The world of Reform that you dote on, like Berkeley’s material world, lives only in your own brain, and long may it live there! Those same Dissenting Ministers throughout the country (I mean the descendants of the old Puritans) are to this hour a sort of Fifth-monarchy men: very turbulent fellows, in my opinion altogether incorrigible, and according to the suggestions of others, should be hanged out of the way without judge or jury for the safety of church and state. Marry, hang them! they may be left to die a natural death: the race is nearly extinct of itself, and can do little more good or harm!
[56]. William, our waiter, is dressed neatly in black, takes in the Tickler, (which many of the gentlemen like to look into) wears, I am told, a diamond-pin in his shirt-collar, has a music-master to teach him to play on the flageolet two hours before the maids are up, complains of confinement and a delicate constitution, and is a complete Master Stephen in his way.
[57]. His account of Dr. L— was prodigious—of his occult sagacity, of his eyes prominent and wild like a hare’s, fugacious of followers, of the arts by which he had left the City to lure the patients that he wanted after him to the West-End, of the ounce of tea that he purchased by stratagem as an unusual treat to his guest, and of the narrow winding staircase, from the height of which he contemplated in security the imaginary approach of duns. He was a large, plain, fair-faced Moravian preacher, turned physician. He was an honest man, but vain of he knew not what. He was once sitting where Sarratt was playing a game at chess without seeing the board; and after remaining for some time absorbed in silent wonder, he turned suddenly to me and said, ‘Do you know, Mr. H—, that I think there is something I could do?’ ‘Well, what is that?’ ‘Why perhaps you would not guess, but I think I could dance, I’m sure I could; ay, I could dance like Vestris!’—Sarratt, who was a man of various accomplishments, (among others one of the Fancy,) afterwards bared his arm to convince us of his muscular strength, and Mrs. L— going out of the room with another lady said, ‘Do you know, Madam, the Doctor is a great jumper!’ Moliere could not outdo this. Never shall I forget his pulling off his coat to eat beef-steaks on equal terms with Martin B—. Life is short, but full of mirth and pastime, did we not so soon forget what we have laughed at, perhaps that we may not remember what we have cried at!—Sarratt, the chess-player, was an extraordinary man. He had the same tenacious, epileptic faculty in other things that he had at chess, and could no more get any other ideas out of his mind than he could those of the figures on the board. He was a great reader, but had not the least taste. Indeed the violence of his memory tyrannised over and destroyed all power of selection. He could repeat Ossian by heart, without knowing the best passage from the worst; and did not perceive he was tiring you to death by giving an account of the breed, education, and manners of fighting-dogs for hours together. The sense of reality quite superseded the distinction between the pleasurable and the painful. He was altogether a mechanical philosopher.
[58]. ‘Ils ne pouvoient croire qu’un corps de cette beauté fût de quelque chose au visage de Mademoiselle Churchill.’—Memoires de Grammont, Vol. II. p. 254.
[59]. When I was young, I spent a good deal of my time at Manchester and Liverpool; and I confess I give the preference to the former. There you were oppressed only by the aristocracy of wealth; in the latter by the aristocracy of wealth and letters by turns. You could not help feeling that some of their great men were authors among merchants and merchants among authors. Their bread was buttered on both sides, and they had you at a disadvantage either way. The Manchester cotton-spinners, on the contrary, set up no pretensions beyond their looms, were hearty good fellows, and took any information or display of ingenuity on other subjects in good part. I remember well being introduced to a distinguished patron of art and rising merit at a little distance from Liverpool, and was received with every mark of attention and politeness, till the conversation turning on Italian literature, our host remarked that there was nothing in the English language corresponding to the severity of the Italian ode—except perhaps Dryden’s Alexander’s Feast, and Pope’s St. Cecilia! I could no longer contain my desire to display my smattering in criticism, and began to maintain that Pope’s Ode was, as it appeared to me, far from an example of severity in writing. I soon perceived what I had done, but here am I writing Table-talks in consequence. Alas! I knew as little of the world then as I do now. I never could understand any thing beyond an abstract definition.
[60]. Lord H— had made a diary (in the manner of Boswell) of the conversation held at his house, and read it at the end of a week pro bono publico. Sir J— M— made a considerable figure in it, and a celebrated poet none at all, merely answering Yes and No. With this result he was by no means satisfied, and talked incessantly from that day forward. At the end of the week he asked, with some anxiety and triumph, if his Lordship had continued his diary, expecting himself to shine in ‘the first row of the rubric.’ To which his Noble Patron answered in the negative, with an intimation that it had not appeared to him worth while. Our poet was thus thrown again into the back ground, and Sir James remained master of the field!
[61]. A Mr. Rose and the Rev. Dr. Kippis were for many years its principal support. Mrs. Rose (I have heard my father say) contributed the Monthly Catalogue. There is sometimes a certain tartness and the woman’s tongue in it. It is said of Gray’s Elegy—‘This little poem, however humble its pretensions, is not without elegance or merit.’ The characters of prophet and critic are not always united.
[62]. There are some splendid exceptions to this censure. His comparison between Ovid and Virgil, and his character of Shakespear, are masterpieces of their kind.
[63]. We have critics in the present day who cannot tell what to make of the tragic writers of Queen Elizabeth’s age (except Shakespear, who passes by prescriptive right,) and are extremely puzzled to reduce the efforts of their ‘great and irregular’ power to the standard of their own slight and shewy common-places. The truth is, they had better give up the attempt to reconcile such contradictions as an artificial taste and natural genius; and repose on the admiration of verses which derive their odour from the scent of rose-leaves inserted between the pages, and their polish from the smoothness of the paper on which they are printed. They, and such writers as Deckar and Webster, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ford and Marlowe, move in different orbits of the human intellect, and need never jostle.
[64]. The intelligent reader will be pleased to understand, that there is here a tacit allusion to Squire Western’s significant phrase of Hanover Rats.