barbarous heart I do a-bo-mi-nate.
I'll take your part, my dearest faithful Doctor!
I've told my son, and see how he has mockt her!
He'll fire her soul and make her rant and rave;
See how she groans to be old Vulcan's slave.
The fatal bow is bent. Shoot, Cupid, shoot,
And there's your Montague all over soot.
Now say no more my little Boy is blind,
For sure this tyrant he has paid in kind.
She fondly thought to captivate a lord.
A lord, sweet queen? 'Tis true, upon my word.
And what's his name? His name? Why—
And thought her parts and wit the feat had done.
But he had parts and wit as well as she.
Why then, 'tis strange those folks did not agree.
Agree? Why, had she lived one moment longer,
His love was strong, but madam's grew much stronger.
Hiatus valde deflendus.
So for her long neglect of Venus' altar
I changed Cu's Bowstring to a silken Halter;
I made the noose, and Cupid drew the knot.
Dear mam! says he, don't let her lie and rot,
She is too pretty. Hold your tongue, you sot!
The pretty blockhead? None of yr. rogue's tricks.
Ask her, she'll own she's turned of thirty-six.
I was but twenty when I got the apple,
And let me tell you, 'twas a cursed grapple.
Had I but staid till I was twenty-five,
I'ad surely lost it, as you're now alive!
Paris had said to Juno and Minerva,
Ladies, I'm yours, and shall be glad to serve yer;
I must have bowed to wisdom and to power.
And Troy had stood it to this very hour,
Homer had never wrote, nor wits had read
Achilles' anger or Patroclus dead.
We gods and goddesses had lived in riot,
And the blind fool had let us all be quiet.
Mortals had never been stunn'd with!!!!!!!—
Nor Virgil's wooden horse play'd Hocus Pocus.
Hang the two Bards! But Montague is pretty.
Sirrah, you lie; but I'll allow she's witty.
Well! but I'm told she was so at fifteen,
Ay, and the veriest so that e'er was seen.
Why that I own; and I myself——"But, hold! as in all probability I am going to tell a parcel of cursed lies, I'll travel no further, lay down my presumptuous pen, and go to bed; for it's half-past two, and two hours and an half is full long enough to write nonsense at one time. You see what it is to give a Goth Tokay: you manure your land with filth, and it produces Tokay; you enrich a man with Tokay, and he brings forth the froth and filth of nonsense. You will learn how to bestow it better another time. I hope what you took yourself had a better, or at least no bad, effect. I wish you had wrote me a note after your first sleep. There wou'd have been your sublime double-distilled, treble-refined wit. I shouldn't have known it to be yours if it could have been anybody's else.
"Pray don't show these humble rhimes to R——y. That puppy will write notes upon 'em or perhaps paint 'em upon sign-posts, and make 'em into an invitation to draw people to see the Camel and Dromedary—for I see he can make anything of anything; but, after all, why should I be afraid? Perhaps he might make something of nothing. I have wrote in heroics. Sure the wretch will have a reverence for heroics, especially for such as he never saw before, and never may again. Well, upon my life I will go to bed—'tis a burning shame to sit up so. I lie, for my fire is out, and so will my candle too if I write a word more.
"So I will only make my mark. X
"God eternally bless and preserve you from such writers."
"March 5th, 12 o'clock.
"Dear Mrs. Montague,
"My fever has been so great that I have not had any time to write to you in such a manner as to try and convince you that I had recovered my senses, and I could write a sober line. Pray, how do you do after your wine and its effects on you, as well as upon me? You are grown a right down rake, and I never expect you for a patient again as long as we live, the last relation I should like to stand to you in, and which nothing could make bearable but serving you, and that is a J'ay pays for all my misery in serving you ill.
"I am called out, so adieu."
"March 6th.
"How do you stand this flabby weather? I tremble to hear, but want to hear of all things. If you have done with my stupid West India Ly., pray send 'em, for they go to-morrow or next day at latest. 'Tis hardly worth while to trouble Ld L with so much chaff and so little wheat—then why you!
"Very true. 'Tis a sad thing to have to do with a fool, who can't keep his nonsense to himself. You know I am a rose, but I have terrible prickles. Dear madam, adieu. Pray God I may hear you are well, or that He will enable me to make you so, for you must not be sick or die. I'll find fools and rogues enough to be that for you, that are good for nothing else, and hardly, very hardly, good enough for that. Adieu, Adieu! I say Adieu, Adieu.
"M. M."
Truly did Dr. Messenger Monsey understand the art of writing a long letter about nothing.
CHAPTER XVIII.
AKENSIDE.
There were two Akensides—Akenside the poet, and Akenside the man; and of the man Akenside there were numerous subdivisions. Remarkable as a poet, he was even yet more noteworthy a private individual in his extreme inconsistency. No character is more commonplace than the one to which is ordinarily applied the word contradictory; but Akenside was a curiosity from the extravagance in which this form of "the commonplace" exhibited itself in his disposition and manners.
By turns he was placid, irritable, simple, affected, gracious, haughty, magnanimous, mean, benevolent, harsh, and sometimes even brutal. At times he was marked by a childlike docility, and at other times his vanity and arrogance displayed him almost as a madman. Of plebeian extraction, he was ashamed of his origin, and yet was throughout life the champion of popular interests. Of his real humanity there can be no doubt, and yet in his demeanour to the unfortunate creatures whom, in his capacity of a hospital-physician, he had to attend, he was always supercilious, and often cruel.
Like Byron, he was lame, one of his legs being shorter than the other; and of this personal disfigurement he was even more sensitive than was the author of "Childe Harold" of his deformity. When his eye fell on it he would blush, for it reminded him of the ignoble condition in which he was born. His father was a butcher at Newcastle-upon-Tyne; and one of his cleavers, falling from the shop-block, had irremediably injured the poet's foot, when he was still a little child.