University of Virginia Library

‘London, 18—.

‘My dear Alfred,

‘Your last letters put me in pain.
‘This contempt of existence, this listless disdain
‘Of your own life,—its joys and its duties,—the deuce
‘Take my wits if they find for it half an excuse!
‘I wish that some Frenchman would shoot off your leg,
‘And compel you to stump through the world on a peg.
‘I wish that you had, like myself (more's the pity!),
‘To sit seven hours on this cursed committee.
‘I wish that you knew, sir, how salt is the bread
‘Of another—(what is it that Dante has said?)
‘And the trouble of other men's stairs. In a word,
‘I wish fate had some real affliction conferr'd
‘On your whimsical self, that, at least, you had cause
‘For neglecting life's duties, and damning its laws!
‘This pressure against all the purpose of life,
‘This self-ebullition, and ferment, and strife,
‘Betoken'd, I grant that it may be in truth,
‘The richness and strength of the new wine of youth.
‘But if, when the wine should have mellow'd with time,
‘Being bottled and binn'd, to a flavour sublime,
‘It retains the same acrid, incongruous taste,
Why, the sooner to throw it away that we haste
‘The better, I take it. And this vice of snarling,
‘Self-love's little lapdog, the over-fed darling
‘Of a hypochondriacal fancy, appears,
‘To my thinking at least, in a man of your years,
‘At the midnoon of manhood, with plenty to do,
‘And every incentive for doing it too,—
‘With the duties of life just sufficiently pressing
‘For prayer, and of joys more than most men for blessing;
‘With a pretty young wife, and a pretty full purse,—
‘Like poltroonery, puerile truly, or worse!
‘I wish I could get you at least to agree
‘To take life as it is, and consider with me,
‘If it be not all smiles, that it is not all sneers;
‘It admits honest laughter, and needs honest tears.
‘Do you think none have known but yourself all the pain
‘Of hopes that retreat, and regrets that remain?
‘And all the wide distance fate fixes, no doubt,
‘'Twixt the life that's within, and the life that's without?
‘What one of us finds the world just as he likes?
‘Or gets what he wants when he wants it? Or strikes
‘Without missing the thing that he strikes at the first?
‘Or walks without stumbling? Or quenches his thirst
‘At one draught? Bah! I tell you! I, bachelor John,
‘Have had griefs of my own. But what then? I push on
‘All the faster perchance that I yet feel the pain
‘Of my last fall, albeit I may stumble again.
‘God means every man to be happy, be sure.
‘He sends us no sorrows that have not some cure.
‘Our duty down here is to do, not to know.
‘Live as though life were earnest, and life will be so.
‘Let each moment, like Time's last ambassador, come:
‘It will wait to deliver its message; and some
‘Sort of answer it merits. It is not the deed
‘A man does, but the way that he does it, should plead
‘For the man's compensation in doing it.

‘Here,
‘My next neighbour's a man with twelve thousand a year,
‘Who deems that life has not a pastime more pleasant
‘Than to follow a fox, or to slaughter a pheasant.
‘Yet this fellow goes through a contested election,
‘Lives in London, and sits, like the soul of dejection,
‘All the day through upon a committee, and late
‘To the last, every night, through the dreary debate,
‘As though he were getting each speaker by heart,
‘Though amongst them he never presumes to take part.
‘One asks oneself why, without murmur or question,
‘He foregoes all his tastes, and destroys his digestion,
‘For a labour of which the result seems so small.
‘“The man is ambitious,” you say. Not at all.
‘He has just sense enough to be fully aware
‘That he never can hope to be Premier, or share
‘The renown of a Tully;—or even to hold
‘A subordinate office. He is not so bold
‘As to fancy the House for ten minutes would bear
‘With patience his modest opinions to hear.
‘“But he wants something!”

‘What! with twelve thousand a year?
‘What could Government give him would be half so dear
‘To his heart as a walk with a dog and a gun
‘Through his own pheasant woods, or a capital run?
‘“No; but vanity fills out the emptiest brain;
‘The man would be more than his neighbours, 'tis plain;
‘And the drudgery drearily gone through in town
‘Is more than repaid by provincial renown.
‘Enough if some Marchioness, lively and loose,
‘Shall have eyed him with passing complaisance; the goose,
‘If the Fashion to him open one of its doors,
‘As proud as a sultan, returns to his boors.”
‘Wrong again! if you think so,

‘For, primo; my friend
‘Is the head of a family known from one end
‘Of his shire to the other, as the oldest; and therefore
‘He despises fine lords and fine ladies. He care for
‘A peerage? no truly! Secondo; he rarely
‘Or never goes out: dines at Bellamy's sparely,
‘And abhors what you call the gay world.

‘Then, I ask,
‘What inspires, and consoles, such a self-imposed task
‘As the life of this man,—but the sense of its duty?
‘And I swear that the eyes of the haughtiest beauty
‘Have never inspired in my soul that intense,
‘Reverential, and loving, and absolute sense
‘Of heart-felt admiration I feel for this man,
‘As I see him beside me;—there, wearing the wan
‘London daylight away, on his humdrum committee;
‘So unconscious of all that awakens my pity,
‘And wonder—and worship, I might say.
‘To me
‘There seems something nobler than genius to be
‘In that dull patient labour no genius relieves,
‘That absence of all joy which yet never grieves;
‘The humility of it! the grandeur withal!
‘The sublimity of it! And yet, should you call
‘The man's own very slow apprehension to this,
‘He would ask, with a stare, what sublimity is!
‘His work is the duty to which he was born;
‘He accepts it, without ostentation or scorn:
‘And this man is no uncommon type (I thank Heaven!)
‘Of this land's common men. In all other lands, even
‘The type's self is wanting. Perchance, 'tis the reason
‘That government oscillates ever 'twixt treason
‘And tyranny elsewhere.

‘I wander away
‘Too far, though, from what I was wishing to say.
‘You, for instance, read Plato. You know that the soul
‘Is immortal; and put this in rhyme, on the whole,
‘Very well, with sublime illustration. Man's heart
‘Is a mystery, doubtless. You trace it in art:—
‘The Greek Psyche,—that's beauty,—the perfect ideal:
‘But then comes the imperfect, perfectible real,
‘With its pain'd aspiration and strife. In those pale
‘Ill-drawn virgins of Giotto you see it prevail.
‘You have studied all this. Then, the universe, too,
‘Is not a mere house to be lived in, for you.
‘Geology opens the mind. So you know
‘Something also of strata and fossils; these show
‘The bases of cosmical structure: some mention
‘Of the nebulous theory demands your attention;
‘And so on.

‘In short, it is clear the interior
‘Of your brain, my dear Alfred, is vastly superior
‘In fibre, and fulness, and function, and fire,
‘To that of my poor parliamentary squire;
‘But your life leaves upon me (forgive me this heat
‘Due to friendship) the sense of a thing incomplete.
‘You fly high. But what is it, in truth, you fly at?
‘My mind is not satisfied quite as to that.
‘An old illustration 's as good as a new,
‘Provided the old illustration be true.
‘We are children. Mere kites are the fancies we fly,
‘Though we marvel to see them ascending so high;
‘Things slight in themselves,—long-tail'd toys, and no more!
‘What is it that makes the kite steadily soar
‘Through the realms where the cloud and the whirlwind have birth,
‘But the tie that attaches the kite to the earth?
‘I remember the lessons of childhood, you see,
‘And the hornbook I learn'd on my poor mother's knee.
‘In truth, I suspect little else do we learn
‘From this great book of life, which so shrewdly we turn,
‘Saving how to apply, with a good or bad grace,
‘What we learn'd in the hornbook of childhood.

‘Your case
‘Is exactly in point.

‘Fly your kite, if you please,
‘Out of sight: let it go where it will, on the breeze;
‘But cut not the one thread by which it is bound,
‘Be it never so high, to this poor human ground.
‘No man is the absolute lord of his life.
‘You, my friend, have a home, and a sweet and dear wife.
‘If I often have sigh'd by my own silent fire,
‘With the sense of a sometimes recurring desire
‘For a voice sweet and low, or a face fond and fair,
‘Some dull winter evening to solace and share
‘With the love which the world its good children allows
‘To shake hands with,—in short, a legitimate spouse,
‘This thought has consoled me: “at least I have given
‘For my own good behaviour no hostage to heaven.”
‘You have, though. Forget it not! faith, if you do,
‘I would rather break stones on a road than be you.
‘If any man wilfully injured, or led
‘That little girl wrong, I would sit on his head,
‘Even though you yourself were the sinner!

‘And this
‘Leads me back (do not take it, dear cousin, amiss!)
‘To the matter I meant to have mention'd at once,
‘But these thoughts put it out of my head for the nonce.
‘Of all the preposterous humbugs and shams,
‘Of all the old wolves ever taken for lambs,
‘The wolf best received by the flock he devours
‘Is that uncle-in-law, my dear Alfred, of yours.
‘At least, this has long been my settled conviction,
‘And I almost would venture at once the prediction
‘That before very long—but no matter! I trust
‘For his sake and our own, that I may be unjust.
‘But Heaven forgive me, if cautious I am on
‘The score of such men as, with both God and Mammon,
‘Seem so shrewdly familiar.

‘Neglect not this warning.
‘There were rumours afloat in the City this morning
‘Which I scarce like the sound of. Who knows? would he fleece
‘At a pinch, the old hypocrite, even his own niece?
‘For the sake of Matilda I cannot importune
‘Your attention too early. If all your wife's fortune
‘Is yet in the hands of that specious old sinner,
‘Who would dice with the devil, and yet rise up winner,
‘I say, lose no time! get it out of the grab
‘Of her trustee and relative Ridley MacNab.
‘I trust those deposits, at least, are drawn out,
‘And safe at this moment from danger or doubt.
‘A wink is as good as a nod to the wise.
‘Verbum sap. I admit nothing yet justifies
‘My mistrust; but I have in my own mind a notion
‘That old Ridley's white waistcoat, and airs of devotion,
‘Have long been the only ostensible capital
‘On which he does business. If so, time must sap it all,
‘Sooner or later. Look sharp. Do not wait,
‘Draw at once. In a fortnight it may be too late.
‘I admit I know nothing. I can but suspect;
‘I give you my notions. Form yours, and reflect.
‘My love to Matilda. Her mother looks well.
‘I saw her last week. I have nothing to tell
‘Worth your hearing. We think that the government here
‘Will not last out next session. Fitz Funk is a peer,
‘You will see by the Times. There are symptoms which show
‘That the ministers now are preparing to go,
‘And finish their feast of the loaves and the fishes.
‘It is evident that they are clearing the dishes,
‘And cramming their pockets with bon-bons. Your news
‘Will be always acceptable. Vere, of the Blues,
‘Has bolted with Lady Selina. And so,
‘You have met with that hot-headed Frenchman? I know
‘That the man is a sad mauvais sujet. Take care
‘Of Matilda. I wish I could join you both there;
‘But, before I am free, you are sure to be gone.
‘Good-bye, my dear fellow.

‘Yours, anxiously,

‘John.’