SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.
THE CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH NOVEL READER.
How shall I describe the emotions with which I read the first novel I ever perused! A school-fellow had secretly brought with him from home after the holidays, the novel of Peregrine Pickle, which he carefully concealed in his trunk. He at first lent it to some of the elder boys, who read it, and enlarging on some of the most despicable incidents to be found, disgusted my meek spirit of it, by their report. It seemed to violate all my cherished ideas of beauty and soft luxury. I was then about fourteen years of age, and my companions persuaded me to a perusal. I took it up listlessly, expecting but little pleasure, but what language can paint the manner in which I was entranced by it? I read it over and over with increased delight, my entire soul and frame of mind and passions seemed to be suddenly changed and remodelled. I forgot Ariadne and Telemachus, and Tom Pipes and Hatchway became my idols, the undivided objects of my admiration.
I had hitherto been a remarkably quiet and inoffensive boy; Telemachus I considered never took delight in robbing orchards. I had the confidence of my teachers from my uniform rejection of any participation in the rude affrays, the catastrophe of which dramas was in general an almost universal flogging match. My admiration naturally led to its probable result, a desire to imitate—I firmly resolved to become a Peregrine. I soon promoted myself to be the leader of every mad prank that the wit of a spirit suddenly excited to activity could devise. In the first fortnight I got flogged for tying a huge mass of brown paper to the tail of the favourite cat of the master's lady, with which she rushed with an insane and terrifying distraction into the drawing-room. We owed a spite to a neighbouring milkman for tale-bearing, and we rendered his pump, the great source of profit, useless, by filling it with soot and mire. The old woman who served the school with tarts, and who, in her endeavours to please all palates, brought some varieties heated over a charcoal fire, had her apparatus blown to atoms by an ounce of gunpowder, insinuated with so much art, that although done before her face, she could attach no one with the offence. All became riot, waste, and destruction under the guidance of my beloved Peregrine.
But, ah! the poor Count—amiable, patient, and long-suffering Gaul! He was an unhappy refugee, who had sought a home, by becoming the reviled, insulted teacher of his native tongue to a mob of heartless ruffians. How well do I remember his neat but thread-bare coat and pigtail; his stooping gait, not the decrepitude of age, but as though it sprang from the abasement of his fortune; his endurance of injury to a certain point, when patience suddenly forsook him, and his, to us, irresistibly comic rage and exasperation! What would that generous seaman Pipes have thought a defenceless Frenchman fit for, but as the object of spirited and well-conducted pranks? Nothing cruel or revengeful, but only to show our own superior wit and address in concerted and premeditated annoyance.
I had gained with a most surprising rapidity upon the confidence of the most conspicuous rioters in the school. There was something so noble and daring in all my designs, that they seemed to yield willingly to so superior a spirit. The sudden alteration in my manners had been noticed with secret wonder by the masters, and they, thinking to check my fatal tendencies at the outset, had inflicted on me several severe and well-merited chastisements. I converted even these into means of extending my influence. I had borne them like a hero, a very Peregrine. No groan—no sigh—no bellowing promise of amendment, had lessened my dignity. Under the torture, I was sullen and silent. The stoutest heart in the school envied my manhood and composure.
The poor French teacher had been the hereditary object of annoyance for several generations of boys. The meekest and most chicken-hearted scrubs in the school tried their apprenticeship to mischief upon him, and were tutored to more noble game by beginning with the Count. They split and cut his pens into a thousand fantastic shapes during a momentary absence; they filled his snuff with the most odious pulverulents. They placed on his desk rude, but expressive designs of a guillotine, with a meagre fellow in ruffles and no shirt, running in the extremity of speed from the spot. These, and a thousand exhibitions of budding genius, and original sin, were our daily subjects of merriment and applause. I taught them nobler arts, or rather the spirit of Pickle which spake within me. It was nothing to annoy on such a petty and momentary scale; let the art and forethought of Hatchway be exhibited.
The amiable Frenchman was a zealous Catholic, and upon certain festivals always received from a Catholic gentleman of rank and fortune in the neighbourhood, an invitation to visit him. On these occasions his dress was the most ludicrous imaginable, being compounded of remnants of pristine finery, such as his wardrobe could afford, without attention to uniformity, or consistency of colour. Above all, he possessed a pair of light pea-green small clothes, on which he much prided himself, and I swore by old Trunnion to be their murderer. His custom on the aforesaid visits was to dress early, and then hastily to dismiss his lessons, and proceed immediately.
Having gained intelligence of an approaching field day, we prepared a strong solution of gum, with which we varnished the bottom of a leather chair upon which he sat in the school. The morning came, his green media and white silk stockings were hailed with the most extravagant but secret exultation. He seated himself, and let us run as we pleased through our tasks, with an unusual portion of smiles and pleasantries, and then looking at his watch, he attempted hastily to rise! in vain—there seemed an indissoluble bond of union between him and the chair; the most grotesque series of strugglings ensued, and by one desperate effort he was erect, a thin coating of the black leather which he had torn off, firmly adhering to his dress! Nothing abated my delight at my success, but the thought that my magnus Apollo, Pickle, was not there to enjoy it; to see the poor Count stand mute with a mixed passion of rage and distress for several seconds, and then to witness his fruitless attempts to view the full extent of the injury, which, notwithstanding the surprising flexibility of his vertebrae, he was unable to compass. Tom Pipes I felt certain would have died on the spot, he must have split.