‘Each corner to search, and each nook to scan.’
Well, you have made your bow with such a trigonometrical flourish, as proves indisputably your claim to a rectilineal descent from the Angles—if I intended a pun, may I eat a dinner of cabbage and quicksilver, and then, with my heels higher than my head, take a siesta beneath a Nubian sun on “Damien’s bed of steel;” (Dante would have chuckled over so original a punishment, for the embellishment of his Inferno.) Now you are in the room don’t open your mouth with such a convulsive gape. Did you never see a classical studio before? Drop your arms by your sides with perpendicular propriety, and, if you wish to note the aspect of the room, and its occupants, do it by quiet, occasional glances, and not by an Hibernian stare. Take a seat—you have done it indeed, and with a most rheumatic grace; one would think you had been studying the ‘Poetry of motion’ all your days. If you wish to take an inventory of the novelties you see, “Accipe jam tabulas”—pull out your memorandum book,—“detur nobis locus, hora, custodes”—sit down, and take your time about it, but be careful,—“videamus, uter plus scribere possit”—see how fast you can write; that’s what my old paedotribe used to call a free translation.
But we must hasten to a description of the room, and its contents.
Item. Your infernal extremities are sublevated by a carpet, somewhat homely, but thick and warm, while from an open stove a blazing pile of ‘divina Hickoria’ (as Virgil would call it) diffuses a salutary warmth.
Item. Abutting upon either window, stand two tall and open book-cases, “filled to the brim of contentment.” Beside the dull and thumb-worn volumes of the ‘college course,’ which constitute but a small portion of their burden, you will find a choice selection from the infinity of books, which the wit of man has perpetrated. The stolidity of wisdom, and the levity of wit, equally find there a place.
Item. In the centre of the room rests a substantial table, around whose broad circumference an astral lamp sheds its fluent splendors upon a literary chaos, where taste and fancy have collected their aliment,
‘In embryon atoms
Light-armed, or heavy, sharp, smooth, swift, or slow’—
The meditations of Hervey, and the sparkling humor of Butler,—the regal Virgil,
‘With the sounding line—