There is not, we will venture to say, a single portion of our Jar, which does not contain appropriate reading for Christmas.
The first chapter concerns the Arabian Nights; and every little boy knows that the Arabian Nights are reading for all seasons, particularly holidays.
The second chapter is full of the Fairy Tales of Antiquity; things which people used to relate round their fires during the ancient Saturnalia, just as our ancestors used to do at Christmas, and as boys read them still. And the Saturnalia were not only, to the ancients, what the Christmas holidays are to us, but the veritable parents and progenitors of those holidays, as every antiquary knows. It is doubtful whether Macrobius, who wrote a Saturnalia, or Christmas Holiday Book, of his time, was a Pagan or a Christian; but, at all events, his book is full of every kind of miscellaneous reading and gossiping, from Scipio’s Dream down to a scandalous anecdote and a disputed passage in Virgil. Such was the pastime, he tells us, at that season, of the best-informed circles at Rome.
Our third chapter contains, among other Saturnalian subjects, the story of the truly Christmas-like personage, Gellias, one of the wittiest and most hospitable of entertainers, a noble-hearted merchant-prince, who kept seven hundred gallons of wine in his house, and was famous for making his workmen happy.
Our fourth and fifth chapters, besides some Saturnalian stories, include an account of an ancient holiday, full of gossip, and show, and leafy boughs, together with a vast deal of Pastoral,—a summer recollection, to which Christmas has always been fond of reverting, at least in books and among the poets; probably on the principle of extremes meeting, and by a happy rule of contraries. It is observable how fond we are at Christmas of what our forefathers used to call “greens,” that is to say, boughs and flowers and everything which can force the summer, as it were, to remain with us by our firesides.
The sixth chapter is our beloved subject, the story of King Robert aforesaid.
The seventh brings us, through Italian Pastoral, to the Christmas poetical entertainments of our ancestors.
In the eighth and ninth we are in the Old English Poetical Works. In the tenth at Mount Ætna with its stories. In the eleventh with the Bees. In the twelfth with the musical services of the Church, with cheerful pieties of all sorts, and with the jovial Sicilian poet, Meli, one of the most universal of men.
Some persons have fancied that our book would be too learned! The most unlearned of such readers as we hope to possess will see what a notion this is, and to what plain English all our Greek and Latin has turned. We have the greatest contempt for learning, merely so called; together with the greatest respect for it when it sees through the dead letter of time and words into the spirit that concerns all ages and all descriptions of men. Every clever unlearned man in England, rich and poor, if we had the magic to do it, should be gifted to-morrow with all the learning that would adorn and endear his commerce to him, his agriculture, and the poorest flower-pot at his window. It would satisfy the longings that are born with such a man, and are natural to his powers; and would enable him, while he no longer envied such right parliamentary quoters of Virgil as the Minister, or Macaulay, or Sir Robert, or Brougham, or Lord Ellesmere, or Lord Morpeth, or Fox, to laugh at such educated ignoramuses as A, B, and C, who, though the classics were beaten into their heads at school, have no more real taste for what they quote, than the wall has for the pictures that are hung upon it with nail and hammer.
Spirit is everything, and letter is nothing; except inasmuch as it is a vehicle for spirit. “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” A learned quotation is as ridiculous in some people’s mouths as a flower would be stuck in the mouth of a barber’s block. What would the best claret be to one that could not perceive the odour of it? or the nicest of mince-pies, or college-puddings, to a mouth that had no taste? We are but dull ourselves in such matters (the more’s the pity), and would fain share, when at table, the nicest discernments of sharp and sweet, possessed by the luckier palates around us; but we should only laugh at the poor devil of a pretender, who, with nothing but a palate of silver, and no taste at all, should affect to emulate the Almanach des Gourmands, and give his opinion of the contending sauces.