Aquilius.—Yes, a pie. It is remarkably good—quite delicious. It puts the brute in good humour with himself and every body, and he grunts applause, and promises his favour to the cook. At this stage—this incipient stage of his conversion—a pathetic butler bursts into tears, and affectionately sobs out the beautiful truth. The cook for the occasion was his mistress—the ill-treated wife. He becomes a perfect Christian on the instant; and with the conversion comes the moral metamorphosis, and the "brute of a husband" is, on a sudden, the best and most religious of men. Now, in what respect, Mr Curate, would you bid any of your flock to go and do likewise? Setting aside as worthless, then, to say the best of it, the moral, the set-up primness of the whole affair is so odious, that you long even for a little wickedness to set nature upon nature's legs, that we may at least acknowledge the presence of humanity.
Curate.—We must ask Lydia to defend the writers of her sex. You are severe upon poor Hannah, who would have been good enough in spite of her extreme vanity, if the clique had let her alone. Her Cœlebs was to be the novel par excellence, the model tale,—and with no little contempt for all others.
Aquilius.—Your Lydia has too much good sense, and too much plain honesty, to defend any thing wrong because it is found in woman. The utmost you can expect from her is not to object to the saintly Hannah, as was the charity of the Wolverhampton audience, when her play was acted there. Master Betty was hissed, and this impromptu was uttered, during a lull, from the gallery—
"The age of childhood now is o'er,
Of folly and of whim—
We dont object to Hannah More,
But we'll ha-na-more of him."
Curate.—Yet she is supposed to have done some good by her minor tales for the poor. Possibly she did—the object was at all events good.
Aquilius.—And here she was the precursor to a worse set, so bad that it can hardly be said of them that they are "daturos progeniem vitiosiorem."
Curate.—Yes, even wickedly religious. The scheme was, that the poor should teach the rich, and the infant the man. I remember reading some of these tales of Mrs Sherwood's. Is there not one where a little urchin, not long after he is able to run alone, is sent out on an errand,—an unconverted child,—commits the very natural sin of idleness, loiters by the way, and lies under a tree. There, you will suppose, sleep comes upon him—no, but grace. He rises a converted man-child, an infant apostle, goes home and converts his wicked grandfather, or great-grandfather. "Ex uno disce omnes." Great was the outcry against Maria Edgeworth's children's tales, because they did not inculcate religious dogmas. This was a great compliment to her genius, for it showed that every sect would have wished her theirs. She wisely left the catechism to fathers, mothers, and nurses, and preferred leaving to the parson of each parish the prerogative of sermonising.
Aquilius.—Some of you take your prerogative as a sanitary prescription, and sweeten your own tempers by throwing off their acerbities, ad libitum, one day in the week; abusing in very unmeasured terms all mankind, and their own congregation in particular—indeed, often in language that, used on week days, and by any other people, would be looked upon as nearly akin to what is called "cursing and swearing." So do extremes sometimes meet. A little thunder clears the air wonderfully; the lightning may not always be evident.
Curate.—All writers, especially novelists and reviewers, assume this privilege of bitterness, without the restriction to one day out of seven; hence, to say nothing of the better motives in the other case, they are more practised in acerbity than amiability. Your medicine becomes the habit, not the cure. We must have civil tongues the greater part of our lives. Your literary satirist uses the drunkard's remonstrance—
"Which is the properest day to drink—
Saturday, Sunday, Monday?
Each is the properest day, I think;
Why should you name but one day?"