ALFIERI’S HAIR.
Alfieri, the greatest poet modern Italy produced, delighted in eccentricities, not always of the most amiable kind. One evening, at the house of the Princess Carignan, he was leaning, in one of his silent moods, against a sideboard decorated with a rich tea service of china, when, by a sudden movement of his long loose tresses, he threw down one of the cups. The lady of the mansion ventured to tell him, that he had spoiled the set, and had better have broken them all. The words were no sooner said, than Alfieri, without reply or change of countenance, swept off the whole service upon the floor. His hair was fated to bring another of his eccentricities into play. He went one night, alone, to the theatre at Turin; and there, hanging carelessly with his head backwards over the corner of the box, a lady in the next seat on the other side of the partition, who had on other occasions made attempts to attract his attention, broke out into violent and repeated encomiums on his auburn locks, which were flowing down close to her hand. Alfieri, however, spoke not a word, and continued his position till he left the theatre. Next morning, the lady received a parcel, the contents of which she found to be the tresses which she had so much admired, and which the erratic poet had cut off close to his head. No billet accompanied the gift; but it could not have been more clearly said, “If you like the hair, here it is; but, for Heaven’s sake, leave me alone!”
SMOLLETT’S HARD FORTUNES.
Smollett, perhaps one of the most popular authors by profession that ever wrote, furnishes a sad instance of the insufficiency of even the greatest literary favour, in the times in which he wrote, to procure those temporal comforts on which the happiness of life so much depends. “Had some of those,” he says, “who were pleased to call themselves my friends, been at any pains to deserve the character, and told me ingenuously what I had to expect in the capacity of an author, when first I professed myself of that venerable fraternity, I should in all probability have spared myself the incredible labour and chagrin I have since undergone.” “Of praise and censure both,” he writes at another time, “I am sick indeed, and wish to God that my circumstances would allow me to consign my pen to oblivion.” When he had worn himself down in the service of the public or the booksellers, there scarce was left of all his slender remunerations, at the last stage of life, enough to convey him to a cheap country and a restoring air on the Continent. Gradually perishing in a foreign land, neglected by the public that admired him, deriving no resources from the booksellers who were drawing the large profits of his works, Smollett threw out his injured feelings in the character of Bramble, in Humphrey Clinker: the warm generosity of his temper, but not his genius, seeming to fleet away with his breath. And when he died, and his widow, in a foreign land, was raising a plain memorial over his ashes, her love and piety but made the little less; and she perished in unbefriended solitude. “There are indeed,” says D’Israeli, “grateful feelings in the public at large for a favourite author; but the awful testimony of these feelings, by its gradual process, must appear beyond the grave! They visit the column consecrated by his name—and his features are most loved, most venerated, in the bust!”
JERROLD’S REBUKE TO A RUDE INTRUDER.
Douglas Jerrold and some friends were dining once at a tavern, and had a private room; but after dinner the landlord, on the plea that the house was partly under repair, requested permission that a stranger might take a chop in the apartment, at a separate table. The company gave the required permission; and the stranger, a man of commonplace aspect, was brought in, ate his chop in silence, and then fell asleep—snoring so loudly and discordantly that the conversation could with difficulty be prosecuted. Some gentleman of the party made a noise; and the stranger, starting out of his nap, called out to Jerrold, “I know you, Mr. Jerrold, I know you; but you shall not make a butt of me!” “Then don’t bring your hog’s head in here!” was the instant answer of the wit.