There is a solid volume, written in an inquiring spirit, but in a manner which reminds one of deep calling unto deep, about the dark superstitions of a country which was once a separate European kingdom. I feel a peculiar interest in it, from the author having informed me, by way of communicating an important fact in literary history, and also as an example to be followed by literary aspirants, that, before committing the book to the press, he had written it over sixteen times. It would have been valuable to have his first manuscript, were it only that one might form some idea of the steps by which he had brought it into the condition in which it was printed. But its perusal in that condition was not entirely thrown away, since I was able to recommend it to a teacher of composition, as containing, within a moderate compass—after the manner, in fact, of a handbook—good practical specimens of every description of depravity of style of which the English language is susceptible.
In the present day, when few scholars have opportunities of enriching the world with their prison hours, perhaps the best conditions for testing how far any volume or portion of printed matter, however hopeless-looking, may yet yield edifying or amusing matter to a sufficient pressure, will occur when a bookish person finds himself imprisoned in a country inn, say for twenty-four hours. Such things are not impossible in this age of rapid movement. It is not long since a train, freighted with musical artistes, sent express to perform at a provincial concert and be back immediately in town for other engagements, were caught by a great snow-storm which obliterated the railway, and had to live for a week or two in a wayside alehouse, in one of the dreariest districts of Scotland. The possessor and user of a large library undergoing such a calamity in a modified shape will be able to form a conception of the resources at his disposal, and to calculate how long it will take him to exhaust the intellectual treasures at his command, just as a millionaire, haunted as such people sometimes are by the dread of coming on the parish, might test how long a life his invested capital would support by spending a winter in a Shetland cottage, and living on what he could procure. Having exhausted all other sources of excitement and interest, the belated traveller is supposed to call for the literature of the establishment. Perhaps the Directory of the county town is the only available volume. Who shall say what the belated traveller may make of this? He may do a turn in local statistics, or, if his ambition rises higher, he may pursue some valuable ethnological inquiries, trying whether Celtic or Saxon names prevail, and testing the justice of Mr Thierry's theory by counting the Norman patronymics, and observing whether any of them are owned by persons following plebeian and sordid occupations. If in after-life the sojourner should come in contact with people interested in the politics or business of that county town, he will surprise them by exhibiting his minute acquaintance with its affairs.
If, besides the Directory, an Almanac, old or new, is to be had, the analysis may be conducted on a greatly widened basis. The rotations of the changes of the seasons may at the same time suggest many appropriate reflections on the progress of man from the cradle to the grave, and all that he meets with between the alpha and omega; and if the prisoner is a man of genius, the announcements of eclipses and other solar phenomena will suggest trains of thought which he can carry up to any height of sublimity. A person in the circumstances supposed, after he has exhausted the Directory and the Almanac, may perhaps be led to read (if he can get) Zimmerman On Solitude, Hervey's Meditations, Watts on the Improvement of the Mind, or Hannah More's Sacred Dramas. Who knows what he may be reduced to? I remember the great Irish liberator telling how, when once detained in an inn in Switzerland, he could find no book to beguile the time with but the Lettres Provinciales of Pascal. I have no doubt that the coerced perusal of them to which he had to submit did him a deal of good.
Let us imagine that nothing better is to be found than the advertising sheet of an old newspaper—never mind. Let the unfortunate man fall to and read the advertisements courageously, and make the best of them. An advertisement is itself a fact, though it may sometimes be the vehicle of a falsehood; and, as some one has remarked, he who has a fact in hand is like a turner with a piece of wood in his lathe, which he can manipulate to his liking, tooling it in any way, as a plain cylinder or a richly ornamented toy. There have been fortunate instances of people driven to read them finding good jokes and other enjoyable things in advertisements—such things as make one almost regret that so little attention has been paid to this department of literature.[50] Besides the spontaneous undesigned attractions to be found in it, there have been men of distinguished parts whose powers have found development in the advertisement line. George Robins, a hero in his day, is surely not yet quite forgotten; and though he were, doubtless his works will be restored to notice by future philosophers who will perhaps find in them the true spirit of the nineteenth century. Advertisements, more prosaic than his, however, bring us into the very heart of life and business, and contain a world of interest. Suppose that the dirty broadside you pick up in the dingy inn's soiled room contains the annual announcement of the reassembling of the school in which you spent your own years of schoolboy life—what a mingled and many-figured romance does it recall of all that has befallen to yourself and others since the day when the same advertisement made you sigh, because the hour was close at hand when you were to leave home and all its homely ways to dwell among strangers! Going onward, you remember how each one after another ceased to be a stranger, and twined himself about your heart; and then comes the reflection, Where are they all now? You remember how
"He, the young and strong, who cherished
Noble longings for the strife,
By the roadside fell and perished,
Weary with the march of life."
You recall to your memory also those two inseparables—linked together, it would seem, because they were so unlike. The one, gentle, dreamy, and romantic, was to be the genius of the set; but alas, he "took to bad habits," and oozed into the slime of life, imperceptibly almost, hurting no creature but himself—unless it may be that to some parent or other near of kin his gentle facility may have caused keener pangs than others give by cruelty and tyranny. The other, bright-eyed, healthy, strong, and keen-tempered—the best fighter and runner and leaper in the school—the dare-devil who was the leader in every row—took to Greek much about the time when his companion took to drinking, got a presentation, wrote some wonderful things about the functions of the chorus, and is now on the fair road to a bishopric.
Next arises the vision of "the big boy," the lout—the butt of every one, even of the masters, who, when any little imp did a thing well, always made the appropriate laudation tell to the detriment of the big boy, as if he were bound to be as superfluous in intellect as in flesh. He has sufficiently dinned into him to make him thoroughly modest, poor fellow, how all great men were little. Napoleon was little, so was Frederic the Great, William III., the illustrious Condé, Pope, Horace, Anacreon, Campbell, Tom Moore, and Jeffrey. His relations have so thoroughly given in to the prejudice against him, that they get him a cadetship because he is fit for nothing at home; and now, years afterwards, the newspapers resound with his fame—how, when at the quietest of all stations when the mutiny suddenly broke out in its most murderous shape, and even experienced veterans lost heart, he remained firm and collected, quietly developing, one after another, resources of which he was not himself aware, and in the end putting things right, partly by stern vigour, but more by a quiet tact and genial appreciation of the native character. But what has become of the Dux—him who, in the predictions of all, teachers and taught, was to render the institution some day illustrious by occupying the Woolsack, or the chief place at the Speaker's right hand? A curious destiny is his: at a certain point the curve of his ascent was as it were truncated, and he took to the commonest level of ordinary life. He may now be seen, staid and sedate in his walk, which brings him, with a regularity that has rendered him useful to neighbours owning erratic watches, day by day to a lofty three-legged stool, mounted on which, all his proceedings confirm the high character retained by him through several years for the neatness of his handwriting, and especially for his precision in dotting his i's and stroking his t's.
This is all along of the use which the reflective man may make of an old advertisement. If it be old, the older the better—the more likely is it to contain matter of curious interest or instruction about the ways of men. To show this, I reprint two advertisements from British newspapers.
From the Public Advertiser of 28th March 1769.
"TO BE SOLD, A BLACK GIRL, the property of J. B——, eleven years of age, who is extremely handy, works at her needle tolerably, and speaks English perfectly well: is of an excellent temper, and willing disposition.