“Had but seldom known the use
Of the grape’s surprising juice,”
became so top heavy, that I saw his head gently let down, as if by a pully and tackle, on the shoulder of the metaphysician, who not inclined to enact the prop to a fallen foe, disengaged himself so abruptly from this mountain of the muses (for Behemoth is a poet), that the chair on which he sat, having glided away, the latter came down on the floor plump, like a full sack that had broken from the crane. My gravity was not proof against this downfall of Parnassus, and I made my way up stairs as quickly as I could, only lagging behind a sufficient length of time for the water-drinking philosopher to be lodged before me. Oh ye gods, what an exhibition did I open upon! the only similitude which I can find at hand for the drawing-room that presented itself, was a glass of some highly bottled liquid, in which a froth of white muslin occupied the upper, and a sediment of black cloth its lower extremity. Not a sound was to be heard as I entered the room; but I soon perceived that the et ceteras of coffee, tea, cakes, and bread and butter, were not at all more indifferent in the superior, than soups, meats, and wine had been in the inferior regions of this intellectual festum. It quite astonished me to see the quantity of all these appurtenances of the soireé, that almost immediately vanished, “leaving not a wreck behind.” During the consumption of these mere creatures of the entertainment, certain solemn sentences were fired at intervals, after the manner of minute guns, each succeeded by a deadly pause.
The gentlemen below stairs sat a long time, but I was resolved to see out the evening, ere I passed judgment on a party of the literati. At length the authors ascended, and, had I been a young lady, I should have felt most unwilling
——“to meet the rudeness and swilled insolence
Of such late wassailers;”
but the habits of the trade triumphed over the occasional excess which Sir Marmaduke’s hospitality had caused his guests to commit, and so profoundly discreet was this book-making assembly, that while, on the one hand, not a syllable that betrayed either taste or genius escaped, and laid them open to plagiarism, I must do justice to the equal taciturnity which they observed upon every subject less immediately connected with the direct views of their calling; insomuch, that, for the greater number, they withstood the most pedantic efforts, on the side of the blues, to draw them out, and—with the exception of some tedious verbiage pronounced, ex cathedrâ, by the man in the black cap, who, perceiving the advantage which his abstemiousness gave him over the rest, grew loquacious and collected a circle of ladies around him—One might have imagined that rumination was the object of the meeting, and that the members of this tiresome confraternity had come together principally for the purpose of feeding first, and then chewing the cud on the subjects of their next lucubrations. I never was so weary of the “human face divine,” as on the memorable occasion which I have mentioned, and gladly banished all recollection of a party, over which the goddess of dulness had especially presided—in the most leaden slumber that I have experienced since my arrival in the British capital.
I shall part from Arthur with such sorrow as a brother’s love might feel. He must positively be a changeling in his mother’s house, so entirely does he differ from his family. Yet in Louisa there are, as our country taylor would say, “the makings” of something good, had she received a decent education. But empty heads and flinty hearts are quite the thing; and if nature throw away her labours, and, forgetting the class on which she is operating, lavish fine faculties and gentle affections on one of your exquisites, whether male or female, these, like troublesome excrescences, must be amputated; and a better hand at performing such a species of excision cannot exist than that of my aunt. Her influence is enough to eradicate the deepest sensibilities, and cut to the quick the most promising intellect. She cannot bear me, because my uncle takes kind notice of me, and it is time that we should part; for a day in Grosvenor Square seems to me as if passed in purgatory; though Arthur is there.