Oxford bred—pure Oxford, ma'am. You cannot possibly utter a sentiment which he does not roll you off in pure Iambics, nor mention a fact which does not suggest another, at least eighteen centuries old.
"The day is very fine, ma'am, very fine indeed. 'And thus, from day to day'—you remember the quotation in Shakspere—it is prettily said, but not delicately. I do not like the words 'rot, and rot;' yet, if one take into account the age, ma'am, the age of Shakspere—I don't mean the years which he lived, but the age of the world in which he lived—if you take into consideration the age, such words as rot were not deemed ungenteel. 'Like a bare bodkin,' and 'groan and sweat'—all these phrases have got somehow into bad repute now; but they were once seen in the most polite company. Have you read the 'Laus Stultitiæ' of Erasmus, sir; or, as it is more frequently expressed in Greek terms, the Encomium Moriæ? It is quite unique, sir; so full of genuine fun, expressed in beautiful Latin, with scraps of Greek intermixed. What think you of the 'Prometheus' of Euripides?—is it not sublime and terrific?—such a thunder of language and meaning intermingled! These old fellows—these ancients—were the boys. What are our moderns to them? What is Southey to Virgil, or Scott to Homer, Tom Moore to Anacreon, or the lyrics of Burns to those of Horace? Oh, fons Blandusiæ! how soft, how sweet, how beautifully simplex munditiis! And then his 'quem verum aut heroa,' 'Cœlo tonantem credimus Jovem'. But I am, perhaps, trespassing on your patience; if so, I ask your pardon, and bid you good-morning."
There he goes—a creature of nut-shells, one who deals with the husk but never with the kernel—a bag of chaff, with scarcely a per-centage of honest grain—a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal—a thing of shreds and patches—a Joseph's coat of many colours. I was heartily tired of the classical pedant; but there are pedants, ma'am, in all situations and professions. There are even pedantic chimney-sweeps—men in sooty garb, who brandish the brush and display the dirt-bag with an air of importance, and whose loud and penetrating "sweep" has a peculiar force with it. There is, for example, your next neighbour, Mrs Manage, who makes more cheeses from less milk than any one of her neighbours; whose butter has a higher flavour than any in the market; and who kills you, from morn to night, with plans of savings, and profits, and improvements. She even rides her hobby whilst asleep; for she often starts, and mutters the name of a favourite milcher. And there is Mr Clark. Ah, my dear, good-natured, companionable, ever-to-be-remembered Mr Clark! You were indeed the prince of fishers. You had travelled over a great part of Scotland, like my friend Stodart, fishing; and, really and in truth, you had done and seen wonders. I am sorry, very sorry, indeed, to place you amongst the "pedants;" but truth, my dear sir—my dear shade, compels me to do so. Set you once upon fishing, and there was no end of it—from Dan to Beersheba, on you went. Here you killed a salmon of fourteen pounds weight, after playing him up pool and down stream for at least six hours; there, you hooked another, which broke your line, and curvetted away to the tune of
"I care for nobody, no not I,
If nobody cares for me."
Again, you filled your basket ere twelve o'clock, and gave up fishing merely because you could carry no more. And then, such adventures! One day you lost yourself in the mist—found a tethered horse—wandered for hours, and then encountered the same tethered horse again. At another time, you came upon a cottage in the muirland with a lame crow; and, after much wandering, came again upon the same object. You once changed your flies three times, and at last pulled him out by a knot upon the line, at which he took greedily. Was it not you who filled your basket with trouts of a pound weight each, and then, in leaning over a bank to land another, your basket-pin gave way, and they all tumbled dead into the gullet? Did not you jump in after them; and were you not carried down into the bumbling pool; and had it not been that you got a hold of a heather cow, would not you have been absolutely drowned? After all this testimony, which you know—I mean knew (alas! my dear friend, that I should say knew!)—to be true, can I avoid placing you amongst the fishing pedants? Yet, as the angel did in Sterne (an angel who has had a deal of work to do in his time), do I now drop a tear upon what I have written, and all but blot it out for ever. Honest Mr Clark! you were indeed the king of fishers; but, then, all your fish weighed fisher's weight—you added at least seventy-five per cent. to the avoirdupois!
But golfers! Golfers, of all pedants who infest earth or purgatory, are the most intolerable. During dinner, you hear the distant grumble of thunder; there is a word or two dropped, of this hole and that hole—of this stroke and that stroke—of this tee and that tee; but so soon as the glass has circulated a little, you are all mish-mash, helter-skelter, at it again. Done—done! is the word on the match; shillings, pounds, and guineas fly about like midges in harvest sunshine. Some one tries to introduce general conversation, by observing that the coronation went well off; but it is all to no purpose. Their voice is not heard in the general uproar. The very table seems to take an interest in the hubbub, and responds to the clenched fist with a peculiar hollow sound. If this be not pedantry, I know nothing of the subject. The Old Commodore, a second Uncle Toby, was a pedant; and so was Willie Herdman, who had fought as a common soldier at the siege of Gibraltar; and Jumping Jenny was a pedant, who had not an idea beyond a reel and a fling; and Willie Crosbie was a pedant, who could talk of nothing but ewes and gimmers; and Geordie Johnston was a pedant, who valued himself on his small ankles, and nice lambs'-wool stockings; and Archy Tait was a pedant, who kept up a nightly intercourse with the devil and all manner of bogles. But time and paper (which is more precious than time, never to speak of the printing) would fail me, were I to reveal to you the thousandth part of the cases in which pedantic idiocy appears. Turn we now, therefore, to another species of the same genus, to the "Sarcastical Jester," who, though he has not yet obtained a name amongst the notables, is, undeniably, the greatest and most offensive Idiot of the whole batch.
We must approach him slily, for he is an exceedingly cunning fellow; and, when you least think of it, he will be showing you off to some third party, whom, in his turn, he will again be showing off to you. Dean Swift's housemaid was one of this class, who pinned a dish-clout to the tail of Dr Sheridan, and pointed him out as an object of ridicule to all the servants. Nay, Satan himself was a master of works on the occasion, when he said "eat, and be wise," well knowing that his advice was folly, and obedience to it death. The practical jester is not a man of many words, but he looks two ways for Sabbath. He will tread upon your corny toe, and then ask your pardon, looking all the while slily to his companion, who is in the secret. He will call you Kettle of Barclay, instead of Barclay of Kettle—aware, as he is, that you value yourself upon your title. He will, above all this, practise upon you his great leading joke of Johnnie Hastie's shears. You are sitting beside him upon the top of a coach, and thinking of nothing but the crops, the fields, and the cottages. All at once, you spring to your feet with a shout, and are precipitated over the driver's seat upon the backs of the horses. All that he did, or was doing, was to give you a clip of Johnnie Hastie's shears. Good reader (for all readers of those Tales are good, like the Tales themselves), dost thou know anything about Johnnie Hastie or his shears? I shall tell thee.
He was a tailor in the Parish of Crail, famous for fish and herrings—a real cankered body, but with about an equal quantity of humour or malevolent wit. Whenever he found a proper opportunity, he used to bend his fore and middle fingers, and then, protruding the middle joint, and opening or separating the one from the other, he used to apply this instrument to the fleshy and most sensitive part of any person who might happen to sit near him, and, by compressing suddenly the joints and fingers, gave the impression of severe clipping. This he denominated a clip of Johnnie Hastie's shears; and hence arose the by-word. An incident or two of this sort it may not be improper to mention.
It is well known that hiccuping is an unpleasant but a pertinacious complaint, and that it proceeds from many causes as well as from a too liberal indulgence in wine. A person who happened to be at the time afflicted with this convulsive movement was suddenly struck on the back, by a practical jester, by way of surprising him out of the distemper. The stroke, however, happened to introduce a small piece of nut kernel, which he was eating, into his windpipe, and it was not without much suffering that it was at last extracted. Another came up to a man of peculiar habits and feelings, observing that he was looking very ill; and then, meeting him again next day, and a third, and a fourth, made the same observation. The poor nervous creature took it sadly to heart, went to bed, and never rose again. He died from the fear of death. At the siege of Toulon—when balls flew about in abundance—after the battle was over, and our ships were forced, by the infant Hercules, Bonaparte, to retreat, an officer went up to his companion, who was standing with his back towards him in the dark, and slapped him suddenly on the back betwixt the shoulders. The person suddenly struck jumped up on the deck, and shouting, "Shot at last, by God!" he died on the spot.
Jeanie Gibson and William Laidlaw were lovers, not in any particular sentimental manner, but just in the old-fashioned way. They liked each other's company, sat very close to each other in the dark, and occasionally indulged in an innocent kiss! But Jeanie was what is called "bonny," and had more lovers than Willie Laidlaw; one of whom, Bob Paton, a sly, unfeeling rogue, of the practical-jesting kind, was over head-and-ears in love with bonny Jeanie. He took it into his head that he would play a trick upon Jeanie, and make her avow at once her preference for Willie Laidlaw, whom she only in secret favoured. For this purpose, he dressed up a figure in what (in the dark) might appear to be the clothes of Willie Laidlaw, and placed it in a field through which he knew Laidlaw was to pass. He armed himself with a gun, duly charged with powder and shot. Firm prepared, he advanced into the field or park, well knowing that Jeanie Gibson was not only within sight, but within hearing of him, being seated under the cover of a stone dyke hard by.