One word more: Œhlenschläger used to complain that when he wrote in Danish he wrote for two hundred readers; Russians are very much in the same case, and Prince Soltykoff, like all his countrymen who desire to have a public, has been obliged to have recourse to a foreign language. But the misfortune is so easily and gracefully borne, that we can scarcely find pity for it. The drawings are well lithographed by French artists. Our neighbors are much fonder of lithographic illustrations than we are, and, it must be admitted, excel us in that branch of art. We have noticed especially the lithographs executed by M. Trayer, a young artist, who is also a painter of promise.
From Leigh Hunt's Journal.
DUELLING TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS AGO.
SIR THOMAS DUTTON AND SIR HATTON CHEEK.
BY THOMAS CARLYLE.
Peace here, if possible; skins were not made for mere slitting and slashing! You that are for war, cannot you go abroad, and fight the Papist Spaniards? Over in the Netherlands there is always fighting enough. You that are of ruffling humor, gather your truculent ruffians together; make yourselves colonels over them; go to the Netherlands, and fight your bellyful!
Which accordingly many do, earning deathless war-laurels for the moment; and have done, and will continue doing, in those generations. Our gallant Veres, Earl of Oxford and the others, it has long been their way; gallant Cecil, to be called Earl of Wimbledon; gallant Sir John Burroughs, gallant Sir Hatton Cheek,—it is still their way. Deathless military renowns are gathered there in this manner; deathless for the moment. Did not Ben Jonson, in his young hard days, bear arms very manfully as a private soldado there? Ben, who now writes learned plays and court-masks as Poet Laureate, served manfully with pike and sword there, for his groat a day with rations. And once when a Spanish soldier came strutting forward between the lines, flourishing his weapon, and defying all persons in general—Ben stept forth, as I hear; fenced that braggart Spaniard, since no other would do it; and ended by soon slitting him in two, and so silencing him! Ben's war-tuck, to judge by the flourish of his pen, must have had a very dangerous stroke in it.
"Swashbuckler age," we said; but the expression was incorrect, except as a figure. Bucklers went out fifty years ago, "about the twentieth of Queen Elizabeth"; men do not now swash with them, or fight in that way. Iron armor has mostly gone out, except in mere pictures of soldiers; King James said, It was an excellent invention; you could get no harm, and neither could you do any in it. Bucklers, either for horse or foot, are quite gone. Yet old Mr. Stowe, good chronicler, can recollect when every gentleman had his buckler; and at length every serving man and city dandy. Smithfield—still a waste field, full of puddles in wet weather,—was in those days full of buckler duels, every Sunday and holiday in the dry season; and was called Ruffian's Rig, or some such name.
A man, in those days, bought his buckler, of gilt leather and wood, at the haberdasher's; "hung it over his back, by a strap fastened to the pommel of his sword in front." Elegant men showed what taste, or sense of poetic beauty, was in them by the fashion of their buckler. With Spanish beaver, with starched ruff, and elegant Spanish cloak, with elegant buckler hanging at his back, a man, if his moustachios and boots were in good order, stepped forth with some satisfaction. Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard; a decidedly truculent-looking figure. Jostle him in the street thoroughfares, accidentally splash his boots as you pass—by heaven the buckler gets upon his arm, the sword flashes in his fist, with oaths enough; and you too being ready, there is a noise! Clink, clank, death and fury; all persons gathering round, and new quarrels springing from this one! And Dogberry comes up with the town guard? And the shopkeepers hastily close their shops? Nay, it is hardly necessary, says Mr. Howe; these buckler fights amount only to noise, for most part; the jingle of iron against tin and painted leather. Ruffling swashers strutting along with big oaths and whiskers, delight to pick a quarrel; but the rule is you do not thrust, you do not strike below the waist; and it was oftenest a dry duel—mere noise, as of working tinsmiths, with profane swearing! Empty vaporing bullyrooks and braggarts, they encumber the thoroughfares mainly. Dogberry and Verges ought to apprehend them. I have seen, in Smithfield, on a dry holiday, "thirty of them on a side," fighting and hammering as if for life; and was not at the pains to look at them, the blockheads; their noise as the mere beating of old kettles to me!