The works of Washington Irving

This world is the best that we live in,
To lend, or to spend, or to give in;
But to beg, or to borrow, or get a man's own.
'Tis the very worst world, sir, that ever was known.
Lines from an Inn Window.

LITERARY LIFE.

Among other subjects of a traveller's
curiosity, I had at one time a great craving
after anecdotes of literary life; and
being at London, one of the most noted
places for the production of books, I was
excessively anxious to know something
of the animals which produced them.
Chance fortunately threw me in the way
of a literary man by the name of Buckthorne,
an eccentric personage, who had
lived much in the metropolis, and could
give me the natural history of every odd
animal to be met with in that wilderness
of men. He readily imparted to me
some useful hints upon the subject of my
inquiry.

"The literary world," said he, "is
made up of little confederacies, each
looking upon its own members as the
lights of the universe; and considering
all others as mere transient meteors,
doomed soon to fall and be forgotten,
while its own luminaries are to shine
steadily on to immortality."

"And pray," said I, "how is a man
to get a peep into those confederacies

you speak of? I presume an intercourse
with authors is a kind of intellectual exchange,
where one must bring his commodities
to barter, and always give a
quid pro quo."

"Pooh, pooh! how you mistake," said
Buckthorne, smiling; "you must never
think to become popular among wits by
shining. They go into society to shine
themselves, not to admire the brilliancy
of others. I once thought as you do,
and never went into literary society
without studying my part beforehand;
the consequence was, that I soon got the
name of an intolerable proser, and should,
in a little while, have been completely
excommunicated, had I not changed my
plan of operations. No, sir, there is no
character that succeeds so well among
wits as that of a good listener; or if ever
you are eloquent, let it be when tête-àtête
with an author, and then in praise
of his own works, or, what is nearly as
acceptable, in disparagement of the works
of his contemporaries. If ever he speaks
favourably of the productions of a particular
friend, dissent boldly from him;
pronounce his friend to be a blockhead;
never fear his being vexed; much as
people speak of the irritability of authors,
I never found one to take offence at such
contradictions. No, no, sir, authors are
particularly candid in admitting the faults
of their friends.

"Indeed, I would advise you to be
extremely sparing of remarks on all modern
works, except to make sarcastic
observations on the most distinguished
writers of the day."

"Faith," said I, "I'll praise none that
have not been dead for at least half a
century."

"Even then," observed Mr. Buckthorne,
"I would advise you to be rather
cautious; for you must know that many
old writers have been enlisted under the
banners of different seets, and their
merits have become as completely topics
of party discussion as the merits of living
statesmen and politicians. Nay, there
have been whole periods of literature
absolutely taboo'd, to use a South Sea
phrase. It is, for example, as much as
a man's critical reputation is worth in
some circles, to say a word in praise of
any of the writers of the reign of Charles
the Second, or even of Queen Anne, they
being all declared Frenchmen in disguise."

"And pray," said I, "when am I then
to know that I am on safe grounds, being
totally unacquainted with the literary
landmarks, and the boundary-line of fashionable
taste?"

"Oh!" replied he, "there is fortunately
one tract of literature which forms
a kind of neutral ground, on which all
the literati meet amicably, and run riot
in the excess of their good humour; and
this is in the reigns of Elizabeth and
James. Here you may praise away at
random. Here it is `cut and come again;'
and the more obscure the author, and the
more quaint and crabbed his style, the
more your admiration will smack of the
real relish of the connoisseur; whose
taste, like that of an epicure, is always
for game that has an antiquated flavour.

"But," continued he, "as you seem
anxious to know something of literary
society, I will take an opportunity to introduce
you to some coterie, where the
talents of the day are assembled. I cannot
promise you, however, that they will
all be of the first order. Somehow or
other, our great geniuses are not gregarious;
they do not go in flocks, but fly
singly in general society. They prefer
mingling, like common men, with the
multitude, and are apt to carry nothing
of the author about them but the reputation.
It is only the inferior orders that
herd together, acquire strength and importance
by their confederacies, and bear
all the distinctive characteristics of their
species."

A LITERARY DINNER.

A few days after this conversation
with Mr. Buckthorne, he called upon me,
and took me with him to a regular literary
dinner. It was given by a great
bookseller, or rather a company of booksellers,
whose firm surpassed in length
that of Shadrach, Meshech and Abednego.

I was surprised to find between twenty
and thirty guests assembled, most of
whom I had never seen before. Mr.

Buckthorne explained this to me, by
informing me that this was a business
dinner, or kind of field-day, which the
house gave about twice a year to its authors.
It is true they did occasionally
give snug dinners to three or four literary
men at a time; but then these were generally
select authors, favourites of the
public, such as had arrived at their sixth
or seventh editions. "There are," said
he, "certain geographical boundaries in
the land of literature, and you may judge
tolerably well of an author's popularity
by the wine his bookseller gives him.
An author crosses the port line about
the third edition, and gets into clarets;
and when he has reached the sixth or
seventh, he may revel in champagne and
burgundy."

"And pray," said I, "how far may
these gentlemen have reached that I see
around me; are any of these claret
drinkers?"

"Not exactly, not exactly. You find
at these great dinners the common steady
run of authors, one or two edition men;
or if any others are invited, they are
aware that it is a kind of republican
meeting. You understand me—a meeting
of the republic of letters; and that
they must expect nothing but plain substantial
fare."

These hints enabled me to comprehend
more fully the arrangement of the
table. The two ends were occupied by
two partners of the house; and the host
seemed to have adopted Addison's idea
as to the literary precedence of his
guests. A popular poet had the post of
honour; opposite to whom was a hot-pressed
traveller in quarto with plates.
A grave-looking antiquarian, who had
produced several solid works, that were
much quoted and little read, was treated
with great respect, and seated next to a
neat dressy gentleman in black, who had
written a thin, genteel, hot-pressed octavo
on political economy, that was getting
into fashion. Several three volume
duodecimo men, of fair currency, were
placed about the centre of the table;
while the lower end was taken up with
small poets, translators, and authors
who had not as yet risen into much
notoriety.

The conversation during dinner was
by fits and starts; breaking out here and
there in various parts of the table in
small flashes, and ending in smoke. The
poet, who had the confidence of a man
on good terms with the world, and independent
of his bookseller, was very gay
and brilliant, and said many clever things
which set the partner next him in a roar,
and delighted all the company. The
other partner, however, maintained his
sedateness, and kept carving on, with the
air of a thorough man of business, intent
upon the occupation of the moment. His
gravity was explained to me by my friend
Buckthorne. He informed me that the
concerns of the house were admirably
distributed among the partners. "Thus,
for instance," said he, "the grave gentleman
is the carving partner, who attends
to the joints; and the other is the laughing
partner, who attends to the jokes."

The general conversation was chiefly
carried on at the upper end of the table,
as the authors there seemed to possess
the greatest courage of the tongue. As
to the crew at the lower end, if they did
not make much figure in talking, they
did in eating. Never was there a more
determined, inveterate, thoroughly-sustained
attack on the trencher than by
this phalanx of masticators. When the
cloth was removed, and the wine began
to circulate, they grew very merry and
jocose among themselves. Their jokes,
however, if by chance any of them reached
the upper end of the table, seldom
produced much effect. Even the laughing
partner did not seem to think it
necessary to honour them with a smile;
which my neighbour Buckthorne accounted
for, by informing me that there
was a certain degree of popularity to be
obtained before a bookseller could afford
to laugh at an author's jokes.

Among this crew of questionable gentlemen
thus seated below the salt, my
eye singled out one in particular. He
was rather shabbily dressed; though he
had evidently made the most of a rusty
black coat, and wore his shirt-frill plaited
and puffed out voluminously at the bosom.
His face was dusky, but florid, perhaps a
little too florid, particularly about the
nose; though the rosy hue gave the
greater lustre to a twinkling black eye.
He had a little the look of a boon companion,

with that dash of the poor devil
in it which gives an inexpressibly mellow
tone to a man's humour. I had seldom
seen a face of richer promise; but never
was promise so ill kept. He said nothing,
ate and drank with the keen appetite
of a garreteer, and scarcely stopped
to laugh, even at the good jokes from the
upper end of the table. I inquired who
he was. Buckthorne looked at him attentively;
"Gad," said he, "I have seen
that face before, but where I cannot
recollect. He cannot be an author of
any note. I suppose some writer of sermons,
or grinder of foreign travels."

After dinner we retired to another
room to take tea and coffee, where we
were reinforced by a cloud of inferior
guests,—authors of small volumes in
boards, and pamphlets stitched in blue
paper. These had not as yet arrived to
the importance of a dinner invitation, but
were invited occasionally to pass the
evening "in a friendly way." They
were very respectful to the partners, and,
indeed, seemed to stand a little in awe of
them; but they paid devoted court to the
lady of the house, and were extravagantly
fond of the children. Some few, who
did not feel confidence enough to make
such advances, stood shyly off in corners,
talking to one another; or turned
over the portfolios of prints which they
had not seen above five thousand times,
or moused over the music on the forte-piano.

The poet and the thin octavo gentleman
were the persons most current and
at their ease in the drawing-room; being
men evidently of circulation in the west
end. They got on each side of the lady
of the house, and paid her a thousand
compliments and civilities, at some of
which I thought she would have expired
with delight. Every thing they said and
did had the odour of fashionable life. I
looked round in vain for the poor-devil
author in the rusty black coat; he had
disappeared immediately after leaving the
table, having a dread, no doubt, of the
glaring light of a drawing-room. Finding
nothing further to interest my attention,
I took my departure soon after coffee
had been served, leaving the poet, and
the thin, genteel, hot-pressed, octavo gentleman,
masters of the field.

THE CLUB OF QUEER FELLOWS.

I think it was the very next evening
that, in coming out of Covent Garden
Theatre with my eccentric friend Buckthorne,
he proposed to give me another
peep at life and character. Finding me
willing for any research of the kind, he
took me through a variety of the narrow
courts and lanes about Covent Garden,
until we stopped before a tavern from
which we heard the bursts of merriment
of a jovial party. There would be a
loud peal of laughter, then an interval,
then another peal, as if a prime wag
were telling a story. After a little while
there was a song, and at the close of
each stanza a hearty roar, and a vehement
thumping on the table.

"This is the place," whispered Buckthorne;
"it is the club of queer fellows,
a great resort of the small wits, third-rate
actors, and newspaper critics of the
theatres. Any one can go in on paying
a sixpence at the bar for the use of the
club."

We entered, therefore, without ceremony,
and took our seats at a lone table
in a dusky corner of the room. The
club was assembled round a table, on
which stood beverages of various kinds,
according to the tastes of the individuals.
The members were a set of queer fellows
indeed; but what was my surprise
on recognising in the prime wit of the
meeting the poor-devil author whom I
had remarked at the booksellers' dinner
for his promising face and his complete
taciturnity! Matters, however, were entirely
changed with him. There he was
a mere cypher; here he was lord of the
ascendant, the choice spirit, the dominant
genius. He sat at the head of the table
with his hat on, and an eye beaming
even more luminously than his nose.
He had a quip and a fillip for every one,
and a good thing on every occasion.
Nothing could be said or done without
eliciting a spark from him; and I solemnly
declare I have heard much worse wit
even from noblemen. His jokes, it must
be confessed, were rather wet, but they
suited the circle over which he presided.
The company were in that maudlin
mood, when a little wit goes a great
way. Every time he opened his lips

there was sure to be a roar; and even
sometimes before he had time to speak.

We were fortunate enough to enter in
time for a glee composed by him expressly
for the club, and which he sang
with two boon companions, who would
have been worthy subjects for Hogarth's
pencil. As they were each provided
with a written copy, I was enabled to
procure the reading of it:

Merrily, merrily push round the glass,
And merrily troll the glee;
For he who won't drink till he wink is an ass:
So, neighbour, I drink to thee.

Merrily, merrily fuddle thy nose,
Until it right rosy shall be;
For a jolly red nose, I speak under the rose,
Is a sign of good company.

We waited until the party broke up,
and no one but the wit remained. He
sat at the table with his legs stretched
under it, and wide apart; his hands in
his breeches pockets; his head drooped
upon his breast; and gazing with lacklustre
countenance on an empty tankard.
His gayety was gone, his fire completely
quenched.

My companion approached, and startled
him from his fit of brown study,
introducing himself on the strength of
their having dined together at the booksellers'.

"By the way," said he, "it seems to
me I have seen you before; your face is
surely that of an old acquaintance, though
for the life of me, I cannot tell where I
have known you."

"Very likely," replied he with a
smile: "many of my old friends have
forgotten me. Though, to tell the truth,
my memory in this instance is as bad as
your own. If, however, it will assist
your recollection in any way, my name
is Thomas Dribble, at your service."

"What! Tom Dribble, who was at
old Birchell's school in Warwickshire?"

"The same," said the other coolly.

"Why, then, we are old schoolmates,
though it's no wonder that you don't
recollect me. I was your junior by
several years; don't you recollect little
Jack Buckthorne?"

Here there ensued a scene of schoolfellow
recognition, and a world of talk
about old school times and school pranks.
Mr. Dribble ended by observing with a
heavy sigh, "that times were sadly
changed since those days."

"Faith, Mr. Dribble," said I, "you
seem quite a different man here from
what you were at dinner. I had no idea
that you had so much stuff in you. There
you were all silence, but here you absolutely
keep the table in a roar."

"Ah! my dear sir," replied he, with
a shake of the head, and a shrug of the
shoulder, "I'm a mere glow-worm. I
never shine by daylight. Besides, it's a
hard thing for a poor devil of an author
to shine at the table of a rich bookseller.
Who do you think would laugh at any
thing I could say, when I had some of
the current wits of the day about me?
But here, though a poor devil, I am
among still poorer devils than myself;
men who look up to me as a man of
letters, and a bel-esprit, and all my jokes
pass as sterling gold from the mint."

"You surely do yourself injustice, sir,"
said I; "I have certainly heard more
good things from you this evening, than
from any of those beau-esprits by whom
you appear to have been so daunted."

"Ah, sir! but they have luck on their
side: they are in the fashion—there's
nothing like being in fashion. A man
that has once got his character up for a
wit is always sure of a laugh, say what
he may. He may utter as much nonsense
as he pleases, and all will pass current.
No one stops to question the coin
of a rich man; but a poor devil cannot
pass off either a joke or a guinea, without
its being examined on both sides.
Wit and coin are always doubted with a
threadbare coat."

"For my part," continued he, giving
his hat a twitch a little more on one side,
"for my part, I hate your fine dinners;
there's nothing, sir, like the freedom of a
chop-house. I'd rather, any time, have
my steak and tankard among my own
set, than drink claret and eat venison
with your cursed civil, elegant company,
who never laugh at a good joke from a
poor devil for fear of its being vulgar.
A good joke grows in a wet soil; it flourishes
in low places, but withers on your
d—d high, dry grounds. I once kept
high company, sir, until I nearly ruined
myself; I grew so dull, and vapid, and
genteel. Nothing saved me but being

arrested by my landlady, and thrown
into prison; where a course of catch
clubs, eight-penny ale, and poor-devil
company, manured my mind, and brought
it back to itself again."

As it was growing late, we parted for
the evening, though I felt anxious to
know more of this practical philosopher.
I was glad, therefore, when Buckthorne
proposed to have another meeting, to talk
over old school-times, and inquired his
schoolmate's address. The latter seemed
at first a little shy of naming his lodgings;
but suddenly, assuming an air of hardihood—"Green-arbour
Court, sir," exclaimed
he—"Number —, in Greenarbour
Court. You must know the place.
Classic ground, sir, classic ground! It
was there Goldsmith wrote his Vicar of
Wakefield—I always like to live in literary
haunts."

I was amused with this whimsical
apology for shabby quarters. On our
way homeward, Buckthorne assured me
that this Dribble had been the prime wit
and great wag of the school in their
boyish days, and one of those unlucky
urchins denominated bright geniuses. As
he perceived me curious respecting his
old schoolmate, he promised to take me
with him in his proposed visit to Greenarbour
Court.

A few mornings afterward he called
upon me, and we set forth on our expedition.
He led me through a variety of
singular alleys, and courts, and blind
passages; for he appeared to be perfectly
versed in all the intricate geography of
the metropolis. At length we came out
upon Fleet-market, and traversing it,
turned up a narrow street to the bottom
of a long steep flight of stone steps, called
Breakneck Stairs. These, he told me,
led up to Green-arbour Court, and that
down them poor Goldsmith might many
a time have risked his neck. When we
entered the court, I could not but smile
to think in what out-of-the-way corners
genius produces her bantlings! And the
Muses, those capricious dames, who,
forsooth, so often refuse to visit palaces,
and deny a single smile to votaries in
splendid studies, and gilded drawingrooms,—what
holes and burrows will
they frequent, to lavish their favours on
some ragged disciple!

This Green-arbour Court I found to be
a small square, of tall and miserable
houses, the very intestines of which
seemed turned inside out, to judge from
the old garments and frippery that fluttered
from every window. It appeared
to be a region of washerwomen, and
lines were stretched about the little
square, on which clothes were dangling
to dry.

Just as we entered the square, a
scuffle took place between two viragos
about a disputed right to a wash-tub,
and immediately the whole community
was in a hubbub. Heads in mob-caps
popped out of every window, and such a
clamour of tongues ensued, that I was
fain to stop my ears. Every amazon
took part with one or other of the disputants,
and brandished her arms, dripping
with soapsuds, and fired away from
her window as from the embrazure of a
fortress, while the swarms of children
nestled and cradled in every procreant
chamber of this hive, waking with the
noise, set up their shrill pipes to swell the
general concert.

Poor Goldsmith! what a time must he
have had of it, with his quiet disposition
and nervous habits, penned up in this
den of noise and vulgarity! How strange,
that while every sight and sound was
sufficient to embitter the heart, and fill
it with misanthropy, his pen should be
dropping the honey of Hybla! Yet it is
more than probable that he drew many
of his inimitable pictures of low life from
the scenes which surrounded him in this
abode. The circumstance of Mrs. Tibbs
being obliged to wash her husband's two
shirts in a neighbour's house, who refused
to lend her wash-tub, may have
been no sport of fancy, but a fact passing
under his own eye. His landlady may
have sat for the picture, and Beau Tibbs's
scanty wardrobe have been a fac simile
of his own.

It was with some difficulty that we
found our way to Dribble's lodgings.
They were up two pair of stairs, in a
room that looked upon the court, and
when we entered, he was seated on the
edge of his bed, writing at a broken
table. He received us, however, with a
free, open, poor-devil air, that was irresistible.
It is true he did at first appear

slightly confused; buttoned up his waistcoat
a little higher, and tucked in a stray
frill of linen. But he recollected himself
in an instant; gave a half swagger, half
leer, as he stepped forth to receive us;
drew a three-legged stool for Mr. Buckthorne;
pointed me to a lumbering old
damask chair, that looked like a dethroned
monarch in exile; and bade us
welcome to his garret.

We soon got engaged in conversation.
Buckthorne and he had much to say
about early school scenes; and as nothing
opens a man's heart more than recollections
of the kind, we soon drew from
him a brief outline of his literary career.

THE POOR-DEVIL AUTHOR.

I began life unluckily by being the
wag and bright fellow at school; and I
had the further misfortune of becoming
the great genius of my native village.
My father was a country attorney, and
intended that I should succeed him in
business; but I had too much genius to
study, and he was too fond of my genius
to force it into the traces: so I fell into
bad company, and took to bad habits.
Do not mistake me. I mean that I fell
into the company of village literati, and
village blues, and took to writing village
poetry.

It was quite the fashion in the village
to be literary. There was a little knot
of choice spirits of us, who assembled
frequently together, formed ourselves
into a Literary, Scientific, and Philosophical
Society, and fancied ourselves
the most learned Philos in existence.
Every one had a great character assigned
him, suggested by some casual habit or
affectation. One heavy fellow drank an
enormous quantity of tea, rolled in his
arm-chair, talked sententiously, pronounced
dogmatically, and was considered
a second Dr. Johnson; another,
who happened to be a curate, uttered
coarse jokes, wrote doggerel rhymes, and
was the Swift of our association. Thus
we had also our Popes, and Goldsmiths,
and Addisons; and a blue-stocking lady,
whose drawing-room we frequented, who
corresponded about nothing with all the
world, and wrote letters with the stiffness
and formality of a printed book, was
cried up as another Mrs. Montagu. I
was, by common consent, the juvenile
prodigy, the poetical youth, the great
genius, the pride and hope of the village,
through whom it was to become one day
as celebrated as Stratford-on-Avon.

My father died, and left me his blessing
and his business. His blessing brought
no money into my pocket; and as to his
business, it soon deserted me; for I was
busy writing poetry, and could not attend
to law; and my clients, though they had
great respect for my talents, had no
faith in a poetical attorney.

I lost my business, therefore, spent my
money, and finished my poem. It was
the Pleasures of Melancholy, and was
cried up to the skies by the whole circle.
The Pleasures of Imagination, the Pleasures
of Hope, and the Pleasures of
Memory, though each had placed its
author in the first rank of poets, were
blank prose in comparison. Our Mrs.
Montagu would cry over it from beginning
to end. It was pronounced by all
the members of the Literary, Scientific,
and Philosophical Society, the greatest
poem of the age, and all anticipated the
noise it would make in the great world.
There was not a doubt but the London
booksellers would be mad after it, and
the only fear of my friends was, that I
would make a sacrifice by selling it too
cheap. Every time they talked the matter
over, they increased the price. They
reckoned up the great sums given for the
poems of certain popular writers, and
determined that mine was worth more
than all put together, and ought to be
paid for accordingly. For my part, I
was modest in my expectations, and determined
that I would be satisfied with a
thousand guineas. So I put my poem in
my pocket, and set off for London.

My journey was joyous. My heart
was light as my purse, and my head full
of anticipations of fame and fortune.
With what swelling pride did I cast my
eyes upon old London from the heights
of Highgate! I was like a general,
looking down upon a place he expects
to conquer. The great metropolis lay
stretched before me, buried under a homemade

cloud of murky smoke, that wraped
it from the brightness of a sunny day,
and formed for it a kind of artificial bad
weather. At the outskirts of the city,
away to the west, the smoke gradually
decreased until all was clear and sunny,
and the view stretched uninterrupted to
the blue line of the Kentish hills.

My eye turned fondly to where the
mighty cupola of St. Paul swelled dimly
through this misty chaos, and I pictured
to myself the solemn realm of learning
that lies about its base. How soon
should the Pleasures of Melancholy
throw this world of booksellers and
printers into a bustle of business and
delight! How soon should I hear my
name repeated by printers' devils throughout
Paternoster Row, and Angel Court,
and Ave-Maria Lane, until Amen Corner
should echo back the sound!

Arrived in town, I repaired at once to
the most fashionable publisher. Every
new author patronises him of course. In
fact, it had been determined in the village
circle that he should be the fortunate
man. I cannot tell you how vaingloriously
I walked the streets. My head
was in the clouds. I felt the airs of
heaven playing about it, and fancied it
already encircled by a halo of literary
glory. As I passed by the windows of
bookshops, I anticipated the time when
my work would be shining among the
hot-pressed wonders of the day; and my
face, scratched on copper, or cut on
wood, figuring in fellowship with those
of Scott, and Byron, and Moore.

When I applied at the publisher's
house, there was something of the loftiness
of my air, and the dinginess of my
dress, that struck the clerks with reverence.
They doubtless took me for some
person of consequence: probably a digger
of Greek roots, or a penetrator of
pyramids. A proud man in a dirty shirt
is always an imposing character in the
world of letters: one must feel intellectually
secure before he can venture to
dress shabbily; none but a great genius,
or a great scholar, dares to be dirty: so
I was ushered at once to the sanctum
sanctorum of this high priest of Minerva.

The publishing of books is a very different
affair now-a-days from what it
was in the time of Bernard Lintot. I
found the publisher a fashionably dressed
man, in an elegant drawing-room,
furnished with sofas and portraits of
celebrated authors, and cases of splendidly
bound books. He was writing
letters at an elegant table. This was
transacting business in style. The place
seemed suited to the magnificent publications
that issued from it. I rejoiced at
the choice I had made of a publisher, for
I always liked to encourage men of taste
and spirit.

I stepped up to the table with the lofty
poetical part that I had been accustomed
to maintain in our village circle; though
I threw in it something of a patronising
air, such as one feels when about to make
a man's fortune. The publisher paused
with his pen in his hand, and seemed
waiting in mute suspense to know what
was to be announced by so singular an
apparition.

I put him at his ease in a moment, for I
felt that I had but to come, see, and conquer.
I made known my name, and the
name of my poem; produced my precious
roll of blotted manuscript; laid it
on the table with an emphasis; and told
him at once, to save time, and come
directly to the point, the price was one
thousand guineas.

I had given him no time to speak, nor
did he seem so inclined. He continued
looking at me for a moment with an air
of whimsical perplexity; scanned me
from head to foot; looked down at the
manuscript, then up again at me, then
pointed to a chair; and whistling softly
to himself, went on writing his letter.

I sat for some time waiting his reply,
supposing he was making up his mind;
but he only paused occasionally to take
a fresh dip of ink, to stroke his chin, or
the tip of his nose, and then resumed his
writing. It was evident his mind was
intently occupied upon some other subject;
but I had no idea that any other
subject should be attended to, and my
poem lie unnoticed on the table. I had
supposed that every thing would make
way for the Pleasures of Melancholy.

My gorge at length rose within me.
I took up my manuscript, thrust it into
my pocket, and walked out of the room:
making some noise as I went out, to let

my departure be heard. The publisher,
however, was too much buried in minor
concerns to notice it. I was suffered to
walk down stairs without being called
back. I sallied forth into the street, but
no clerk was sent after me; nor did the
publisher call after me from the drawing-room
window. I have been told since,
that he considered me either a madman
or a fool. I leave you to judge how
much he was in the wrong in his opinion.

When I turned the corner, my crest
fell. I cooled down in my pride and
my expectations, and reduced my terms
with the next bookseller to whom I applied.
I had no better success; nor with
a third, nor with a fourth. I then desired
the booksellers to make an offer
themselves; but the deuce an offer would
they make. They told me poetry was a
mere drug; every body wrote poetry;
the market was overstocked with it.
And then they said, the title of my poem
was not taking; that pleasures of all
kinds were worn threadhare, nothing
but horrors did now-a-days, and even
those were almost worn out. Tales of
Pirates, Robbers, and Bloody Turks,
might answer tolerably well; but then
they must come from some established
well-known name, or the public would
not look at them.

At last I offered to leave my poem
with a bookseller, to read it, and judge
for himself. "Why, really, my dear
Mr. ——a—a—I forget your name,"
said he, casting an eye at my rusty coat
and shabby gaiters, "really, sir, we are
so pressed with business just now, and
have so many manuscripts on hand to
read, that we have not time to look at
any new productions; but if you can call
again in a week or two, or say the middle
of next month, we may be able to
look over your writings, and give you an
answer. Don't forget, the month after
next; good morning, sir; happy to see
you at any time you are passing this
way." So saying, he bowed me out in
the civilest way imaginable. In short,
sir, instead of an eager competition to
secure my poem, I could not even get it
read! In the mean time I was harassed
by letters from my friends, wanting to
know when the work was to appear;
who was to be my publisher; but, above
all things, warning me not to let it go
too cheap.

There was but one alternative left. I
determined to publish the poem myself;
and to have my triumph over the booksellers,
when it should become the fashion
of the day. I accordingly published the
Pleasures of Melancholy, and ruined myself.
Excepting the copies sent to the
reviews, and to my friends in the country,
not one, I believe, ever left the
bookseller's warehouse. The printer's
bill drained my purse, and the only
notice that was taken of my work, was
contained in the advertisements paid for
by myself.

I could have borne all this, and have
attributed it, as usual, to the mismanagement
of the publisher, or the want of
taste in the public, and could have made
the usual appeal to posterity; but my
village friends would not let me rest in
quiet. They were picturing me to themselves
feasting with the great, communing
with the literary, and in the high
career of fortune and renown. Every
little while, some one would call on me
with a letter of introduction from the
village circle, recommending him to my
attentions, and requesting that I would
make him known in society; with a
hint, that an introduction to a celebrated
literary nobleman would be extremely
agreeable. I determined, therefore, to
change my lodgings, drop my correspondence,
and disappear altogether from
the view of my village admirers. Besides,
I was anxious to make one more
poetic attempt. I was by no means disheartened
by the failure of my first.
My poem was evidently too didactic.
The public was wise enough. It no
longer read for instruction. "They
want horrors, do they?" said I: "I'
faith! then they shall have enough of
them." So I looked out for some quiet,
retired place, where I might be out of
reach of my friends, and have leisure to
cook up some delectable dish of poetical
"hell-broth."

I had some difficulty in finding a place
to my mind, when chance threw me in
the way of Canonbury Castle. It is an
ancient brick tower, hard by "merry
Islington;" the remains of a hunting-seat

of Queen Elizabeth, where she took
the pleasure of the country when the
neighbourhood was all woodland. What
gave it particular interest in my eyes
was the circumstance that it had been
the residence of a poet. It was here
Goldsmith resided when he wrote his
Deserted Village. I was shown the
very apartment. It was a relic of the
original style of the castle, with paneled
wainscots and Gothic windows. I was
pleased with its air of antiquity, and with
its having been the residence of poor
Goldy.

"Goldsmith was a pretty poet," said
I to myself, "a very pretty poet, though
rather of the old school. He did not
think and feel so strongly as is the
fashion now-a-days; but had he lived in
these times of hot hearts and hot heads,
he would no doubt have written quite
differently."

In a few days I was quietly established
in my new quarters; my books all arranged;
my writing-desk placed by a
window looking out into the fields; and
I felt as snug as Robinson Crusoe, when
he had finished his bower. For several
days I enjoyed all the novelty of change
and the charms which grace new lodgings,
before one has found out their defects.
I rambled about the fields where
I fancied Goldsmith had rambled. I explored
merry Islington; ate my solitary
dinner at the Black Bull, which, according
to tradition, was a country-seat of
Sir Walter Raleigh; and would sit and
sip my wine, and muse on old times, in
a quaint old room, where many a council
had been held.

All this did very well for a few days.
I was stimulated by novelty; inspired
by the associations awakened in my
mind by these curious haunts; and
began to think I felt the spirit of composition
stirring within me. But Sunday
came, and with it the whole city world,
swarming about Canonbury Castle. I
could not open my window but I was
stunned with shouts and noises from the
cricket ground; the late quiet road beneath
my window was alive with the
tread of feet and clack of tongues; and,
to complete my misery, I found that my
quiet retreat was absolutely a "show
house," the tower and its contents
being shown to strangers at sixpence a
head.

There was a perpetual tramping up
stairs of citizens and their families, to
look about the country from the top of
the tower, and to take a peep at the city
through the telescope, to try if they could
discern their own chimneys. And then,
in the midst of a vein of thought, or a
moment of inspiration, I was interrupted,
and all my ideas put to flight, by my
intolerable landlady's tapping at the
door, and asking me if I would "just
please to let a lady and gentleman come
in, to take a look at Mr. Goldsmith's
room." If you know any thing of what
an author's study is, and what an author
is himself, you must know that there
was no standing this. I put a positive
interdict on my room's being exhibited;
but then it was shown when I was absent,
and my papers put in confusion;
and, on returning home one day, I absolutely
found a cursed tradesman and
his daughters gaping over my manuscripts,
and my landlady in a panic at
my appearance. I tried to make out a
little longer, by taking the key in my
pocket; but it would not do. I overheard
mine hostess one day telling some
of her customers on the stairs, that the
room was occupied by an author, who
was always in a tantrum if interrupted;
and I immediately perceived, by a slight
noise at the door, that they were peeping
at me through the key-hole. By the
head of Apollo, but this was quite too
much! With all my eagerness for fame,
and my ambition of the stare of the million,
I had no idea of being exhibited by
retail, at sixpence a head, and that
through a key-hole. So I bade adieu to
Canonbury Castle, merry Islington, and
the haunts of poor Goldsmith, without
having advanced a single line in my
labours.

My next quarters were at a small,
white-washed cottage, which stands not
far from Hampstead, just on the brow of
a hill; looking over Chalk Farm and
Camden Town, remarkable for the rival
houses of Mother Red Cap and Mother
Black Cap; and so across Crackscull
Common to the distant city.

The cottage was in no wise remarkable
in itself; but I regarded it with reverence,

for it had been the asylum of a
persecuted author. Hither poor Steele
had retreated, and lain perdu, when persecuted
by creditors and bailiffs—those
immemorial plagues of authors and free-spirited
gentlemen; and here he had
written many numbers of the Spectator.
It was from hence, too, that he had despatched
those little notes to his lady, so
full of affection and whimsicality, in
which the fond husband, the careless
gentleman, and the shifting spendthrift,
were so oddly blended. I thought, as I
first eyed the window of his apartment,
that I could sit within it and write volumes.

No such thing! It was hay-making
season, and, as ill-luck would have it,
immediately opposite the cottage was a
little alehouse, with the sign of the Load
of Hay. Whether it was there in Steele's
time, I cannot say; but it set all attempts
at conception or inspiration at defiance.
It was the resort of all the Irish haymakers
who mow the broad fields in the
neighbourhood; and of drovers and
teamsters who travel that road. Here
they would gather in the endless summer
twilight, or by the light of the harvest
moon, and sit round a table at the door;
and tipple, and laugh, and quarrel, and
fight, and sing drowsy songs, and dawdle
away the hours, until the deep solemn
notes of St. Paul's clock would warn the
varlets home.

In the daytime I was still less able to
write. It was broad summer. The
haymakers were at work in the fields,
and the perfume of the new-mown hay
brought with it the recollection of my
native fields. So, instead of remaining
in my room to write, I went wandering
about Primrose Hill, and Hampstead
Heights, and Shepherd's Fields, and all
those Arcadian scenes so celebrated by
London bards. I cannot tell you how
many delicious hours I have passed,
lying on the cocks of new-mown hay,
on the pleasant slopes of some of those
hills, inhaling the fragrance of the fields,
while the summer-fly buzzed about me,
or the grasshopper leaped into my bosom;
and how I have gazed with half-shut
eye upon the smoky mass of London,
and listened to the distant sound of
its population, and pitied the poor sons
of earth, toiling in its bowels, like
Gnomes in the "dark gold mine."

People may say what they please
about cockney pastorals, but, after all,
there is a vast deal of rural beauty about
the western vicinity of London; and any
one that has looked down upon the valley
of West End, with its soft bosom of
green pasturage lying open to the south,
and dotted with cattle; the steeple of
Hampstead rising among rich groves on
the brow of the hill; and the learned
height of Harrow in the distance; will
confess that never has he seen a more
absolutely rural landscape in the vicinity
of a great metropolis.

Still, however, I found myself not a
whit the better off for my frequent
change of lodgings; and I began to discover,
that in literature, as in trade, the
old proverb holds good, "a rolling stone
gathers no moss."

The tranquil beauty of the country
played the very vengeance with me. I
could not mount my fancy into the termagant
vein. I could not conceive,
amidst the smiling landscape, a scene of
blood and murder; and the smug citizens
in breeches and gaiters put all ideas of
heroes and bandits out of my brain. I
could think of nothing but dulcet subjects,
"the Pleasures of Spring"—"the
Pleasures of Solitude"—"the Pleasures
of Tranquillity"—"the Pleasures of Sentiment"—nothing
but pleasures; and I
had the painful experience of "the Pleasures
of Melancholy" too strongly in my
recollection to be beguiled by them.

Chance at length befriended me. I
had frequently, in my ramblings, loitered
about Hampstead Hill, which is a kind
of Parnassus of the metropolis. At such
times I occasionally took my dinner at
Jack Straw's Castle. It is a country inn
so named: the very spot where that
notorious rebel and his followers held
their council of war. It is a favourite
resort of citizens when rurally inclined,
as it commands fine fresh air, and a good
view of the city. I sat one day in the
public room of this inn, ruminating over
a beefsteak and a pint of port, when my
imagination kindled up with ancient and
heroic images. I had long wanted a
theme and a hero; both suddenly broke
upon my mind: I determined to write

a poem on the history of Jack Straw.
I was so full of my subject, that I was
fearful of being anticipated. I wondered
that none of the poets of the day, in
their researches after ruffian heroes, had
ever thought of Jack Straw. I went to
work pell-mell, blotted several sheets of
paper with choice floating thoughts, and
battles, and descriptions, to be ready at
a moment's warning. In a few days'
time I sketched out the skeleton of my
poem, and nothing was wanting but to
give it flesh and blood. I used to take
my manuscript, and stroll about Caen-Wood,
and read aloud; and would dine
at the Castle, by way of keeping up the
vein of thought.

I was there one day, at rather a late
hour, in the public room. There was
no other company but one man, who sat
enjoying his pint of port at a window,
and noticing the passers-by. He was
dressed in a green shooting-coat. His
countenance was strongly marked: he
had a hooked nose; a romantic eye,
excepting that it had something of a
squint; and altogether, as I thought, a
poetical style of head. I was quite taken
with the man, for you must know I am
a little of a physiognomist; I set him
down for either a poet or a philosopher.

As I like to make new acquaintances,
considering every man a volume of human
nature, I soon fell into conversation
with the stranger, who, I was pleased to
find, was by no means difficult of access.
After I had dined, I rejoined him at the
window, and we became so sociable that
I proposed a bottle of wine together, to
which he most cheerfully assented.

I was too full of my poem to keep
long quiet on the subject, and began to
talk about the origin of the tavern, and
the history of Jack Straw. I found my
new acquaintance to be perfectly at home
on the topic, and to jump exactly with
my humour in every respect. I became
elevated by the wine and the conversation.
In the fulness of an author's feelings,
I told him of my projected poem,
and repeated some passages, and he
was in raptures. He was evidently of a
strong poetical turn.

"Sir," said he, filling my glass at the
same time, "our poets don't look at
home. I don't see why we need go out
of old England for robbers and rebels to
write about. I like your Jack Straw,
sir,—he's a home-made hero. I like
him, sir—I like him exceedingly. He's
English to the back-bone—damme—
Give me honest old England after all!
Them's my sentiments, sir."

"I honour your sentiment," cried I,
zealously; "it is exactly my own. An
English ruffian is as good a ruffian for
poetry as any in Italy, or Germany, or
the Archipelago; but it is hard to make
our poets think so."

"More shame for them!" replied the
man in green. "What a plague would
they have? What have we to do with
their Archipelagos of Italy and Germany?
Haven't we heaths and commons
and highways on our own little
island—ay, and stout fellows to pad the
hoof over them too? Stick to home, I
say—them's my sentiments. Come, sir,
my service to you—I agree with you
perfectly."

"Poets, in old times, had right notions
on this subject," continued I; "witness
the fine old ballads about Robin Hood,
Allan a'Dale, and other staunch blades of
yore."

"Right, sir, right," interrupted he;
"Robin Hood! he was the lad to cry
Stand! to a man, and never to flinch."

"Ah, sir," said I, "they had famous
bands of robbers in the good old times;
those were glorious poetical days. The
merry crew of Sherwood Forest, who
led such a roving picturesque life `under
the greenwood tree.' I have often wished
to visit their haunts, and tread the
scenes of the exploits of Friar Tuck, and
Clymn of the Clough, and Sir William
of Cloudeslie."

"Nay, sir," said the gentleman in
green, "we have had several very pretty
gangs since their day. Those gallant
dogs that kept about the great heaths
in the neighbourhood of London, about
Bagshot, and Hounslow and Blackheath,
for instance. Come, sir, my service to
you. You don't drink."

"I suppose," said I, emptying my
glass, "I suppose you have heard of the
famous Turpin, who was born in this
very village of Hampstead, and who used
to lurk with his gang in Epping Forest,
about a hundred years since?"

"Have I?" cried he, "to be sure I
have! A hearty old blade that. Sound
as pitch. Old Turpentine! as we used to
call him. A famous fine fellow, sir."

"Well, sir," continued I, "I have
visited Waltham Abbey and Chingford
Church merely from the stories I heard
when a boy of his exploits there, and
I have searched Epping Forest for the
cavern where he used to conceal himself.
You must know," added I, "that I am a
sort of amateur of highwaymen. They
were dashing, daring fellows: the best
apologies that we had for the knights-errant
of yore. Ah, sir! the country
has been sinking gradually into tameness
and commonplace. We are losing
the old English spirit. The bold knights
of the post have all dwindled down into
lurking footpads and sneaking pickpockets;
there's no such thing as a dashing,
gentleman-like robbery committed now-a-days
on the King's highway: a man
may roll from one end of England to the
other in a drowsy coach, or jingling
post-chaise, without any other adventure
than that of being occasionally overturned,
sleeping in damp sheets, or having
an ill-cooked dinner. We hear no more
of public coaches being stopped and robbed
by a well-mounted gang of resolute
fellows, with pistols in their hands, and
crapes over their faces. What a pretty
poetical incident was it, for example, in
domestic life, for a family carriage, on
its way to a country-seat, to be attacked
about dark; the old gentleman eased of
his purse and watch, the ladies of their
necklaces and ear-rings, by a politely-spoken
highwayman on a blood mare,
who afterwards leaped the hedge and
galloped across the country; to the admiration
of Miss Caroline, the daughter,
who would write a long and romantic
account of the adventure to her friend,
Miss Juliana, in town. Ah, sir! we meet
with nothing of such incidents now-a-days."

"That, sir," said my companion,
taking advantage of a pause, when I
stopped to recover breath, and to take a
glass of wine which he had just poured
out, "that, sir, craving your pardon, is
not owing to any want of old English
pluck. It is the effect of this cursed
system of banking. People do not travel
with bags of gold as they did formerly.
They have post-notes, and drafts on
bankers. To rob a coach is like catching
a crow, where you have nothing but
carrion flesh and feathers for your pains.
But a coach in old times, sir, was as
rich as a Spanish galloon. It turned
out the yellow boys bravely. And a
private carriage was a cool hundred or
two at least."

I cannot express how much I was
delighted with the sallies of my new
acquaintance. He told me that he often
frequented the Castle, and would be glad
to know more of me; and I promised
myself many a pleasant afternoon with
him, when I should read him my poem
as it proceeded, and benefit by his remarks;
for it was evident that he had
the true poetical feeling.

"Come, sir," said he, pushing the
bottle, "damme, I like you! you're a
man after my own heart. I'm cursed
slow in making new acquaintances. One
must be on the reserve, you know. But
when I meet with a man of your kidney,
damme, my heart jumps at once to him.
Them's my sentiments, sir. Come, sir,
here's Jack Straw's health! I presume
one can drink it now-a-days without treason!"

"With all my heart," said I, gaily,
"and Dick Turpin's into the bargain!"

"Ah, sir," said the man in green,
"those are the kind of men for poetry.
The Newgate Calendar, sir! the Newgate
Calendar is your only reading!
There's the place to look for bold deeds
and dashing fellows."

We were so much pleased with each
other that we sat until a late hour.
I insisted on paying the bill, for both my
purse and my heart were full, and I
agreed that he should pay the score at
our next meeting. As the coaches had
all gone that run between Hampstead
and London, we had to return on foot.
He was so delighted with the idea of my
poem, that he could talk of nothing else.
He made me repeat such passages as I
could remember; and though I did it
in a very mangled manner, having a
wretched memory, yet he was in raptures.

Every now and then he would break
out with some scrap, which he would

misquote most terribly, would rub his
hands and exclaim, "By Jupiter, that's
fine, that's noble! Damme, sir, if I
can conceive how you hit upon such
ideas!"

I must confess I did not always relish
his misquotations, which sometimes made
absolute nonsense of the passages; but
what author stands upon trifles when he
is praised?"

Never had I spent a more delightful
evening. I did not perceive how the
time flew. I could not bear to separate,
but continued walking on, arm in arm,
with him, past my lodgings, through
Camden Town, and across Crackscull
Common, talking the whole way about
my poem.

When we were half way across the
common, he interrupted me in the midst
of a quotation, by telling me that this
had been a famous place for footpads,
and was still occasionally infested by
them; and that a man had recently been
shot there in attempting to defend himself.
"The more fool he!" cried I;
"a man is an idiot to risk life, or even
limb, to save a paltry purse of money.
It's quite a different case from that of a
duel, where one's honour is concerned.
For my part," added I, "I should never
think of making resistance against one
of those desperadoes."

"Say you so?" cried my friend in
green, turning suddenly upon me, and
putting a pistol to my breast; "why,
then, have at you, my lad!—come—
disburse! empty! unsack!"

In a word, I found that the Muse had
played me another of her tricks, and
had betrayed me into the hands of a
footpad. There was no time to parley;
he made me turn my pockets inside out;
and, hearing the sound of distant footsteps,
he made one fell swoop upon
purse, watch, and all; gave me a
thwack over my unlucky pate that laid
me sprawling on the ground, and scampered
away with his booty.

I saw no more of my friend in green
until a year or two afterwards; when
I caught a sight of his poetical countenance
among a crew of scapegraces
heavily ironed, who were on the way
for transportation. He recognised me
at once, tipped me an impudent wink,
and asked me how I came on with the
history of Jack Straw's Castle.

The catastrophe at Crackscull Common
put an end to my summer's campaign.
I was cured of my poetical enthusiasm
for rebels, robbers, and highwaymen.
I was put out of conceit of
my subject, and, what was worse, I was
lightened of my purse, in which was
almost every farthing I had in the world.
So I abandoned Sir Richard Steele's cottage
in despair, and crept into less celebrated,
though no less poetical and airy
lodgings, in a garret in town.

I now determined to cultivate the society
of the literary, and to enrol myself
in the fraternity of authorship. It is by
the constant collision of mind, thought I,
that authors strike out the sparks of
genius, and kindle up with glorious conceptions.
Poetry is evidently a contagious
complaint. I will keep company with
poets; who knows but I may catch it as
others have done?

I found no difficulty of making a circle
of literary acquaintances, not having
the sin of success lying at my door: indeed
the failure of my poem was a kind
of recommendation to their favour. It is
true my new friends were not of the
most brilliant names in literature; but
then if you would take their words for it,
they were like the prophets of old, men
of whom the world was not worthy; and
who were to live in future ages, when the
ephemeral favourites of the day should
be forgotten.

I soon discovered, however, that the
more I mingled in literary society, the less
I felt capable of writing; that poetry was
not so catching as I imagined; and that
in familiar life there was often nothing
less poetical than a poet. Besides, I
wanted esprit de corps to turn these literary
fellowships to any account. I could
not bring myself to enlist in any particular
seet. I saw something to like in
them all, but found that would never do,
for that the tacit condition on which a
man enters into one of these sects is, that
he abuses all the rest.

I perceived that there were little knots
of authors who lived with, and for, and
by one another. They considered themselves
the salt of the earth. They fostered
and kept up a conventional vein of

thinking and talking, and joking on all
subjects; and they cried each other up to
the skies. Each sect had its particular
creed; and set up certain authors as
divinities, and fell down and worshipped
them; and considered every one who did
not worship them, or who worshipped
any other, as a heretic and an infidel.

In quoting the writers of the day, I
generally found them extolling names of
which I had scarcely heard, and talking
slightly of others who were the favourites
of the public. If I mentioned any recent
work from the pen of a first-rate author,
they had not read it; they had not time
to read all that was spawned from the
press; he wrote too much to write well;—
and then they would break out into
raptures about some Mr. Timson, or
Tomson, or Jackson, whose works were
neglected at the present day, but who
was to be the wonder and delight of
posterity. Alas! what heavy debts is
this neglectful world daily accumulating
on the shoulders of poor posterity!

But, above all, it was edifying to hear
with what contempt they would talk of the
great. Ye gods! how immeasurably the
great are despised by the small fry of literature!
It is true, an exception was now
and then made of some nobleman, with
whom, perhaps, they had casually shaken
hands at an election, or hobbed or nobbed
at a public dinner, and who was pronounced
a "devilish good fellow," and
"no humbug;" but, in general, it was
enough for a man to have a title, to be
the object of their sovereign disdain:
you have no idea how poetically and philosophically
they would talk of nobility.

For my part this affected me but little;
for though I had no bitterness against the
great, and did not think the worse of a
man for having innocently been born to a
title, yet I did not feel myself at present
called upon to resent the indignities
poured upon them by the little. But the
hostility to the great writers of the day
went sore against the grain with me. I
could not enter into such feuds, nor participate
in such animosities. I had not
become author sufficiently to hate other
authors. I could still find pleasure in the
novelties of the press, and could find it
in my heart to praise a contemporary,
even though he were successful. Indeed
I was miscellaneous in my taste, and
could not confine it to any age or growth
of writers. I could turn with delight from
the glowing pages of Byron to the cool
and polished raillery of Pope; and, after
wandering among the sacred groves of
Paradise Lost, I could give myself up to
voluptuous abandonment in the enchanted
bowers of Lalla Rookh.

"I would have my authors," said I,
as various as my wines, and, in relishing
the strong and the racy, would never
decry the sparkling and exhilarating.
Port and sherry are excellent stand-by's,
and so is madeira; but claret and burgundy
may be drunk now and then
without disparagement to one's palate;
and champagne is a beverage by no
means to be despised."

Such was the tirade I uttered one day,
when a little flushed with ale, at a literary
club. I uttered it, too, with something
of a flourish, for I thought my simile a
clever one. Unluckily, my auditors were
men who drank beer and hated Pope; so
my figure about wines went for nothing,
and my critical toleration was looked
upon as downright heterodoxy. In a
word, I soon became like a freethinker
in religion, an outlaw from every seet,
and fair game for all. Such are the
melancholy consequences of not hating
in literature.

I see you are growing weary, so I will
be brief with the residue of my literary
career. I will not detain you with a
detail of my various attempts to get
astride of Pegasus; of the poems I have
written which were never printed, the
plays I have presented which were never
performed, and the tracts I have published
which were never purchased. It seemed
as if booksellers, managers, and the very
public, had entered into a conspiracy to
starve me. Still I could not prevail upon
myself to give up the trial, nor abandon
those dreams of renown in which I had
indulged. How should I be able to look
the literary circle of my native village in
the face, if I were so completely to falsify
their predictions? For some time longer,
therefore, I continued to write for fame,
and was, of course, the most miserable dog
in existence, besides being in continual
risk of starvation. I accumulated loads of
literary treasure on my shelves—loads

which were to be treasures to posterity;
but, alas! they put not a penny into my
purse. What was all this wealth to my
present necessities? I could not patch
my elbows with an ode; nor satisfy my
hunger with blank verse. "Shall a man
fill his belly with the east wind?" says
the proverb. He may as well do so as
with poetry.

I have many a time strolled sorrowfully
along with a sad heart and an empty
stomach, about five o'clock, and looked
wistfully down the areas in the west end
of the town, and seen through the kitchen
windows the fires gleaming, and the joints
of meat turning on the spits and dripping
with gravy, and the cook-maids beating
up puddings, or trussing turkeys, and felt
for the moment that if I could but have
the run of one of those kitchens, Apollo
and the Muses might have the hungry
heights of Parnassus for me. Oh, sir!
talk of meditations among the tombs—
they are nothing so melancholy as the
meditations of a poor devil without penny
in pouch, along a line of kitchen-windows
towards dinner-time.

At length, when almost reduced to
famine and despair, the idea all at once
entered my head, that perhaps I was not
so clever a fellow as the village and
myself had supposed. It was the salvation
of me. The moment the idea
popped into my brain it brought conviction
and comfort with it. I awoke as from a
dream—I gave up immortal fame to those
who could live on air; took to writing
for mere bread; and have ever since had
a very tolerable life of it. There is no
man of letters so much at his ease, sir,
as he who has no character to gain or
lose. I had to train myself to it a little,
and to clip my wings short at first, or
they would have carried me up into poetry
in spite of myself. So I determined to
begin by the opposite extreme, and abandoning
the higher regions of the craft,
I came plump down to the lowest, and
turned creeper.

"Creeper! and pray what is that?"
said I.

"Oh, sir, I see you are ignorant of the
language of the craft: a creeper is one
who furnishes the newspapers with paragraphs
at so much a line; one who
goes about in quest of misfortunes; attends
the Bow Street Office, the Courts of
Justice, and every other den of mischief
and iniquity. We are paid at the rate of
a penny a line, and as we can sell the
same paragraph to almost every paper,
we sometimes pick up a very decent day's
work. Now and then the Muse is unkind,
or the day uncommonly quiet, and then
we rather starve; and sometimes the
unconscionable editors will clip our paragraphs
when they are a little too
rhetorical, and snip off two-pence or
three-pence at a go. I have many a
time had my pot of porter nipped off of
my dinner in this way, and have had to
dine with dry lips. However, I cannot
complain. I rose gradually in the lower
ranks of the craft, and am now, I think,
in the most comfortable region of literature."

"And pray," said I, "what may you
be at present?"

"At present," said he, "I am a regular
job-writer, and turn my hand to
any thing. I work up the writings of
others at so much a sheet; turn off
translations; write second-rate articles to
fill up reviews and magazines; compile
travels and voyages, and furnish theatrical
criticisms for the newspapers. All this
authorship, you perceive, is anonymous;
it gives me no reputation except among
the trade; where I am considered an
author of all work, and am always sure
of employ. That's the only reputation I
want. I sleep soundly, without dread of
duns or critics, and leave immortal fame
to those that choose to fret and fight about
it. Take my word for it, the only happy
author in this world is he who is below
the care of reputation."

NOTORIETY.

When we had emerged from the literary
nest of honest Dribble, and had
passed safely through the dangers of
Break neck Stairs, and the labyrinths of
Fleet-market, Buckthorne indulged in
many comments upon the peep into literary
life which he had furnished me.

I expressed my surprise at finding it so
different a world from what I had imagined.

"It is always so," said he, "with
strangers. The land of literature is a
fairy land to those who view it from a
distance, but, like all other landscapes,
the charm fades on a nearer approach,
and the thorns and briars become visible.
The republic of letters is the most factious
and discordant of all republics, ancient
or modern."

"Yet," said I, smiling, "you would
not have me take honest Dribble's experience
as a view of the land. He is
but a mousing owl; a mere groundling.
We should have quite a different strain
from one of those fortunate authors whom
we see sporting about the empyreal heights
of fashion, like swallows in the blue sky
of a summer's day."

"Perhaps we might," replied he, "but
I doubt it. I doubt whether, if any one,
even of the most successful, were to tell
his actual feelings, you would not find
the truth of friend Dribble's philosophy
with respect to reputation. One you
would find carrying a gay face to the
world, while some vulture critic was
preying upon his very liver. Another, who
was simple enough to mistake fashion for
fame, you would find watching countenances,
and cultivating invitations, more
ambitious to figure in the beau monde
than the world of letters, and apt to be
rendered wretched by the neglect of an
illiterate peer, or a dissipated duchess.
Those who were rising to fame, you
would find tormented with anxiety to get
higher; and those who had gained the
summit, in constant apprehension of a
decline.

"Even those who are indifferent to
the buzz of notoriety, and the farce of
fashion, are not much better off, being
incessantly harassed by intrusions on
their leisure, and interruptions of their
pursuits; for, whatever may be his feelings,
when once an author is launched
into notoriety, he must go the rounds
until the idle curiosity of the day is satisfied,
and he is thrown aside to make way
for some new caprice. Upon the whole,
I do not know but he is most fortunate
who engages in the whirl through ambition,
however tormenting; as it is doubly
irksome to be obliged to join in the game
without being interested in the stake.

"There is a constant demand in the
fashionable world for novelty; every
nine days must have its wonder, no
matter of what kind. At one time it is
an author: at another a fire-eater; at
another a composer, an Indian juggler,
or an Indian chief; a man from the
North Pole or the Pyramids: each figures
through his brief term of notoriety, and
then makes way for the succeeding
wonder. You must know that we have
oddity-fanciers among our ladies of rank,
who collect about them all kinds of
remarkable beings; fiddlers, statesmen,
singers, warriors, artists, philosophers,
actors, and poets; every kind of personage,
in short, who is noted for something
peculiar: so that their routs are like
fancy balls, where every one comes `in
character.'

"I have had infinite amusement at
these parties in noticing how industriously
every one was playing a part, and
acting out of his natural line. There is
not a more complete game at cross-purposes
than the intercourse of the literary
and the great. The fine gentleman is
always anxious to be thought a wit, and
the wit a fine gentleman.

"I have noticed a lord endeavouring
to look wise and to talk learnedly with
a man of letters, who was aiming at a
fashionable air, and the tone of a man
who had lived about town. The peer
quoted a score or two of learned authors,
with whom he would fain be thought intimate,
while the author talked of Sir
John this, and Sir Harry that, and extolled
the burgundy he had drunk at Lord
Such-a-one's. Each seemed to forget
that he could only be interesting to the
other in his proper character. Had the
peer been merely a man of erudition,
the author would never have listened to
his prosing; and had the author known
all the nobility in the Court Calendar, it
would have given him no interest in the
eyes of the peer.

"In the same way I have seen a fine
lady, remarkable for beauty, weary a
philosopher with flimsy metaphysics,
while the philosopher put on an awkward
air of gallantry, played with her
fan, and prattled about the opera. I have
heard a sentimental poet talk very stupidly
with a statesman about the national
debt; and on joining a knot of scientific

old gentlemen conversing in a corner,
expecting to hear the discussion of some
valuable discovery, I found they were
only amusing themselves with a fat
story."

A PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHER.

The anecdotes I had heard of Buckthorne's
early schoolmate, together with
a variety of peculiarities which I had
remarked in himself, gave me a strong
curiosity to know something of his own
history. I am a traveller of the good
old school, and am fond of the custom
laid down in books, according to which,
whenever travellers met, they sat down
forthwith and gave a history of themselves
and their adventures. This Buckthorne,
too, was a man much to my
taste; he had seen the world, and mingled
with society, yet retained the strong
eccentricities of a man who had lived
much alone. There was a careless dash
of good-humour about him which pleased
me exceedingly; and at times an odd
tinge of melancholy mingled with his
humour, and gave it an additional zest.
He was apt to run into long speculations
upon society and manners, and to indulge
in whimsical views of human nature, yet
there was nothing ill-tempered in his
satire. It ran more upon the follies than
the vices of mankind; and even the
follies of his fellow-man were treated
with the leniency of one who felt himself
to be but frail. He had evidently been
a little chilled and buffeted by fortune,
without being soured thereby: as some
fruits become mellower and more generous
in their flavour from having been
bruised and frostbitten.

I have always had a great relish for
the conversation of practical philosophers
of this stamp, who have profited by the
"sweet uses" of adversity without imbibing
its bitterness; who have learnt to
estimate the world rightly, yet good-humouredly;
and who, while they perceive
the truth of the saying, that "all
is vanity," are yet able to do so without
vexation of spirit.

Such a man was Buckthorne. In general
a laughing philosopher; and if at
any time a shade of sadness stole across
his brow, it was but transient; like a
summer cloud, which soon goes by, and
freshens and revives the fields over which
it passes.

I was walking with him one day in
Kensington Gardens—for he was a knowing
epicure in all the cheap pleasures
and rural haunts within reach of the
metropolis. It was a delightful warm
morning in spring; and he was in the
happy mood of a pastoral citizen, when
just turned loose into grass and sunshine.
He had been watching a lark which,
rising from a bed of daisies and yellowcups,
had sung his way up to a bright
snowy cloud floating in the deep blue sky.

"Of all birds," said he, "I should like
to be a lark. He revels in the brightest
time of the day, in the happiest season
of the year, among fresh meadows and
opening flowers; and when he has sated
himself with the sweetness of earth, he
wings his flight up to heaven as if he
would drink in the melody of the morning
stars. Hark to that note! How it
comes thrilling down upon the ear!
What a stream of music, note falling
over note in delicious cadence! Who
would trouble his head about operas and
concerts when he could walk in the fields
and hear such music for nothing? These
are the enjoyments which set riches at
scorn, and make even a poor man independent:

I care not. Fortune, what you do deny:—
You cannot rob me of free nature's grace:
You cannot shut the windows of the sky.
Through which Aurora shows her bright'ning face;
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace
The woods and lawns by living streams at eve—

"Sir, there are homilies in nature's
works worth all the wisdom of the
schools, if we could but read them
rightly, and one of the pleasantest lessons
I ever received in a time of trouble,
was from hearing the notes of a lark."

I profited by this communicative vein
to intimate to Buckthorne a wish to know
something of the events of his life, which
I fancied must have been an eventful one.

He smiled when I expressed my desire.
"I have no great story," said he,
"to relate. A mere tissue of errors and
follies. But, such as it is, you shall

have one epoch of it, by which you may
judge of the rest." And so, without any
further prelude, he gave me the following
anecdotes of his early adventures.

BUCKTHORNE;
OR THE
YOUNG MAN OF GREAT EXPECTATIONS.

I was born to very little property, but
to great expectations—which is, perhaps,
one of the most unlucky fortunes that a
man can be born to. My father was
a country gentleman, the last of a very
ancient and honourable but decayed
family, and resided in an old hunting-lodge
in Warwickshire. He was a keen
sportsman, and lived to the extent of his
moderate income, so that I had little to
expect from that quarter; but then I had
a rich uncle by the mother's side, a
penurious, accumulating curmudgeon,
who it was confidently expected would
make me his heir, because he was an
old bachelor, because I was named after
him, and because he hated all the world
except myself.

He was, in fact, an inveterate hater, a
miser even in misanthropy, and hoarded
up a grudge as he did a guinea. Thus,
though my mother was an only sister,
he had never forgiven her marriage with
my father, against whom he had a cold,
still, immovable pique, which had lain
at the bottom of his heart, like a stone
in a well, ever since they had been
schoolboys together. My mother, however,
considered me as the intermediate
being that was to bring every thing again
into harmony, for she looked on me as
a prodigy—God bless her! my heart
overflows whenever I recall her tenderness.
She was the most excellent,
the most indulgent of mothers. I was
her only child: it was a pity she had no
more, for she had fondness of heart
enough to have spoiled a dozen!

I was sent at an early age to a public
school, sorely against my mother's
wishes; but my father insisted that it
was the only way to make boys hardy.
The school was kept by a conscientious
prig of the ancient system, who did his
duty by the boys intrusted to his care:
that is to say, we were flogged soundly
when we did not get our lessons. We
were put into classes, and thus flogged
on in droves along the highways of
knowledge, in much the same manner as
cattle are driven to market; where those
that are heavy in gait, or short in leg,
have to suffer for the superior alertness
or longer limbs of their companions.

For my part, I confess it with shame,
I was an incorrigible laggard. I have
always had the poetical feeling, that is
to say, I have always been an idle fellow,
and prone to play the vagabond. I
used to get away from my books and
school whenever I could, and ramble
about the fields. I was surrounded by
seductions for such a temperament. The
schoolhouse was an old-fashioned whitewashed
mansion, of wood and plaster,
standing on the skirts of a beautiful
village: close by it was the venerable
church, with a tall Gothic spire; before
it spread a lovely green valley, with a
little stream glistening along through
willow groves; while a line of blue hills
that bounded the landscape gave rise to
many a summer-day dream as to the
fairy land that lay beyond.

In spite of all the scourgings I suffered
at that school to make me love my book,
I cannot but look back on the place with
fondness. Indeed, I considered this frequent
flagellation as the common lot of
humanity, and the regular mode in which
scholars were made.

My kind mother used to lament over
my details of the sore trials I underwent
in the cause of learning; but my father
turned a deaf ear to her expostulations.
He had been flogged through school himself,
and swore there was no other way
of making a man of parts; though, let
me speak it with all due reverence, my
father was but an indifferent illustration
of his theory, for he was considered a
grievous blockhead.

My poetical temperament evinced itself
at a very early period. The village
church was attended every Sunday by
a neighbouring squire, the lord of the
manor, whose park stretched quite to
the village, and whose spacious country-seat
seemed to take the church under its
protection. Indeed, you would have

thought the church had been consecrated
to him instead of to the Deity. The
parish-clerk bowed low before him, and
the vergers humbled themselves unto the
dust in his presence. He always entered
a little late, and with some stir; striking
his cane emphatically on the ground,
swaying his hat in his hand, and looking
loftily to the right and left as he walked
slowly up the aisle; and the parson, who
always ate his Sunday dinner with him,
never commenced service until he appeared.
He sat with his family in a
large pew, gorgeously lined, humbling
himself devoutly on velvet cushions, and
reading lessons of meekness and lowliness
of spirit out of splendid gold and
morocco prayer-books. Whenever the
parson spoke of the difficulty of a rich
man's entering the kingdom of Heaven,
the eyes of the congregation would turn
towards the "grand pew," and I thought
the squire seemed pleased with the application.

The pomp of this pew, and the aristocratical
air of the family, struck my
imagination wonderfully; and I fell desperately
in love with a little daughter of
the squire's, about twelve years of age.
This freak of fancy made me more
truant from my studies than ever. I
used to stroll about the squire's park,
and would lurk near the house, to catch
glimpses of this little damsel at the windows,
or playing about the lawn, or
walking out with her governess.

I had not enterprise nor impudence
enough to venture from my concealment.
Indeed I felt like an arrant poacher,
until I read one or two of Ovid's Metamorphoses,
when I pictured myself as
some sylvan deity, and she a coy wood-nymph
of whom I was in pursuit. There
is something extremely delicious in these
early awakenings of the tender passion.
I can feel even at this moment the throbbing
of my boyish bosom, whenever by
chance I caught a glimpse of her white
frock fluttering among the shrubbery. I
carried about in my bosom a volume of
Waller, which I had purloined from my
mother's library; and I applied to my
little fair one all the compliments lavished
upon Sacharissa.

At length I danced with her at a
school-ball. I was so awkward a booby,
that I dared scarcely speak to her; I
was filled with awe and embarrassment
in her presence; but I was so inspired,
that my poetical temperament for the
first time broke out in verse, and I fabricated
some glowing lines, in which I
be-rhymed the little lady under the
favourite name of Sacharissa. I slipped
the verses, trembling and blushing, into
her hand the next Sunday as she came
out of church. The little prude handed
them to her mamma; the mamma handed
them to the squire; the squire, who
had no soul for poetry, sent them in
dudgeon to the schoolmaster; and the
schoolmaster, with a barbarity worthy
of the dark ages, gave me a sound and
peculiarly humiliating flogging for thus
trespassing upon Parnassus. This was
a sad outset for a votary of the muse; it
ought to have cured me of my passion
for poetry; but it only confirmed it, for
I felt the spirit of a martyr rising within
me. What was as well, perhaps, it
cured me of my passion for the young
lady; for I felt so indignant at the ignominious
horsing I had incurred in celebrating
her charms, that I could not hold
up my head in church. Fortunately for
my wounded sensibility, the Midsummer
holidays came on, and I returned home.
My mother, as usual, inquired into all
my school concerns, my little pleasures,
and cares, and sorrows; for boyhood
has its share of the one as well as of the
other. I told her all, and she was indignant
at the treatment I had experienced.
She fired up at the arrogance of the
squire, and the prudery of the daughter;
and as to the schoolmaster, she wondered
where was the use of having schoolmasters,
and why boys could not remain at
home, and be educated by tutors, under
the eye of their mothers. She asked to
see the verses I had written, and she
was delighted with them; for, to confess
the truth, she had a pretty taste in
poetry. She even showed them to the
parson's wife, who protested they were
charming; and the parson's three daughters
insisted on each having a copy of
them.

All this was exceedingly balsamic, and
I was still more consoled and encouraged,
when the young ladies, who were the
blue-stockings of the neighbourhood, and

had read Dr. Johnson's Lives quite
through, assured my mother that great
geniuses never studied, but were always
idle; upon which I began to surmise
that I was myself something out of the
common run. My father, however, was
of a very different opinion; for when my
mother, in the pride of her heart, showed
him my copy of verses, he threw them
out of the window, asking her "if she
meant to make a ballad-monger of the
boy?" But he was a careless, common-thinking
man, and I cannot say that I
ever loved him much; my mother absorbed
all my filial affection.

I used occasionally, during holidays,
to be sent on short visits to the uncle,
who was to make me his heir; they
thought it would keep me in his mind,
and render him fond of me. He was a
withered, anxious-looking old fellow, and
lived in a desolate old country-seat, which
he suffered to go to ruin from absolute
niggardliness. He kept but one manservant,
who had lived, or rather starved,
with him for years. No woman was
allowed to sleep in the house. A daughter
of the old servant lived by the gate,
in what had been a porter's lodge, and
was permitted to come into the house
about an hour each day, to make the
beds, and cook a morsel of provisions.
The park that surrounded the house was
all run wild: the trees were grown out
of shape; the fish-ponds stagnant; the
urns and statues fallen from their pedestals,
and buried among the rank grass.
The hares and pheasants were so little
molested, except by poachers, that they
bred in great abundance, and sported
about the rough lawns and weedy
avenues. To guard the premises and
frighten off robbers, of whom he was
somewhat apprehensive, and visiters, of
whom he was in almost equal awe, my
uncle kept two or three bloodhounds,
who were always prowling round the
house, and were the dread of the neighbouring
peasantry. They were gaunt
and half starved, seemed ready to devour
one from mere hunger, and were
an effectual check on any stranger's
approach to this wizard castle.

Such was my uncle's house, which I
used to visit now and then during the
holidays. I was, as I before said, the
old man's favourite; that is to say, he
did not hate me so much as he did the
rest of the world. I had been apprised
of his character, and cautioned to cultivate
his good-will; but I was too young
and careless to be a courtier, and, indeed,
have never been sufficiently studious of
my interests to let them govern my feelings.
However, we jogged on very well
together, and as my visits cost him almost
nothing, they did not seem to be
very unwelcome. I brought with me
my fishing-rod, and half supplied the
table from the fish-ponds.

Our meals were solitary and unsocial.
My uncle rarely spoke; he pointed to
whatever he wanted, and the servant
perfectly understood him. Indeed, his
man John, or Iron John, as he was called
in the neighbourhood, was a counterpart
of his master. He was a tall, bony old
fellow, with a dry wig, that seemed made
of cow's tail, and a face as tough as
though it had been made of cow's hide.
He was generally clad in a long, patched
livery coat, taken out of the wardrobe of
the house, and which bagged loosely
about him, having evidently belonged to
some corpulent predecessor, in the more
plenteous days of the mansion. From
long habits of taciturnity the hinges of
his jaws seemed to have grown absolutely
rusty, and it cost him as much
effort to set them ajar, and to let out
a tolerable sentence, as it would have
done to set open the iron gates of the
park, and let out the old family carriage,
that was dropping to pieces in the coach-house.

I cannot say, however, but that I was
for some time amused with my uncle's
peculiarities. Even the very desolateness
of the establishment had something
in it that hit my fancy. When the
weather was fine, I used to amuse myself
in a solitary way, by rambling about the
park, and coursing like a colt across its
lawns. The hares and pheasants seemed
to stare with surprise to see a human
being walking these forbidden grounds
by daylight. Sometimes I amused myself
by jerking stones, or shooting at
birds with a bow and arrows, for to have
used a gun would have been treason.
Now and then my path was crossed by a
little red-headed, ragged-tailed urchin,

the son of the woman at the lodge, who
ran wild about the premises. I tried to
draw him into familiarity, and to make a
companion of him; but he seemed to
have imbibed the strange unsocial character
of every thing around him, and
always kept aloof; so I considered him
as another Orson, and amused myself
with shooting at him with my bow
and arrows, and he would hold up his
breeches with one hand, and scamper
away like a deer.

There was something in all this loneliness
and wildness strangely pleasing
to me. The great stables, empty and
weather-broken, with the names of favourite
horses over the vacant stalls;
the windows bricked and boarded up;
the broken roofs, garrisoned by rooks
and jackdaws, all had a singularly forlorn
appearance. One would have concluded
the house to be totally uninhabited, were
it not for a little thread of blue smoke,
which now and then curled up like a
corkscrew, from the centre of one of the
wide chimneys, where my uncle's starveling
meal was cooking.

My uncle's room was in a remote
corner of the building, strongly secured,
and generally locked. I was never admitted
into this stronghold, where the
old man would remain for the greater
part of the time, drawn up, like a veteran
spider, in the citadel of his web. The
rest of the mansion, however, was open
to me, and I wandered about it unconstrained.
The damp and rain which
beat in through the broken windows,
crumbled the paper from the walls,
mouldered the pictures, and gradually
destroyed the furniture. I loved to roam
about the wide waste chambers in bad
weather, and listen to the howling of the
wind, and the banging about of the doors
and window-shutters. I pleased myself
with the idea how completely, when I
came to the estate, I would renovate all
things, and make the old building ring
with merriment, till it was astonished at
its own joeundity.

The chamber which I occupied on
these visits, was the same that had been
my mother's when a girl. There was
still the toilet-table of her own adorning,
the landscapes of her own drawing. She
had never seen it since her marriage, but
would often ask me, if every thing was
still the same. All was just the same,
for I loved that chamber on her account,
and had taken pains to put every thing
in order, and to mend all the flaws in the
windows with my own hands. I anticipated
the time when I should once more
welcome her to the house of her fathers,
and restore her to this little nestling-place
of her childhood.

At length my evil genius, or what,
perhaps, is the same thing, the Muse,
inspired me with the notion of rhyming
again. My uncle, who never went to
church, used on Sundays to read chapters
out of the Bible; and Iron John, the
woman from the lodge, and myself, were
his congregation. It seemed to be all
one to him what he read, so long as it
was something from the Bible. Sometimes,
therefore, it would be the Song of
Solomon; and this withered anatomy
would read about being "stayed with
flagons, and comforted with apples, for
he was sick of love." Sometimes he
would hobble, with spectacles on nose,
through whole chapters of hard Hebrew
names in Deuteronomy, at which the
poor woman would sigh and groan, as if
wonderfully moved. His favourite book,
however, was "The Pilgrim's Progress;"
and when he came to that part which
treats of Doubting Castle and Giant Despair,
I thought invariably of him and
his desolate old country-seat. So much
did the idea amuse me, that I took to
scribbling about it under the trees in the
park; and in a few days had made some
progress in a poem, in which I had given
a description of the place, under the name
of Doubting Castle, and personified my
uncle as Giant Despair.

I lost my poem somewhere about the
house, and I soon suspected that my
uncle had found it, as he harshly intimated
to me that I could return home,
and that I need not come and see him
again till he should send for me.

Just about this time my mother died.
I cannot dwell upon the circumstance.
My heart, careless and wayward as it is,
gushes with the recollection. Her death
was an event that perhaps gave a turn
to all my after fortunes. With her died
all that made home attractive. I had no
longer any body whom I was ambitious

to please, or fearful to offend. My father
was a good kind of a man in his way,
but he had bad maxims in education,
and we differed in material points. It
makes a vast difference in opinion about
the utility of the rod, which end happens
to fall to one's share. I never could be
brought into my father's way of thinking
on the subject.

I now, therefore, began to grow very
impatient of remaining at school, to be
flogged for things that I did not like. I
longed for variety, especially now that I
had not my uncle's house to resort to,
by way of diversifying the dulness of
school, with the dreariness of his coun-try-seat.

I was now almost seventeen, tall for
my age, and full of idle fancies. I had
a roving, inextinguishable desire to see
different kinds of life, and different orders
of society; and this vagrant humour
had been fostered in me by Tom Dribble,
the prime wag and great genius of the
school, who had all the rambling propensities
of a poet.

I used to sit at my desk in the school,
on a fine summer's day, and instead of
studying the book which lay open before
me, my eye was gazing through the
window on the green fields and blue
hills. How I envied the happy groups
seated on the tops of stage-coaches, chatting,
and joking, and laughing, as they
were whirled by the schoolhouse on their
way to the metropolis! Even the wagoners,
trudging along beside their ponderous
teams, and traversing the kingdom
from one end to the other, were
objects of envy to me: I fancied to myself
what adventures they must experience,
and what odd scenes of life they
must witness. All this was, doubtless,
the poetical temperament working within
me, and tempting me forth into a world
of its own creation, which I mistook for
the world of real life.

While my mother lived, this strong
propensity to rove was counteracted by
the stronger attractions of home, and by
the powerful ties of affection which drew
me near to her side; but now that she
was gone, the attractions had ceased;
the ties were severed. I had no longer
an anchorage-ground for my heart, but
was at the mercy of every vagrant impulse.
Nothing but the narrow allowance
on which my father kept me, and
the consequent penury of my purse, prevented
me from mounting the top of a
stage-coach, and launching myself adrift
on the great ocean of life.

Just about this time the village was
agitated for a day or two, by the passing
through of several caravans, containing
wild beasts, and other spectacles, for a
great fair annually held at a neighbouring
town.

I had never seen a fair of any consequence,
and my curiosity was powerfully
awakened by this bustle of preparation.
I gazed with respect and wonder at the
vagrant personages who accompanied
these caravans. I loitered about the
village inn, listening with curiosity and
delight to the slang talk and cant jokes
of the showmen and their followers; and
I felt an eager desire to witness this fair,
which my fancy decked out as something
wonderfully fine.

A holiday afternoon presented, when
I could be absent from noon until evening.
A wagon was going from the village
to the fair: I could not resist the
temptation, nor the eloquence of Tom
Dribble, who was a truant to the very
heart's core. We hired seats, and set
off full of boyish expectation. I promised
myself that I would but take a
peep at the land of promise, and hasten
back again before my absence should be
noticed.

Heavens! how happy I was on arriving
at the fair! How I was enchanted
with the world of fun and pageantry
around me! The humours of Punch,
the feats of the equestrians, the magical
tricks of the conjurors! But what principally
caught my attention was an itinerant
theatre, where a tragedy, pantomime,
and farce, were all acted in the course
of half an hour; and more of the dramatis
personæ murdered, than at either
Drury Lane or Covent Garden in the
course of a whole evening. I have since
seen many a play performed by the best
actors in the world, but never have I
derived half the delight from any that I
did from this first representation.

There was a ferocious tyrant in a
scullcap like an inverted porringer, and
a dress of red baize, magnificently embroidered

with gilt leather; with his face
so bewhiskered, and his eyebrows so
knit and expanded with burnt cork, that
he made my heart quake within me, as
he stamped about the little stage. I was
enraptured too with the surpassing beauty
of a distressed damsel in faded pink silk,
and dirty white muslin, whom he held in
cruel captivity by way of gaining her
affections, and who wept, and wrung her
hands, and flourished a ragged white
handkerchief, from the top of an impregnable
tower of the size of a bandbox.

Even after I had come out from the
play, I could not tear myself from the
vicinity of the theatre, but lingered,
gazing and wondering, and laughing at
the dramatis personæ as they performed
their antics, or danced upon a stage in
front of the booth, to decoy a new set of
spectators.

I was so bewildered by the scene, and
so lost in the crowd of sensations that
kept swarming upon me, that I was like
one entranced. I lost my companion,
Tom Dribble, in a tumult and scuffle
that took place near one of the shows;
but I was too much occupied in mind to
think long about him. I strolled about
until dark, when the fair was lighted up,
and a new scene of magic opened upon
me. The illumination of the tents and
booths, the brilliant effect of the stages
decorated with lamps, with dramatic
groups flaunting about them in gaudy
dresses, contrasted splendidly with the
surrounding darkness; while the uproar
of drums, trumpets, fiddles, hautboys,
and cymbals, mingled with the harangues
of the showmen, the squeaking of Punch,
and the shouts and laughter of the crowd,
all united to complete my giddy distraction.

Time flew without my perceiving it.
When I came to myself and thought of
the school, I hastened to return. I inquired
for the wagon in which I had
come: it had been gone for hours! I
asked the time: it was almost midnight!
A sudden quaking seized me. How was
I to get back to school? I was too
weary to make the journey on foot, and
I knew not where to apply for a conveyance.
Even if I should find one, could
I venture to disturb the schoolhouse long
after midnight—to arouse that sleeping
lion the usher in the very midst of his
night's rest?—the idea was too dreadful
for a delinquent schoolboy. All the
horrors of return rushed upon me. My
absence must long before this have been
remarked;—and absent for a whole
night!—a deed of darkness not easily to
be expiated. The rod of the pedagogue
budded forth into tenfold terrors before
my affrighted fancy. I pictured to myself
punishment and humiliation in every
variety of form, and my heart sickened
at the picture. Alas! how often are the
petty ills of boyhood as painful to our
tender natures, as are the sterner evils
of manhood to our robuster minds!

I wandered about among the booths,
and I might have derived a lesson from
my actual feelings, how much the charms
of this world depend upon ourselves; for
I no longer saw any thing gay or delightful
in the revelry around me. At length
I lay down, wearied and perplexed, behind
one of the large tents, and, covering
myself with the margin of the tent cloth
to keep off the night chill, I soon fell
asleep.

I had not slept long, when I was
awakened by the noise of merriment
within an adjoining booth. It was the
itinerant theatre, rudely constructed of
boards and canvass. I peeped through
an aperture, and saw the whole dramatis
personæ, tragedy, comedy, and pantomime,
all refreshing themselves after the
final dismissal of their auditors. They
were merry and gamesome, and made
the flimsy theatre ring with their laughter.
I was astonished to see the tragedy
tyrant in red baize and fierce whiskers,
who had made my heart quake as he
strutted about the boards, now transformed
into a fat, good-humoured fellow;
the beaming porringer laid aside from
his brow, and his jolly face washed from
all the terrors of burnt cork. I was delighted,
too, to see the distressed damsel,
in faded silk and dirty muslin, who had
trembled under his tyranny, and afflicted
me so much by her sorrows, now seated
familiarly on his knee, and quaffing from
the same tankard. Harlequin lay asleep
on one of the benches; and monks,
satyrs, and vestal virgins, were grouped
together, laughing outrageously at a
broad story, told by an unhappy count,

who had been barbarously murdered in
the tragedy.

This was, indeed, novelty to me. It
was a peep into another planet. I gazed
and listened with intense curiosity and
enjoyment. They had a thousand odd
stories and jokes about the events of the
day, and burlesque descriptions and mimickings
of the spectators who had been
admiring them. Their conversation was
full of allusions to their adventures at
different places where they had exhibited;
the characters they had met with
in different villages; and the ludicrous
difficulties in which they had occasionally
been involved. All past cares and troubles
were now turned, by these thoughtless
beings, into matter of merriment,
and made to contribute to the gayety of
the moment. They had been moving
from fair to fair about the kingdom, and
were the next morning to set out on their
way to London. My resolution was
taken. I stole from my nest; and crept
through a hedge into a neighbouring field,
where I went to work to make a tatterdemalion
of myself. I tore my clothes;
soiled them with dirt; begrimed my face
and hands, and crawling near one of the
booths, purloined an old hat, and left my
new one in its place. It was an honest
theft, and I hope may not hereafter rise
up in judgment against me.

I now ventured to the scene of merrymaking,
and presenting myself before the
dramatic corps, offered myself as a volunteer.
I felt terribly agitated and abashed,
for never before "stood I in such a
presence." I had addressed myself to
the manager of the company. He was
a fat man, dressed in dirty white, with
a red sash fringed with tinsel swathed
round his body; his face was smeared
with paint, and a majestic plume towered
from an old spangled black bonnet. He
was the Jupiter Tonans of this Olympus,
and was surrounded by the inferior gods
and goddesses of his court. He sat on
the end of a bench, by a table, with one
arm a-kimbo, and the other extended to
the handle of a tankard, which he had
slowly set down from his lips, as he surveyed
me from head to foot. It was a
moment of awful scrutiny; and I fancied
the groups around all watching as in silent
suspense, and waiting for the imperial nod.

He questioned me as to who I was;
what were my qualifications; and what
terms I expected. I passed myself off
for a discharged servant from a gentleman's
family; and as, happily, one does
not require a special recommendation to
get admitted into bad company, the questions
on that head were easily satisfied.
As to my accomplishments I could spout
a little poetry, and knew several scenes
of plays, which I had learnt at school
exhibitions. I could dance— That
was enough. No further questions were
asked me as to accomplishments; it was
the very thing they wanted; and as I
asked no wages but merely meat and
drink, and safe conduct about the world,
a bargain was struck in a moment.

Behold me, therefore, transformed on
a sudden from a gentleman student to a
dancing buffoon: for such, in fact, was
the character in which I made my debut.
I was one of those who formed the
groups in the dramas, and was principally
employed on the stage in front of
the booth to attract company. I was
equipped as a satyr, in a dress of drab
frieze that fitted to my shape, with a
great laughing mask, ornamented with
huge ears and short horns. I was pleased
with the disguise, because it kept me
from the danger of being discovered,
whilst we were in that part of the country;
and as I had merely to dance and
make antics, the character was favourable
to a debutant—being almost on a par
with Simon Snug's part of the lion,
which required nothing but roaring.

I cannot tell you how happy I was at
this sudden change in my situation. I
felt no degradation, for I had seen too
little of society to be thoughtful about
the difference of rank; and a boy of
sixteen is seldom aristocratical. I had
given up no friend, for there seemed to
be no one in the world that cared for me
now that my poor mother was dead; I
had given up no pleasure, for my pleasure
was to ramble about and indulge
the flow of a poetical imagination, and I
now enjoyed it in perfection. There is
no life so truly poetical as that of a
dancing buffoon.

It may be said that all this argued
grovelling inclinations. I do not think
so. Not that I mean to vindicate myself

in any great degree: I know too well
what a whimsical compound I am. But
in this instance I was seduced by no love
of low company, nor disposition to indulge
in low vices. I have always
despised the brutally vulgar, and I have
always had a disgust at vice, whether in
high or low life. I was governed merely
by a sudden and thoughtless impulse. I
had no idea of resorting to this profession
as a mode of life, or of attaching myself
to these people, as my future class of
society. I thought merely of a temporary
gratification to my curiosity, and
an indulgence of my humours. I had
already a strong relish for the peculiarities
of character and the varieties of
situation, and I have always been fond of
the comedy of life, and desirous of seeing
it through all its shifting scenes.

In mingling, therefore, among mountebanks
and buffoons, I was protected by
the very vivacity of imagination which
had led me among them; I moved about,
enveloped, as it were, in a protecting
delusion, which my fancy spread around
me. I assimilated to these people only
as they struck me poetically; their
whimsical ways and a certain picturesqueness
in their mode of life entertained
me; but I was neither amused nor
corrupted by their vices. In short, I
mingled among them, as Prince Hal did
among his graceless associates, merely
to gratify my humour.

I did not investigate my motives in this
manner at the time, for I was too careless
and thoughtless to reason about the
matter; but I do so now, when I look
back with trembling to think of the ordeal
to which I unthinkingly exposed myself,
and the manner in which I passed
through it. Nothing, I am convinced,
but the poetical temperament, that hurried
me into the scrape, brought me out
of it without my becoming an arrant
vagabond.

Full of the enjoyment of the moment,
giddy with the wildness of animal spirits,
so rapturous in a boy, I capered, I danced,
I played a thousand fantastic tricks about
the stage, in the villages in which we
exhibited; and I was universally pronounced
the most agreeable monster that
had ever been seen in those parts. My
disappearance from school had awakened
my father's anxiety; for I one day heard
a description of myself cried before the
very booth in which I was exhibiting,
with the offer of a reward for any intelligence
of me. I had no great scruple
about letting my father suffer a little uneasiness
on my account; it would punish
him for past indifference, and would
make him value me the more when he
found me again.

I have wondered that some of my
comrades did not recognise me in the
stray sheep that was cried; but they
were all, no doubt, occupied by their
own concerns. They were all labouring
seriously in their antic vocation; for
folly was a mere trade with most of them,
and they often grinned and capered with
heavy hearts. With me, on the contrary,
it was all real. I acted con amore, and
rattled and laughed from the irrepressible
gayety of my spirits. It is true that,
now and then, I started and looked grave
on receiving a sudden thwack from the
wooden sword of Harlequin in the course
of my gambols, as it brought to mind
the birch of my schoolmaster. But I
soon got accustomed to it, and bore all
the cuffing, and kicking, and tumbling
about, which form the practical wit of
your itinerant pantomime, with a good-humour
that made me a prodigious favourite.

The country campaign of the troop
was soon at an end, and we set off for
the metropolis, to perform at the fairs
which are held in its vicinity. The
greater part of our theatrical property
was sent on direct, to be in a state of
preparation for the opening of the fairs;
while a detachment of the company
travelled slowly on, foraging among the
villages. I was amused with the desultory,
hap-hazard kind of life we led;
here to-day, and gone to-morrow. Sometimes
revelling in ale-houses, sometimes
feasting under hedges in the green fields.
When audiences were crowded, and business
profitable, we fared well; and
when otherwise, we fared scantily, consoled
ourselves, and made up with anticipations
of the next day's success.

At length the increasing frequency of
coaches hurrying past us, covered with
passengers; the increasing number of
carriages, carts, wagons, gigs, droves

of cattle and flocks of sheep, all thronging
the road; the snug country boxes
with trim flower-gardens twelve feet
square, and their trees twelve feet high,
all powdered with dust; and the innumerable
seminaries for young ladies and
gentlemen situated along the road for the
benefit of country air and rural retirement;
all these insignia announced that
the mighty London was at hand. The
hurry, and the crowd, and the bustle,
and the noise, and the dust, increased as
we proceeded, until I saw the great cloud
of smoke hanging in the air, like a canopy
of state, over this queen of cities.

In this way then, did I enter the metropolis,
a strolling vagabond, on the top
of a caravan, with a crew of vagabonds
about me; but I was as happy as a
prince; for, like Prince Hal, I felt myself
superior to my situation, and knew that
I could at any time cast it off, and emerge
into my proper sphere.

How my eyes sparkled as we passed
Hyde Park Corner, and I saw splendid
equipages rolling by; with powdered
footmen behind, in rich liveries, with fine
nosegays, and gold-headed canes; and
with lovely women within, so sumptuously
dressed, and so surpassingly fair! I was
always extremely sensible to female
beauty, and here I saw it in all its power
of fascination; for whatever may be said
of "beauty unadorned," there is something
almost awful in female loveliness
decked out in jewelled state. The swanlike
neck encircled with diamonds; the
raven locks clustered with pearls; the
ruby glowing on the snowy bosom, are
objects which I could never contemplate
without emotion; and a dazzling white
arm clasped with bracelets, and taper
transparent fingers, laden with sparkling
rings, are to me irresistible.

My very eyes ached as I gazed at the
high and courtly beauty that passed before
me. It surpassed all that my imagination
had conceived of the sex. I
shrunk, for a moment, into shame at the
company in which I was placed, and
repined at the vast distance that seemed
to intervene between me and these magnificent
beings.

I forbear to give a detail of the happy
life I led about the skirts of the metropolis,
playing at the various fairs held there
during the latter part of spring, and the
beginning of summer. This continued
change from place to place, and scene to
scene, fed my imagination with novelties,
and kept my spirits in a perpetual state
of excitement. As I was tall of my
age, I aspired, at one time, to play heroes
in tragedy; but, after two or three trials,
I was pronounced by the manager totally
unfit for the line; and our first tragic
actress, who was a large woman, and
held a small hero in abhorrence, confirmed
his decision.

The fact is, I had attempted to give
point to language which had no point,
and nature to scenes which had no nature.
They said I did not fill out my characters;
and they were right. The characters
had all been prepared for a different
sort of a man. Our tragedy hero was
a round, robustious fellow, with an
amazing voice; who stamped and slapped
his breast until his wig shook again; and
who roared and bellowed out his bombast
until every phrase swelled upon the ear
like the sound of a kettledrum. I might
as well have attempted to fill out his
clothes as his characters. When we had
a dialogue together, I was nothing before
him, with my slender voice and discriminating
manner. I might as well have
attempted to parry a cudgel with a small-sword.
If he found me in any way
gaining ground upon him, he would take
refuge in his mighty voice, and throw his
tones like peals of thunder at me, until
they were drowned in the still louder
thunders of applause from the audience.

To tell the truth, I suspect that I was
not shown fair play, and that there was
management at the bottom; for, without
vanity, I think I was a better actor than
he. As I had not embarked in the vagabond
line through ambition, I did not
repine at lack of preferment; but I was
grieved to find that a vagrant life was
not without its cares and anxieties; and
that jealousies, intrigues, and mad ambition,
were to be found even among vagabonds.

Indeed, as I became more familiar
with my situation, and the delusions of
fancy gradually faded away, I began to
find that my associates were not the
happy careless creatures I had at first
imagined them. They were jealous of

each other's talents; they quarrelled
about parts, the same as the actors on
the grand theatres; they quarrelled about
dresses; and there was one robe of yellow
silk, trimmed with red, and a head-dress
of three rumpled ostrich feathers, which
were continually setting the ladies of the
company by the ears. Even those who
had attained the highest honours were
not more happy than the rest; for Mr.
Flimsey himself, our first tragedian, and
apparently a jovial, good-humoured fellow,
confessed to me one day, in the
fulness of his heart, that he was a miserable
man. He had a brother-in-law, a
relative by marriage, though not by
blood, who was manager of a theatre in
a small country town. And this same
brother ("a little more than kin, but less
than kind") looked down upon him, and
treated him with contumely, because,
forsooth, he was but a strolling player.
I tried to console him with the thoughts
of the vast applause he daily received,
but it was all in vain. He declared that
it gave him no delight, and that he should
never be a happy man, until the name of
Flimsey rivalled the name of Crimp.

How little do those before the scenes
know of what passes behind! how little
can they judge, from the countenances of
actors, of what is passing in their hearts!
I have known two lovers quarrel like cats
behind the scenes, who were, the moment
after, to fly into each other's embraces.
And I have dreaded, when our Belvidera
was to take her farewell kiss of her
Jaffier, lest she should bite a piece out of
his cheek. Our tragedian was a rough
joker off the stage; our prime clown the
most peevish mortal living. The latter
used to go about snapping and snarling,
with a broad laugh painted on his countenance;
and I can assure you that
whatever may be said of the gravity of
a monkey, or the melancholy of a gibed
cat, there is not a more melancholy creature
in existence than a mountebank off
duty.

The only thing in which all parties
agreed, was to backbite the manager,
and cabal against his regulations. This,
however, I have since discovered to be
a common trait of human nature, and to
take place in all communities. It would
seem to be the main business of man to
repine at government. In all situations
of life into which I have looked, I have
found mankind divided into two grand
parties: those who ride, and those who
are ridden. The great struggle of life
seems to be which shall keep in the saddle.
This, it appears to me, is the fundamental
principle of politics, whether in
great or little life. However, I do not
mean to moralize—but one cannot always
sink the philosopher.

Well then, to return to myself, it was
determined, as I said, that I was not fit
for tragedy, and, unluckily, as my study
was bad, having a very poor memory, I
was pronounced unfit for comedy also;
besides, the line of young gentlemen was
already engrossed by an actor with
whom I could not pretend to enter into
competition, he having filled it for almost
half a century. I came down again,
therefore, to pantomime. In consequence,
however, of the good offices of the manager's
lady, who had taken a liking to
me, I was promoted from the part of the
satyr to that of the lover; and with my
face patched and painted, a huge cravat
of paper, a steeple-crowned hat, and
dangling long-skirted sky-blue coat, was
metamorphosed into the lover of Columbine.
My part did not call for much of
the tender and sentimental. I had merely
to pursue the fugitive fair one; to have
a door now and then slammed in my
face; to run my head occasionally
against a post; to tumble and roll about
with Pantaloon and the clown; and to
endure the hearty thwacks of Harlequin's
wooden sword.

As ill luck would have it, my poetical
temperament began to ferment within
me, and to work out new troubles. The
inflammatory air of a great metropolis,
added to the rural scenes in which the
fairs were held, such as Greenwich Park,
Epping Forest, and the lovely valley of
West End, had a powerful effect upon
me. While in Greenwich Park I was
witness to the old holiday games of running
down hill, and kissing in the ring;
and then the firmament of blooming faces
and blue eyes that would be turned towards
me, as I was playing antics on
the stage; all these set my young blood
and my poetical vein in full flow. In
short, I played the character to the life,

and became desperately enamoured of
Columbine. She was a trim, well-made,
tempting girl, with a roguish dimpling
face, and fine chestnut hair clustering all
about it. The moment I got fairly smitten
there was an end to all playing. I
was such a creature of fancy and feeling,
that I could not put on a pretended,
when I was powerfully affected by a real
emotion. I could not sport with a fiction
that came so near to the fact. I became
too natural in my acting to succeed.
And then, what a situation for a lover!
I was a mere stripling, and she played
with my passion; for girls soon grow
more adroit and knowing in these matters
than your awkward youngsters.
What agonies had I to suffer! Every
time that she danced in front of the
booth, and made such liberal displays of
her charms, I was in torment. To complete
my misery, I had a real rival in
Harlequin, an active, vigorous, knowing
varlet, of six-and-twenty. What had a
raw, inexperienced youngster like me to
hope from such a competition?

I had still, however, some advantages
in my favour. In spite of my change of
life, I retained that indescribable something
which always distinguishes the
gentleman; that something which dwells
in a man's air and deportment, and not
in his clothes; and which it is as difficult
for a gentleman to put off, as for a
vulgar fellow to put on. The company
generally felt it, and used to call me
Little Gentleman Jack. The girl felt it
too, and, in spite of her predilection for
my powerful rival, she liked to flirt with
me. This only aggravated my troubles,
by increasing my passion, and awakening
the jealousy of her party-coloured
lover.

Alas! think what I suffered at being
obliged to keep up an ineffectual chase
after my Columbine through whole pantomimes;
to see her carried off in the
vigorous arms of the happy Harlequin;
and to be obliged, instead of snatching
her from him, to tumble sprawling with
Pantaloon and the clown, and bear the
infernal and degrading thwacks of my
rival's weapon of lath, which, may
Heaven confound him! (excuse my passion)
the villain laid on with a malicious
good-will: nay, I could absolutely hear
him chuckle and laugh beneath his accursed
mask—I beg pardon for growing
a little warm in my narrative—I wish to
be cool, but these recollections will sometimes
agitate me. I have heard and
read of many desperate and deplorable
situations of lovers, but none, I think, in
which true love was ever exposed to so
severe and peculiar a trial.

This could not last long; flesh and
blood, at least such flesh and blood as
mine, could not bear it. I had repeated
heart-burnings and quarrels with my
rival, in which he treated me with the
mortifying forbearance of a man towards
a child. Had he quarrelled outright with
me, I could have stomached it, at least I
should have known what part to take;
but to be humoured and treated as a
child in the presence of my mistress,
when I felt all the bantam spirit of a
little man swelling within me—Gods! it
was insufferable!

At length, we were exhibiting one day
at West End fair, which was at that time
a very fashionable resort, and often beleaguered
with gay equipages from town.
Among the spectators that filled the front
row of our little canvass theatre one afternoon,
when I had to figure in a pantomime,
were a number of young ladies
from a boarding-school, with their governess.
Guess my confusion, when, in
the midst of my antics, I beheld among
the number my quondam flame; her
whom I had be-rhymed at school, her for
whose charms I had smarted so severely,
the cruel Sacharissa! What was worse,
I fancied she recollected me, and was repeating
the story of my humiliating flagellation,
for I saw her whispering to
her companions and her governess. I
lost all consciousness of the part I was
acting, and of the place where I was. I
felt shrunk to nothing, and could have
crept into a rat-hole—unluckily, none
was open to receive me. Before I could
recover from my confusion, I was
tumbled over by Pantaloon and the
clown, and I felt the sword of Harlequin
making vigorous assaults in a manner
most degrading to my dignity.

Heaven and earth! was I again to
suffer martyrdom in this ignominious
manner, in the knowledge and even before
the very eyes of this most beautiful,

but most disdainful of fair ones? All my
long-smothered wrath broke out at
once; the dormant feelings of the gentleman
arose within me. Stung to the
quick by intolerable mortification, I
sprang on my feet in an instant; leaped
upon Harlequin like a young tiger; tore
off his mask; buffeted him in the face;
and soon shed more blood on the stage,
than had been spilt upon it during a
whole tragic campaign of battles and
murders.

As soon as Harlequin recovered from
his surprise, he returned my assault with
interest. I was nothing in his hands.
I was game, to be sure, for I was a gentleman;
but he had the clownish advantage
of bone and muscle. I felt as if I
could have fought even unto the death;
and I was likely to do so, for he was,
according to the boxing phrase, "putting
my head into chancery," when the gentle
Columbine fiew to my assistance. God
bless the women! they are always on
the side of the weak and the oppressed!

The battle now became general; the
dramatis personæ ranged on either side.
The manager interposed in vain; in vain
were his spangled black bonnet and towering
white feathers seen whisking about,
and nodding, and bobbing in the thickest
of the fight. Warriors, ladies, priests,
satyrs, kings, queens, gods, and goddesses,
all joined pell-mell in the fray:
never, since the conflict under the walls
of Troy, had there been such a chance-medley
warfare of combatants, human
and divine. The audience applauded,
the ladies shricked, and fled from the
theatre; and a scene of discord ensued
that baffles all description.

Nothing but the interference of the
peace-officers restored some degree of
order. The havoc, however, that had
been made among dresses and decorations,
put an end to all further acting for
that day. The battle over, the next
thing was to inquire why it was begun;
a common question among politicians
after a bloody and unprofitable war, and
one not always easy to be answered. It
was soon traced to me, and my unaccountable
transport of passion, which
they could only attribute to my having
run a muck. The manager was judge
and jury, and plaintiff into the bargain;
and in such cases justice is always
speedily administered. He came out of
the fight as sublime a wreck as the Santissima
Trinidada. His gallant plumes,
which once towered aloft, were drooping
about his ears; his robe of state hung in
ribands from his back, and but ill concealed
the ravages he had suffered in the
rear. He had received kicks and cuffs
from all sides during the tumult; for
every one took the opportunity of slily
gratifying some lurking grudge on his
fat carcass. He was a discreet man,
and did not choose to declare war with
all his company; so he swore all those
kicks and cuffs had been given by me,
and I let him enjoy the opinion. Some
wounds he bore, however, which were
the incontestable traces of a woman's
warfare: his sleek rosy cheek was
scored by trickling furrows, which were
ascribed to the nails of my intrepid and
devoted Columbine. The ire of the monarch
was not to be appeased; he had
suffered in his person, and he had suffered
in his purse; his dignity, too, had
been insulted, and that went for something;
for dignity is always more irascible
the more petty the potentate. He
wreaked his wrath upon the beginners of
the affray, and Columbine and myself
were discharged, at once, from the company.

Figure me, then, to yourself, a stripling
of little more than sixteen, a gentleman
by birth, a vagabond by trade,
turned adrift upon the world, making the
best of my way through the crowd of
West End fair; my mountebank dress
fluttering in rags about me; the weeping
Columbine hanging upon my arm, in
splendid but tattered finery; the tears
coursing one by one down her face,
carrying off the red paint in torrents,
and literally "preying upon her damask
cheek."

The crowd made way for us as we
passed, and hooted in our rear. I felt
the ridicule of my situation, but had too
much gallantry to desert this fair one,
who had sacrificed every thing for me.
Having wandered through the fair, we
emerged, like another Adam and Eve,
into unknown regions, and "had the
world before us, where to choose."
Never was a more disconsolate pair

seen in the soft valley of West End.
The luckless Columbine cast back many
a lingering look at the fair, which
seemed to put on a more than usual
splendour: its tents, and booths, and
party-coloured groups, all brightening in
the sunshine, and gleaming among the
trees; and its gay flags and streamers
fluttering in the light summer airs.
With a heavy sigh she would lean on
my arm and proceed. I had no hope
nor consolation to give her; but she had
linked herself to my fortunes, and she
was too much of a woman to desert me.

Pensive and silent, then, we traversed
the beautiful fields which lie behind
Hampstead, and wandered on, until the
fiddle, and the hautboy, and the shout,
and the laugh, were swallowed up in the
deep sound of the big bass drum, and
even that died away into a distant rumble.
We passed along the pleasant, sequestered
walk of Nightingale Lane. For
a pair of lovers, what scene could be
more propitious?—But such a pair of
lovers! Not a nightingale sang to soothe
us: the very gypsies, who were encamped
there during the fair, made no offer to
tell the fortunes of such an ill-omened
couple, whose fortunes, I suppose, they
thought too legibly written to need an
interpreter; and the gipsy children
crawled into their cabins, and peeped
out fearfully at us as we went by. For
a moment I paused, and was almost
tempted to turn gipsy; but the poetical
feeling, for the present, was fully satisfied,
and I passed on. Thus we travelled
and travelled, like a prince and
princess in a Nursery Tale, until we had
traversed a part of Hampstead Heath,
and arrived in the vicinity of Jack
Straw's Castle. Here, wearied and
dispirited, we seated ourselves on the
margin of the hill, hard by the very
mile-stone where Whittington of yore
heard the Bow-bells ring out the presage
of his future greatness. Alas! no bell
rung an invitation to us, as we looked
disconsolately upon the distant city. Old
London seemed to wrap itself unsociably
in its mantle of brown smoke, and to
offer no encouragement to such a couple
of tatterdemalions.

For once, at least, the usual course of
the pantomime was reversed, Harlequin
was jilted, and the lover had carried off
Columbine in good earnest. But what
was I to do with her? I could not take her
in my hand, return to my father, throw
myself on my knees, and crave his
forgiveness and his blessing, according
to dramatic usage. The very dogs
would have chased such a draggled-tailed
beauty from the grounds.

In the midst of my doleful dumps,
some one tapped me on the shoulder,
and, looking up, I saw a couple of rough
sturdy fellows standing behind me. Not
knowing what to expect, I jumped on my
legs, and was preparing again to make
battle; but I was tripped up and secured
in a twinkling.

"Come, come, young master," said
one of the fellows, in a gruff but good-humoured
tone, "don't let's have any of
your tantrums; one would have thought
you had had swing enough for this bout.
Come; it's high time to leave off harlequinading,
and go home to your father."

In fact, I had fallen into the hands of
remorseless men. The cruel Sacharissa
had proclaimed who I was, and that a
reward had been offered throughout the
country for any tidings of me; and they
had seen a description of me which had
been inserted in the public papers. Those
harpies, therefore, for the mere sake of
filthy lucre, were resolved to deliver me
over into the hands of my father, and
the clutches of my pedagogue.

It was in vain that I swore I would
not leave my faithful and afflicted Columbine.
It was in vain that I tore myself
from their grasp, and flew to her; and
vowed to protect her; and wiped the
tears from her cheek, and with them a
whole blush that might have vied with
the carnation for brilliancy. My persecutors
were inflexible: they even seemed
to exult in our distress; and to enjoy
this theatrical display of dirt, and finery,
and tribulation. I was carried off in
despair, leaving my Columbine destitute
in the wide world; but many a look of
agony did I cast back at her as she stood
gazing piteously after me from the brink
of Hampstead Hill; so forlorn, so fine,
so ragged, so bedraggled, yet so beautiful.

Thus ended my first peep into the
world. I returned home, rich in good-for-nothing

experience, and dreading the
reward I was to receive for my improvement.
My reception, however, was quite
different from what I had expected. My
father had a spice of the devil in him,
and did not seem to like me the worse
for my freak, which he termed "sowing
my wild oats." He happened to have
some of his sporting friends to dine the
very day of my return; they made me
tell some of my adventures, and laughed
heartily at them.

One old fellow, with an outrageously
red nose, took to me hugely. I heard
him whisper to my father that I was a
lad of mettle, and might make something
clever; to which my father replied, that
I had good points, but was an ill-broken
whelp, and required a great deal of the
whip. Perhaps this very conversation
raised me a little in his esteem, for I
found the red-nosed old gentleman was a
veteran fox-hunter of the neighbourhood,
for whose opinion my father had vast
deference. Indeed, I believe he would
have pardoned any thing in me more
readily than poetry, which he called a
cursed, sneaking, puling, housekeeping
employment, the bane of all fine manhood.
He swore it was unworthy of a
youngster of my expectations, who was
one day to have so great an estate, and
would be able to keep horses and hounds,
and hire poets to write songs for him
into the bargain.

I had now satisfied, for a time, my
roving propensity. I had exhausted the
poetical feeling. I had been heartily
buffeted out of my love for theatrical
display. I felt humiliated by my exposure,
and was willing to hide my head
any where for a season, so that I might
be out of the way of the ridicule of the
world; for I found folks not altogether
so indulgent abroad as they were at my
father's table. I could not stay at home;
the house was intolerably doleful, now
that my mother was no longer there to
cherish me. Every thing around spoke
mournfully of her. The little flower-garden
in which she delighted was all in
disorder and overrun with weeds. I
attempted for a day or two to arrange it,
but my heart grew heavier and heavier
as I laboured. Every little broken-down
flower, that I had seen her rear so tenderly,
seemed to plead in mute eloquence
to my feelings. There was a favourite
honeysuckle which I had seen her often
training with assiduity, and had heard
her say it would be the pride of her
garden. I found it grovelling along the
ground, tangled and wild, and twining
round every worthless weed; and it
struck me as an emblem of myself, a
mere scatterling, running to waste and
uselessness. I could work no longer in
the garden.

My father sent me to pay a visit to
my uncle, by way of keeping the old
gentleman in mind of me. I was received,
as usual, without any expression
of discontent, which we always considered
equivalent to a hearty welcome.
Whether he had ever heard of my strolling
freak or not I could not discover, he
and his man were both so taciturn. I
spent a day or two roaming about the
dreary mansion and neglected park, and
felt at one time, I believe, a touch of
poetry, for I was tempted to drown myself
in a fish-pond; I rebuked the evil
spirit, however, and it left me. I found
the same red-headed boy running wild
about the park, but I felt in no humour
to hunt him at present. On the contrary,
I tried to coax him to me, and to
make friends with him; but the young
savage was untameable.

When I returned from my uncle's, I
remained at home for some time, for my
father was disposed, he said, to make a
man of me. He took me out hunting
with him, and I became a great favourite
of the red-nosed squire, because I rode
at every thing, never refused the boldest
leap, and was always sure to be in at
the death. I used often, however, to
offend my father at hunting dinners, by
taking the wrong side in politics. My
father was amazingly ignorant, so ignorant,
in fact, as not to know that he
knew nothing. He was staunch, however,
to church and king, and full of old-fashioned
prejudices. Now I had picked
up a little knowledge in politics and
religion, during my rambles with the
strollers, and found myself capable of
setting him right as to many of his antiquated
notions. I felt it my duty to do
so; we were apt, therefore, to differ occasionally
in the political discussions

which sometimes arose at those hunting
dinners.

I was at that age when a man knows
least, and is most vain of his knowledge,
and when he is extremely tenacious in
defending his opinion upon subjects about
which he knows nothing. My father
was a hard man for any one to argue
with, for he never knew when he was
refuted. I sometimes posed him a little,
but then he had one argument that
always settled the question; he would
threaten to knock me down. I believe
he at last grew tired of me, because I
both outtalked and outrode him. The
red-nosed squire, too, got out of conceit
of me, because, in the heat of the chase,
I rode over him one day as he and his
horse lay sprawling in the dirt: so I
found myself getting into disgrace with
all the world, and would have got heartily
out of humour with myself, had I not
been kept in tolerable self-conceit by the
parson's three daughters.

They were the same who had admired
my poetry on a former occasion, when
it had brought me into disgrace at school;
and I had ever since retained an exalted
idea of their judgment. Indeed, they
were young ladies not merely of taste,
but science. Their education had been
superintended by their mother, who was
a blue-stocking. They knew enough of
botany to tell the technical names of all
the flowers in the garden, and all their
secret concerns into the bargain. They
knew music too, not mere commonplace
music, but Rossini and Mozart, and they
sang Moore's Irish Melodies to perfection.
They had pretty little work-tables,
covered with all kind of objects of taste;
specimens of lava, and painted eggs, and
work-boxes, painted and varnished by
themselves. They excelled in knotting
and netting, and painted in water-colours;
and made feather fans, and fire-screens,
and worked in silks and worsteds; and
talked French and Italian, and knew
Shakspeare by heart. They even knew
something of geology and mineralogy;
and went about the neighbourhood knocking
stones to pieces, to the great admiration
and perplexity of the country folk.

I am a little too minute, perhaps, in
detailing their accomplishments, but I
wish to let you see that these were not
commonplace young ladies, but had pretensions
quite above the ordinary run.
It was some consolation to me, therefore,
to find favour in such eyes. Indeed, they
had always marked me out for a genius,
and considered my late vagrant freak as
fresh proof of the fact. They observed
that Shakspeare himself had been a mere
Pickle in his youth; that he had stolen
deer, as every one knew, and kept loose
company, and consorted with actors: so
I comforted myself marvellously with the
idea of having so decided a Shakspearean
trait in my character.

The youngest of the three, however,
was my grand consolation. She was a
pale, sentimental girl, with long "hyacinthine"
ringlets hanging about her face.
She wrote poetry herself, and we kept
up a poetical correspondence. She had
a taste for the drama too, and I taught
her how to act several of the scenes in
Romeo and Juliet. I used to rehearse
the garden scene under her lattice, which
looked out from among woodbine and
honeysuckles into the churchyard. I
began to think her amazingly pretty as
well as clever, and I believe I should
have finished by falling in love with her,
had not her father discovered our theatrical
studies. He was a studious, abstracted
man, generally too much absorbed in his
learned and religious labours to notice
the little foibles of his daughters, and,
perhaps, blinded by a father's fondness;
but he unexpectedly put his head out of
his study-window one day in the midst
of a scene, and put a stop to our rehearsals.
He had a vast deal of that
prosaic good sense which I for ever
found a stumbling-block in my poetical
path. My rambling freak had not struck
the good man as poetically as it had his
daughters. He drew his comparison from
a different manual. He looked upon me
as a prodigal son, and doubted whether
I should ever arrive at the happy catastrophe
of the fatted calf.

I fancy some intimation was given to
my father of this new breaking-out of
my poetical temperament, for he suddenly
intimated that it was high time I
should prepare for the University. I
dreaded a return to the school from
whence I had eloped: the ridicule of my
fellow-scholars, and the glances from the

squire's pew, would have been worse
than death to me. I was fortunately
spared the humiliation. My father sent
me to board with a country clergyman,
who had three or four other boys under
his care. I went to him joyfully, for I
had often heard my mother mention him
with esteem. In fact, he had been an
admirer of hers in his younger days,
though too humble in his fortune and
modest in pretensions to aspire to her
hand; but he had ever retained a tender
regard for her. He was a good man; a
worthy specimen of that valuable body
of our country clergy who silently and
unostentatiously do a vast deal of good;
who are, as it were, woven into the whole
system of rural life, and operate upon it
with the steady yet unobtrusive influence
of temperate piety and learned good
sense. He lived in a small village not
far from Warwick, one of those little
communities where the scanty flock is,
in a manner, folded into the bosom of the
pastor. The venerable church, in its
grass-grown cemetery, was one of those
rural temples which are scattered about
our country as if to sanctify the land.

I have the worthy pastor before my
mind's eye at this moment, with his mild
benevolent countenance, rendered still
more venerable by his silver hairs. I
have him before me as I saw him on my
arrival, seated in the embowered porch
of his small parsonage, with a flower-garden
before it, and his pupils gathered
round him like his children. I shall
never forget his reception of me, for I
believe he thought of my poor mother at
the time, and his heart yearned towards
her child. His eye glistened when he
received me at the door, and he took me
into his arms as the adopted child of his
affections. Never had I been so fortunately
placed. He was one of those
excellent members of our church, who
help out their narrow salaries by instructing
a few gentlemen's sons. I am convinced
those little seminaries are among
the best nurseries of talent and virtue in
the land. Both heart and mind are cultivated
and improved. The preceptor is
the companion and the friend of his
pupils. His sacred character gives him
dignity in their eyes, and his solemn
functions produce that elevation of mind
and sobriety of conduct necessary to
those who are to teach youth to think
and act worthily.

I speak from my own random observation
and experience, but I think I speak
correctly. At any rate, I can trace
much of what is good in my own heterogeneous
compound to the short time I
was under the instruction of that good
man. He entered into the cares and
occupations and amusements of his pupils;
and won his way into our confidence,
and studied our hearts and minds
more intently than we did our books.

He soon sounded the depth of my
character. I had become, as I have
already hinted, a little liberal in my
notions, and apt to philosophize on both
politics and religion; having seen something
of men and things, and learnt,
from my fellow-philosophers, the strollers,
to despise all vulgar prejudices. He
did not attempt to cast down my vainglory,
nor to question my right view
of things; he merely instilled into my
mind a little information on these topics;
though in a quiet, unobtrusive way, that
never ruffled a feather of my self-conceit.
I was astonished to find what a change
a little knowledge makes in one's mode
of viewing matters; and how very different
a subject is when one thinks, or when
one only talks about it. I conceived a
vast deference for my teacher, and was
ambitious of his good opinion. In my
zeal to make a favourable impression, I
presented him with a whole ream of my
poetry. He read it attentively, smiled,
and pressed my hand when he returned
it to me, but said nothing. The next
day he set me at mathematics.

Somehow or other the process of
teaching seemed robbed by him of all
its austerity. I was not conscious that
he thwarted an inclination or opposed a
wish; but I felt that, for the time, my inclinations
were entirely changed. I became
fond of study, and zealous to improve
myself. I made tolerable advances
in studies, which I had before considered
as unattainable, and I wondered at my
own proficiency. I thought, too, I astonished
my preceptor; for I often caught
his eyes fixed upon me with a peculiar
expression. I suspect, since, that he
was pensively tracing in my countenance

the early lineaments of my
mother.

Education was not apportioned by him
into tasks, and enjoined as a labour, to
be abandoned with joy the moment the
hour of study was expired. We had, it
is true, our allotted hours of occupation,
to give us habits of method, and of the
distribution of time; but they were made
pleasant to us, and our feelings were
enlisted in the cause. When they were
over, education still went on. It pervaded
all our relaxations and amusements.
There was a steady march of
improvement. Much of his instruction
was given during pleasant rambles, or
when seated on the margin of the Avon;
and information received in that way,
often makes a deeper impression than
when acquired by poring over books.
I have many of the pure and eloquent
precepts that flowed from his lips associated
in my mind with lovely scenes in
nature, which make the recollection of
them indescribably delightful.

I do not pretend to say that any miracle
was effected with me. After all said
and done, I was but a weak disciple.
My poetical temperament still wrought
within me and wrestled hard with wisdom,
and, I fear, maintained the mastery.
I found mathematics an intolerable
task in fine weather. I would be
prone to forget my problems, to watch
the birds hopping about the windows,
or the bees humming about the honeysuckles;
and whenever I could steal
away, I would wander about the grassy
borders of the Avon, and excuse this
truant propensity to myself with the idea
that I was treading classic ground, over
which Shakspeare had wandered. What
luxurious idleness have I indulged, as I
lay under the trees and watched the
silver waves rippling through the arches
of the broken bridge, and laving the
rocky bases of old Warwick Castle; and
how often have I thought of sweet Shakspeare,
and in my boyish enthusiasm
have kissed the waves which had washed
his native village!

My good preceptor would often accompany
me in these desultory rambles.
He sought to get hold of this vagrant
mood of mind and turn it to some account.
He endeavoured to teach me to
mingle thought with mere sensation; to
moralize on the scenes around; and to
make the beauties of nature administer
to the understanding and the heart. He
endeavoured to direct my imagination to
high and noble objects, and to fill it with
lofty images. In a word, he did all he
could to make the best of a poetical temperament,
and to counteract the mischief
which had been done to me by great
expectations.

Had I been earlier put under the care
of the good pastor, or remained with him
a longer time, I really believe he would
have made something of me. He had
already brought a great deal of what
had been flogged into me into tolerable
order, and had weeded out much of the
unprofitable wisdom which had sprung
up in my vagabondizing. I already began
to find that with all my genius a
little study would be no disadvantage to
me; and, in spite of my vagrant freaks,
I began to doubt of my being a second
Shakspeare.

Just as I was making these precious
discoveries, the good parson died. It
was a melancholy day throughout the
neighbourhood. He had his little flock
of scholars, his children, as he used to
call us, gathered around him in his dying
moments; and he gave us the parting
advice of a father, now that he had to
leave us, and we were to be separated
from each other, and scattered about the
world. He took me by the hand, and
talked with me earnestly and affectionately,
and called to mind my mother,
and used her name to enforce his dying
exhortations, for I rather think he considered
me the most erring and heedless
of his flock. He held my hand in his,
long after he had done speaking, and
kept his eye fixed on me tenderly and
almost piteously: his lips moved as if he
were silently praying for me; and he
died away, still holding me by the hand.

There was not a dry eye in the church
when the funeral service was read from
the pulpit from which he had so often
preached. When the body was committed
to the earth, our little band gathered
round it, and watched the coffin
as it was lowered into the grave. The
parishioners looked at us with sympathy;
for we were mourners not merely

in dress but in heart. We lingered about
the grave, and clung to one another for
a time weeping and speechless, and then
parted, like a band of brothers parting
from the paternal hearth, never to assemble
there again.

How had the gentle spirit of that good
man sweetened our natures, and linked
our young hearts together by the kindest
ties! I have always had a throb of pleasure
at meeting with an old schoolmate,
even though one of my truant associates;
but whenever, in the course of my life,
I have encountered one of that little flock
with which I was folded on the banks of
the Avon, it has been with a gush of
affection, and a glow of virtue, that for
the moment have made me a better
man.

I was now sent to Oxford, and was
wonderfully impressed on first entering
it as a student. Learning here puts on
all its majesty. It is lodged in palaces;
it is sanctified by the sacred ceremonies
of religion; it has a pomp and circumstance
which powerfully affect the imagination.
Such, at least, it had in my
eyes, thoughtless as I was. My previous
studies with the worthy pastor, had prepared
me to regard it with deference and
awe. He had been educated here, and
always spoke of the University with filial
fondness and classic veneration. When
I beheld the clustering spires and pinnacles
of this most august of cities rising
from the plain, I hailed them in my
enthusiasm as the points of a diadem,
which the nation had placed upon the
brows of science.

For a time old Oxford was full of
enjoyment for me. There was a charm
about its monastic buildings; its great
Gothic quadrangles; its solemn halls,
and shadowy cloisters. I delighted, in
the evenings, to get in places surrounded
by the colleges, where all modern buildings
were screened from the sight; and
to see the professors and the students
sweeping along in the dusk in their antiquated
caps and gowns. I seemed for a
time to be transported among the people
and edifices of the old times. I was a
frequent attendant, also, of the evening
service in the New College Hall; to hear
the fine organ, and the choir swelling an
anthem in that solemn building, where
painting, music, and architecture, are in
such admirable unison.

A favourite haunt, too, was the beautiful
walk bordered by lofty elms along
the river, behind the gray walls of Magdalen
College, which goes by the name of
Addison's Walk, from being his favourite
walk, when an Oxford student. I became
also a lounger in the Bodleian
Library, and a great dipper into books,
though I cannot say that I studied them;
in fact, being no longer under direction
or control, I was gradually relapsing into
mere indulgence of the fancy. Still this
would have been pleasant and harmless
enough, and I might have awakened from
mere literary dreaming to something better.
The chances were in my favour,
for the riotous times of the University
were past. The days of hard drinking
were at an end. The old feuds of
"Town and Gown," like the civil wars
of the White and Red Rose, had died
away; and student and citizen slept in
whole skins, without risk of being summoned
in the night to bloody brawl. It
had become the fashion to study at the
University, and the odds were always
in favour of my following the fashion.
Unluckily, however, I fell in company
with a special knot of young fellows, of
lively parts and ready wit, who had
lived occasionally upon town, and become
initiated into the Fancy. They
voted study to be the toil of dull minds,
by which they slowly crept up the hill,
while genius arrived at it at a bound.
I felt ashamed to play the owl among
such gay birds; so I threw by my books,
and became a man of spirit.

As my father made me a tolerable
allowance, notwithstanding the narrowness
of his income, having an eye always
to my great expectations, I was enabled
to appear to advantage among my companions.
I cultivated all kinds of sports
and exercises. I was one of the most
expert oarsmen that rowed on the Isis.
I boxed, fenced, angled, shot, and hunted;
and my rooms in college were always
decorated with whips of all kinds, spurs,
fowling-pieces, fishing-rods, foils, and
boxing-gloves. A pair of leather breeches
would seem to be throwing one leg out
of the half-open drawers, and empty bottles
lumbered the bottom of every closet.

My father came to see me at college
when I was in the height of my career.
He asked me how I came on with my
studies, and what kind of hunting there
was in the neighbourhood. He examined
my various sporting apparatus with a
curious eye; wanted to know if any of
the professors were fox-hunters, and
whether they were generally good shots,
for he suspected their studying so much
must be hurtful to the sight. We had a
day's shooting together. I delighted him
with my skill, and astonished him by my
learned disquisitions on horseflesh, and
on Manton's guns; so, upon the whole,
he departed highly satisfied with my improvement
at college.

I do not know how it is, but I cannot
be idle long without getting in love. I
had not been a very long time a man of
spirit, therefore, before I became deeply
enamoured of a shopkeeper's daughter in
the High Street, who, in fact, was the
admiration of many of the students. I
wrote several sonnets in praise of her,
and spent half of my pocket-money at
the shop, in buying articles which I did
not want, that I might have an opportunity
of speaking to her. Her father, a
severe-looking old gentleman, with bright
silver buckles, and a crisp-curled wig,
kept a strict guard on her, as the fathers
generally do upon their daughters in Oxford,
and well they may. I tried to get
into his good graces, and to be social
with him, but all in vain. I said several
good things in his shop, but he never
laughed: he had no relish for wit and
humour. He was one of those dry old
gentlemen who keep youngsters at bay.
He had already brought up two or three
daughters, and was experienced in the
ways of students. He was as knowing
and wary as a gray old badger that has
often been hunted. To see him on
Sunday, so stiff and starched in his demeanour,
so precise in his dress, with his
daughter under his arm, was enough to
deter all graceless youngsters from approaching.

I managed, however, in spite of his
vigilance, to have several conversations
with the daughter, as I cheapened articles
in the shop. I made terrible long bargains,
and examined the articles over and
over before I purchased. In the mean
time, I would convey a sonnet or an
acrostic under cover of a piece of cambric,
or slipped into a pair of stockings; I
would whisper soft nonsense into her ear
as I haggled about the price; and would
squeeze her hand tenderly as I received
my half-pence of change in a bit of
whity-brown paper. Let this serve as a
hint to all haberdashers who have pretty
daughters for shop-girls, and young students
for customers. I do not know
whether my words and looks were very
eloquent, but my poetry was irresistible;
for, to tell the truth, the girl had some
literary taste, and was seldom without a
book from the circulating library.

By the divine power of poetry, therefore,
which is so potent with the lovely
sex, did I subdue the heart of this fair
little haberdasher. We carried on a
sentimental correspondence for a time
across the counter, and I supplied her
with rhyme by the stocking-full. At
length I prevailed on her to grant an
assignation. But how was this to be
effected? Her father kept her always
under his eye; she never walked out
alone; and the house was locked up the
moment that the shop was shut. All
these difficulties served but to give zest
to the adventure. I proposed that the assignation
should be in her own chamber,
into which I would climb at night. The
plan was irresistible—A cruel father, a
secret lover, and a clandestine meeting!
All the little girl's studies from the
circulating library seemed about to be
realized.

But what had I in view in making this
assignation? Indeed, I know not. I had
no evil intentions, nor can I say that I
had any good ones. I liked the girl, and
wanted to have an opportunity of seeing
more of her; and the assignation was
made, as I have done many things else,
heedlessly and without forethought. I
asked myself a few questions of the kind,
after all my arrangements were made,
but the answers were very unsatisfactory.
"Am I to ruin this poor thoughtless girl?"
said I to myself. "No!" was the prompt
and indignant answer. "Am I to run
away with her?"—"Whither, and to
what purpose?"—"Well, then, am I to
marry her?"—"Poh! a man of my expectations
marry a shopkeeper's daughter!"

"What then am I to do with her?"
"Hum—why—let me get into the chamber
first, and then consider—" and so the
self-examination ended.

Well, sir, "come what come might,"
I stole under cover of the darkness to the
dwelling of my dulcinea. All was quiet.
At the concerted signal her window was
gently opened. It was just above the
projecting bow-window of her father's
shop, which assisted me in mounting.
The house was low, and I was enabled
to scale the fortress with tolerable case.
I clambered with a beating heart; I
reached the casement; I hoisted my body
half into the chamber; and was welcomed,
not by the embraces of my expecting fair
one, but by the grasp of the crabbed-looking
old father in the crisp-curled wig.

I extricated myself from his clutches,
and endeavoured to make my retreat;
but I was confounded by his cries of
thieves! and robbers! I was bothered
too by his Sunday cane, which was
amazingly busy about my head as I descended,
and against which my hat was
but a poor protection. Never before had
I an idea of the activity of an old man's
arm, and the hardness of the knob of an
ivory-headed cane. In my hurry and
confusion I missed my footing, and fell
sprawling on the pavement. I was immediately
surrounded by myrmidons,
who, I doubt not, were on the watch for
me. Indeed, I was in no situation to
escape, for I had sprained my ancle in
the fall, and could not stand. I was
seized as a housebreaker; and to exonerate
myself of a greater crime, I had
to accuse myself of a less. I made
known who I was, and why I came there.
Alas! the varlets knew it already, and
were only amusing themselves at my
expense. My perfidious muse had been
playing me one of her slippery tricks.
The old curmudgeon of a father had
found my sonnets and acrostics hid away
in holes and corners of his shop: he had
no taste for poetry like his daughter, and
had instituted a rigorous though silent
observation. He had moused upon our
letters, detected our plans, and prepared
every thing for my reception. Thus was
I ever doomed to be led into scrapes by
the muse. Let no man henceforth carry
on a secret amour in poetry!

The old man's ire was in some measure
appeased by the pummeling of my head
and the anguish of my sprain; so he did
not put me to death on the spot. He was
even humane enough to furnish a shutter,
on which I was carried back to college
like a wounded warrior. The porter was
roused to admit me. The college gate
was thrown open for my entry. The
affair was blazed about the next morning,
and became the joke of the college from
the buttery to the hall.

I had leisure to repent during several
weeks' confinement by my sprain, which
I passed in translating Boethius' Consolations
of Philosophy. I received a most
tender and ill-spelled letter from my
mistress, who had been sent to a relation
in Coventry. She protested her innocence
of my misfortunes, and vowed to be true
to me "till deth." I took no notice of
the letter, for I was cured, for the present,
both of love and poetry. Women, however,
are more constant in their attachments
than men, whatever philosophers
may say to the contrary. I am assured
that she actually remained faithful to her
vow for several months; but she had to
deal with a cruel father, whose heart was
as hard as the knob of his cane. He was
not to be touched by tears or poetry, but
absolutely compelled her to marry a reputable
young tradesman, who made her
a happy woman in spite of herself, and
of all the rules of romance: and, what
is more, the mother of several children.
They are at this very day a thriving couple,
and keep a snug corner shop, just
opposite the figure of Peeping Tom, at
Conventry.

I will not fatigue you by any more
details of my studies at Oxford; though
they were not always as severe as these,
nor did I always pay as dear for my
lessons. To be brief, then, I lived on in
my usual miscellaneous manner, gradually
getting knowledge of good and
evil, until I had attained my twenty-first
year. I had scarcely come of age when
I heard of the sudden death of my father.
The shock was severe, for though he had
never treated me with much kindness,
still he was my father, and at his death I
felt alone in the world.

I returned home, and found myself the
solitary master of the paternal mansion.

A crowd of gloomy feelings came thronging
upon me. It was a place that always
sobered me, and brought me to reflection;
now especially, it looked so deserted and
melancholy. I entered the little breakfasting-room.
There were my father's
whip and spurs hanging by the fireplace;
the Stud-Book, Sporting Magazine, and
Racing Calendar, his only reading. His
favourite spaniel lay on the hearth-rug.
The poor animal, who had never before
noticed me, now came fondling about me,
licked my hand, then looked round the
room, whined, wagged his tail slightly,
and gazed wistfully in my face. I felt
the full force of the appeal. "Poor
Dash," said I, "we are both alone in the
world, with nobody to care for us, and
will take care of one another." The
dog never quitted me afterwards.

I could not go into my mother's room
—my heart swelled when I passed within
sight of the door. Her portrait hung in
the parlour, just over the place she used
to sit. As I cast my eyes on it, I thought
it looked at me with tenderness, and I
burst into tears. I was a careless dog, it
is true, hardened a little, perhaps, by
living in public schools, and buffeting
about among strangers, who cared nothing
for me; but the recollection of a mother's
tenderness was overcoming.

I was not of an age or a temperament
to be long depressed. There was a reaction
in my system that always brought
me up again after every pressure; and,
indeed, my spirits were most buoyant
after a temporary prostration. I settled
the concerns of the estate as soon as
possible; realized my property, which
was not very considerable, but which
appeared a vast deal to me, having a
poetical eye, that magnified every thing;
and finding myself at the end of a few
months, free of all further business or
restraint, I determined to go to London
and enjoy myself. Why should not I?—
I was young, animated, joyous; had
plenty of funds for present pleasures, and
my uncle's estate in the perspective. Let
those mope at college, and pore over
books, thought I, who have their way to
make in the world; it would be ridiculous
drudgery in a youth of my expectations!

Away to London, therefore, I rattled
in a tandem, determined to take the town
gaily. I passed through several of the
villages where I had played the Jack
Pudding a few years before; and I visited
the scenes of many of my adventures
and follies, merely from that feeling of
melancholy pleasure which we have in
stepping again the footprints of foregone
existence, even when they have passed
among weeds and briars. I made a
circuit in the latter part of my journey,
so as to take in West End and Hampstead,
the scenes of my last dramatic exploit,
and of the battle royal of the booth. As
I drove along the ridge of Hampstead
Hill, by Jack Straw's Castle, I paused at
the spot where Columbine and I had sat
down so disconsolately in our ragged
finery, and had looked dubiously on
London. I almost expected to see her
again, standing on the hill's brink, "like
Niobe, all tears;"—mournful as Babylon
in ruins!

"Poor Columbine!" said I, with a
heavy sigh, "thou wert a gallant, generous
girl—a true woman; faithful to the
distressed, and ready to sacrifice thyself
in the cause of worthless man!"

I tried to whistle off the recollection of
her, for there was always something of
self-reproach with it. I drove gaily along
the road, enjoying the stare of hostlers
and stable-boys, as I managed my horses
knowingly down the steep street of Hampstead;
when, just at the skirts of the village,
one of the traces of my leader came
loose. I pulled up, and as the animal
was restive, and my servant a bungler, I
called for assistance to the robustious
master of a snug alehouse, who stood at
his door with a tankard in his hand. He
came readily to assist me, followed by
his wife, with her bosom half open, a
child in her arms, and two more at her
heels. I stared for a moment, as if
doubting my eyes. I could not be mistaken;
in the fat, beer-blown landlord of
the alehouse, I recognised my old rival
Harlequin, and in his slattern spouse, the
once trim and dimpling Columbine.

The change of my looks from youth
to manhood, and the change in my circumstances,
prevented them from recognising
me. They could not suspect in
the dashing young buck, fashionably
dressed and driving his own equipage,
the painted beau, with old peaked hat,

and long, flimsy, sky-blue coat. My
heart yearned with kindness towards
Columbine, and I was glad to see her
establishment a thriving one. As soon
as the harness was adjusted, I tossed
a small purse of gold into her ample
bosom; and then, pretending to give my
horses a hearty cut of the whip, I made
the lash curl with a whistling about the
sleek sides of ancient Harlequin. The
horses dashed off like lightning, and I
was whirled out of sight before either of
the parties could get over their surprise
at my liberal donations. I have always
considered this as one of the greatest
proofs of my poetical genius; it was
distributing poetical justice in perfection.

I now entered London en cavalier, and
became a blood upon town. I took
fashionable lodgings in the West End;
employed the first tailor; frequented the
regular lounges; gambled a little; lost
my money good-humouredly, and gained
a number of fashionable, good-for-nothing
acquaintances. I gained some reputation
also for a man of science, having
become an expert boxer in the course of
my studies at Oxford. I was distinguished,
therefore, among the gentlemen
of the Fancy; became hand and glove
with certain boxing noblemen, and was
the admiration of the Fives Court. A
gentleman's science, however, is apt to
get him into sad scrapes; he is too prone
to play the knight-errant, and to pick up
quarrels which less scientific gentlemen
would quietly avoid. I undertook one
day to punish the insolence of a porter.
He was a Hercules of a fellow, but then
I was so secure in my science! I gained
the victory of course. The porter pocketed
his humiliation, bound up his broken
head, and went about his business as
unconcernedly as though nothing had
happened; while I went to bed with my
victory, and did not dare to show my
battered face for a fortnight: by which I
discovered that a gentleman may have
the worst of the battle even when victorious.

I am naturally a philosopher, and no
one can moralize better after a misfortune
has taken place: so I lay on my
bed and moralized on this sorry ambition,
which levels the gentleman with the
clown. I know it is the opinion of many
sages, who have thought deeply on these
matters, that the noble science of boxing
keeps up the bull-dog courage of the
nation; and far be it from me to decry
the advantage of becoming a nation of
bull-dogs; but I now saw clearly that it
was calculated to keep up the breed of
English ruffians. "What is the Fives
Court," said I to myself, as I turned uncomfortably
in bed, "but a college of
scoundrelism, where every bully ruffian
in the land may gain a fellowship? What
is the slang language of `The Fancy'
but a jargon by which fools and knaves
commune and understand each other, and
enjoy a kind of superiority over the uninitiated?
What is a boxing-match but
an arena, where the noble and the illustrious
are jostled into familiarity with
the infamous and the vulgar? What, in
fact, is the Fancy itself, but a chain of
easy communication, extending from the
peer down to the pickpocket, through the
medium of which a man of rank may
find he has shaken hands, at three removes,
with the murderer on the gibbet?

"Enough!" ejaculated I, thoroughly
convinced through the force of my philosophy,
and the pain of my bruises—
"I'll have nothing more to do with The
Fancy." So when I had recovered from
my victory, I turned my attention to
softer themes, and became a devoted
admirer of the ladies. Had I had more
industry and ambition in my nature, I
might have worked my way to the very
height of fashion, as I saw many laborious
gentlemen doing around me. But
it is a toilsome, an anxious, and an unhappy
life: there are few beings so
sleepless and miserable as your cultivators
of fashionable smiles. I was quite
content with that kind of society which
forms the frontiers of fashion, and may
be easily taken possession of. I found it
a light, easy, productive soil. I had but
to go about and sow visiting-cards, and I
reaped a whole harvest of invitations.
Indeed, my figure and address were by
no means against me. It was whispered,
too, among the young ladies, that I was
prodigiously clever, and wrote poetry;
and the old ladies had ascertained that I
was a young gentleman of good family,
handsome fortune, and "great expectations."

I now was carried away by the hurry
of gay life, so intoxicating to a young
man, and which a man of poetical temperament
enjoys so highly on his first
tasting of it: that rapid variety of sensations;
that whirl of brilliant objects; that
succession of pungent pleasures! I had
no time for thought. I only felt. I
never attempted to write poetry; my
poetry seemed all to go off by transpiration.
I lived poetry; it was all a poetical
dream to me. A mere sensualist
knows nothing of the delights of a splendid
metropolis. He lives in a round of
animal gratifications and heartless habits.
But to a young man of poetical feelings,
it is an ideal world, a scene of enchantment
and delusion; his imagination is in
perpetual excitement, and gives a spiritual
zest to every pleasure.

A season of town-life, however, somewhat
sobered me of my intoxication; or,
rather, I was rendered more serious by
one of my old complaints—I fell in love.
It was with a very pretty, though a very
haughty fair one, who had come to London
under the care of an old maiden
aunt to enjoy the pleasures of a winter in
town, and to get married. There was
not a doubt of her commanding a choice
of lovers; for she had long been the
belle of a little cathedral city, and one of
the poets of the place had absolutely
celebrated her beauty in a copy of Latin
verses. The most extravagant anticipations
were formed by her friends of the
sensation she would produce. It was
feared by some that she might be precipitate
in her choice, and take up with
some inferior title. The aunt was determined
nothing should gain her under a
lord.

Alas! with all her charms, the young
lady lacked the one thing needful—she
had no money. So she waited in vain
for duke, marquis, or earl, to throw himself
at her feet. As the season waned,
so did the lady's expectations; when,
just towards the close, I made my advances.

I was most favourably received by both
the young lady and her aunt. It is true,
I had no title; but then such great expectations!
A marked preference was
immediately shown me over two rivals,
the younger son of a needy baronet, and
a captain of dragoons on half-pay. I did
not absolutely take the field in form, for
I was determined not to be precipitate;
but I drove my equipage frequently
through the street in which she lived,
and was always sure to see her at the
window, generally with a book in her
hand. I resumed my knack at rhyming,
and sent her a long copy of verses;
anonymously, to be sure, but she knew
my handwriting. Both aunt and niece,
however, displayed the most delightful
ignorance on the subject. The young
lady showed them to me; wondered
whom they could be written by; and
declared there was nothing in this world
she loved so much as poetry; while the
maiden aunt would put her pinching
spectacles on her nose, and read them,
with blunders in sense and sound, that
were excruciating to an author's ears;
protesting there was nothing equal to
them in the whole Elegant Extracts.

The fashionable season closed without
my adventuring to make a declaration,
though I certainly had encouragement.
I was not perfectly sure that I had
effected a lodgment in the young lady's
heart, and, to tell the truth, the aunt
overdid her part, and was a little too
extravagant in her liking of me. I knew
that maiden aunts were not apt to be
captivated by the mere personal merits
of their nieces' admirers; and I wanted
to ascertain how much of all this favour
I owed to driving an equipage, and having
great expectations.

I had received many hints how charming
their native place was during the
summer months; what pleasant society
they had; and what beautiful drives
about the neighbourhood. They had
not, therefore, returned home long, before
I made my appearance in dashing
style, driving down the principal street.
The very next morning I was seen at
prayers, seated in the same pew with the
reigning belle. Questions were whispered
about the aisles, after service,
"Who is he?" and "What is he?" And
the replies were as usual, "A young
gentleman of good family and fortune,
and great expectations."

I was much struck with the peculiarities
of this reverend little place. A
cathedral, with its dependencies and regulations,

presents a picture of other
times, and of a different order of things.
It is a rich relic of a more poetical age.
There still linger about it the silence and
solemnity of the cloister. In the present
instance especially, where the cathedral
was large, and the town was small, its
influence was the more apparent. The
solemn pomp of the service, performed
twice a day, with the grand intonations
of the organ, and the voices of the choir
swelling through the magnificent pile,
diffused, as it were, a perpetual sabbath
over the place. This routine of solemn
ceremony continually going on, independent,
as it were, of the world; this
daily offering of melody and praise, ascending
like incense from the altar, had
a powerful effect upon my imagination.

The aunt introduced me to her coterie,
formed of families connected with the
cathedral, and others of moderate fortune,
but high respectability, who had
nestled themselves under the wings of
the cathedral to enjoy good society at
moderate expense. It was a highly
aristocratical little circle; scrupulous in
its intercourse with others, and jealously
cautious about admitting any thing common
or unclean.

It seemed as if the courtesies of the
old school had taken refuge here. There
were continual interchanges of civilities,
and of small presents of fruits and delicacies,
and of complimentary crow-quill
billets; for in a quiet, well-bred community
like this, living entirely at ease,
little duties, and little amusements, and
little civilities, fill up the day. I have
seen, in the midst of a warm day, a corpulent,
powdered footman, issuing from
the iron gateway of a stately mansion,
and traversing the little place with an
air of mighty import, bearing a small
tart on a large silver salver.

Their evening amusements were sober
and primitive. They assembled at a
moderate hour; the young ladies played
music, and the old ladies whist; and at
an early hour they dispersed. There
was no parade on these social occasions.
Two or three old sedan chairs were in
constant activity, though the greater part
made their exit in clogs and pattens, with
a footman or waiting-maid carrying a
lantern in advance; and long before
midnight the clank of pattens and gleam
of lanterns about the quiet little place
told that the evening party had dissolved.

Still I did not feel myself altogether so
much at my ease as I had anticipated,
considering the smallness of the place.
I found it very different from other country
places, and that it was not so easy
to make a dash there. Sinner that I
was! the very dignity and decorum of
the little community was rebuking to me.
I feared my past idleness and folly would
rise in judgment against me. I stood in
awe of the dignitaries of the cathedral,
whom I saw mingling familiarly in society.
I became nervous on this point.
The creak of a prebendary's shoes,
sounding from one end of a quiet street
to the other, was appalling to me; and
the sight of a shovel-hat was sufficient
at any time to check me in the midst of
my boldest poetical soarings.

And then the good aunt could not be
quiet, but would cry me up for a genius,
and extol my poetry to every one. So
long as she confined this to the ladies it
did well enough, because they were able
to feel and appreciate poetry of the new
romantic school. Nothing would content
the good lady, however, but she must
read my verses to a prehendary, who
had long been the undoubted critic of the
place. He was a thin, delicate old gentleman,
of mild, polished manners, steeped
to the lips in classic lore, and not
easily put in a heat by any hot-blooded
poetry of the day. He listened to my
most fervid thoughts and fervid words
without a glow; shook his head with a
smile, and condemned them as not being
according to Horace, as not being legitimate
poetry.

Several old ladies, who had heretofore
been my admirers, shook their heads at
hearing this; they could not think of
praising any poetry that was not according
to Horace; and as to any thing illegitimate,
it was not to be countenanced
in good society. Thanks to my stars,
however, I had youth and novelty on my
side: so the young ladies persisted in
admiring my poetry in despite of Horace
and illegitimacy.

I consoled myself with the good opinion
of the young ladies, whom I had always
found to be the best judges of poetry.

As to these old scholars, said I, they are
apt to be chilled by being steeped in the
cold fountains of the classics. Still I felt
that I was losing ground, and that it was
necessary to bring matters to a point.
Just at this time there was a public ball,
attended by the best society of the place,
and by the gentry of the neighbourhood:
I took great pains with my toilet on the
occasion, and I had never looked better.
I had determined that night to make my
grand assault on the heart of the young
lady, to battle it with all my forces, and
the next morning to demand a surrender
in due form.

I entered the ball-room amidst a buzz
and flutter, which generally took place
among the young ladies on my appearance.
I was in fine spirits; for, to tell
the truth, I had exhilarated myself by a
cheerful glass of wine on the occasion. I
talked, and rattled, and said a thousand
silly things, slap-dash, with all the confidence
of a man sure of his auditors,—
and every thing had its effect.

In the midst of my triumph I observed
a little knot gathering together in the
upper part of the room. By degrees it
increased. A tittering broke out there,
and glances were cast round at me, and
then there would be fresh tittering. Some
of the young ladies would hurry away
to distant parts of the room, and whisper
to their friends. Wherever they went,
there was still this tittering and glancing
at me. I did not know what to make of
all this. I looked at myself from head
to foot, and peeped at my back in a glass,
to see if any thing was odd about my
person; any awkward exposure, any
whimsical tag hanging out:—no—every
thing was right—I was a perfect picture.
I determined that it must be some choice
saying of mine that was bandied about
in this knot of merry beauties, and I
determined to enjoy one of my good
things in the rebound. I stepped gently,
therefore, up the room, smiling at every
one as I passed, who, I must say, all
smiled and tittered in return. I approached
the group, smirking and perking my
chin, like a man who is full of pleasant
feeling, and sure of being well received.
The cluster of little belles opened as I
advanced.

Heavens and earth! whom should I
perceive in the midst of them but my
early and tormenting flame, the everlasting
Sacharissa! She was grown, it
is true, into the full beauty of womanhood;
but showed, by the provoking
merriment of her countenance, that she
perfectly recollected me, and the ridiculous
flagellations of which she had twice
been the cause.

I saw at once the exterminating cloud
of ridicule that was bursting over me.
My crest fell. The flame of love went
suddenly out of my bosom, or was extinguished
by overwhelming shame. How
I got down the room I know not: I fancied
every one tittering at me. Just as
I reached the door, I caught a glance of
my mistress and her aunt listening to the
whispers of Sacharissa, the old lady raising
her hands and eyes, and the face of
the young one lighted up, as I imagined,
with scorn ineffable. I paused to see no
more, but made two steps from the top of
the stairs to the bottom. The next morning,
before sunrise, I beat a retreat, and
did not feel the blushes cool from my
tingling cheeks, until I had lost sight of
the old towers of the cathedral.

I now returned to town thoughtful
and crestfallen. My money was nearly
spent, for I had lived freely and without
calculation. The dream of love was over,
and the reign of pleasure at an end. I
determined to retrench while I had yet a
trifle left: so selling my equipage and
horses for half their value, I quietly put
the money in my pocket, and turned
pedestrian. I had not a doubt that, with
my great expectations, I could at any
time raise funds, either on usury or by
borrowing; but I was principled against
both one and the other, and resolved, by
strict economy, to make my slender
purse hold out until my uncle should
give up the ghost, or rather the estate. I
stayed at home, therefore, and read, and
would have written, but I had already
suffered too much from my poetical productions,
which had generally involved
me in some ridiculous scrape. I gradually
acquired a rusty look, and had a
straitened money-borrowing air, upon
which the world began to shy me. I
have never felt disposed to quarrel with
the world for its conduct; it has always
used me well. When I have been flush

and gay, and disposed for society, it has
caressed me; and when I have been
pinched and reduced, and wished to be
alone, why it has left me alone; and
what more could a man desire? Take
my word for it, this world is a more obliging
world than people generally represent
it.

Well, sir, in the midst of my retrenchment,
my retirement, and my studiousness,
I received news that my uncle was
dangerously ill. I hastened on the wings
of an heir's affections to receive his dying
breath and his last testament. I found
him attended by his faithful valet, old
Iron John; by the woman who occasionally
worked about the house, and by
the foxy-headed boy, young Orson, whom
I had occasionally hunted about the park.
Iron John gasped a kind of asthmatical
salutation as I entered the room, and
received me with something almost like
a smile of welcome. The woman sat
blubbering at the foot of the bed; and
the foxy-headed Orson, who had now
grown up to be a lubberly lout, stood
gazing in stupid vacancy at a distance.

My uncle lay stretched upon his back.
The chamber was without fire, or any of
the comforts of a sick room. The cobwebs
flaunted from the ceiling. The
tester was covered with dust, and the
curtains were tattered. From underneath
the bed peeped out one end of his
strong-box. Against the wainscot were
suspended rusty blunderbusses, horse-pistols,
and a cut-and-thrust sword, with
which he had fortified his room to defend
his life and treasure. He had employed
no physician during his illness; and from
the scanty relics lying on the table,
seemed almost to have denied to himself
the assistance of a cook.

When I entered the room, he was lying
motionless; his eyes fixed and his mouth
open: at the first look I thought him a
corpse. The noise of my entrance made
him turn his head. At the sight of me
a ghastly smile came over his face, and
his glazing eye gleamed with satisfaction.
It was the only smile he had ever given
me, and it went to my heart. "Poor old
man!" thought I, "why would you force
me to leave you thus desolate, when I
see that my presence has the power to
cheer you?"

"Nephew," said he, after several efforts,
and in a low gasping voice—"I
am glad you are come. I shall now die
with satisfaction. Look," said he, raising
his withered hand, and pointing—
"Look in that box on the table: you
will find that I have not forgotten you."

I pressed his hand to my heart, and
the tears stood in my eyes. I sat down
by his bedside and watched him, but he
never spoke again. My presence, however,
gave him evident satisfaction; for
every now and then, as he looked at me,
a vague smile would come over his visage,
and he would feebly point to the sealed
box on the table. As the day wore away,
his life appeared to wear away with it.
Towards sunset his hand sunk on the
bed, and lay motionless, his eyes grew
glazed, his mouth remained open, and
thus he gradually died.

I could not but feel shocked at this
absolute extinction of my kindred. I
dropped a tear of real sorrow over this
strange old man, who had thus reserved
the smile of kindness to his death-bed;
like an evening sun after a gloomy day,
just shining out to set in darkness. Leaving
the corpse in charge of the domestics,
I retired for the night.

It was a rough night. The winds
seemed as if singing my uncle's requiem
about the mansion, and the bloodhounds
howled without, as if they knew of the
death of their old master. Iron John
almost grudged me the tallow candle to
burn in my apartment, and light up its
dreariness, so accustomed had he been
to starveling economy. I could not sleep.
The recollection of my uncle's dying
scene, and the dreary sounds about the
house affected my mind. These, however,
were succeeded by plans for the
future, and I lay awake the greater part
of the night, indulging the poetical anticipation
how soon I should make these
old walls ring with cheerful life, and
restore the hospitality of my mother's
ancestors.

My uncle's funeral was decent but
private. I knew there was nobody that
respected his memory, and I was determined
that none should be summoned to
sneer over his funeral, and make merry
at his grave. He was buried in the
church of the neighbouring village,

though it was not the burying-place of
his race; but he had expressly enjoined
that he should not be buried with his
family; he had quarrelled with most of
them when living, and he carried his
resentments even into the grave.

I defrayed the expenses of his funeral
out of my own purse, that I might have
done with the undertakers at once, and
clear the ill-omened birds from the premises.
I invited the parson of the parish,
and the lawyer from the village, to attend
at the house the next morning, and hear
the reading of the will. I treated them
to an excellent breakfast, a profusion that
had not been seen at the house for many
a year. As soon as the breakfast things
were removed, I summoned Iron John,
the woman, and the boy, for I was particular
in having every one present and
proceeding regularly. The box was
placed on the table—all was silence—I
broke the seal—raised the lid, and beheld
—not the will—but my accursed poem
of Doubting Castle and Giant Despair!

Could any mortal have conceived that
this old withered man, so taciturn and
apparently so lost to feeling, could have
treasured up for years the thoughtless
pleasantry of a boy, to punish him with
such cruel ingenuity? I now could account
for his dying smile, the only one
he had ever given me. He had been a
grave man all his life; it was strange
that he should die in the enjoyment of a
joke, and it was hard that that joke
should be at my expense.

The lawyer and the parson seemed at
a loss to comprehend the matter. "Here
must be some mistake," said the lawyer;
"there is no will here."

"Oh!" said Iron John, creaking forth
his rusty jaws, "if it is a will you are
looking for, I believe I can find one."

He retired with the same singular smile
with which he had greeted me on my
arrival, and which I now apprehended
boded me no good. In a little while he
returned with a will perfect at all points,
properly signed and sealed, and witnessed
and worded with horrible correctness; in
which the deceased left large legacies to
Iron John and his daughter, and the
residue of his fortune to the foxy-headed
boy; who, to my utter astonishment, was
his son by this very woman; he having
married her privately, and, as I verily
believe, for no other purpose than to
have an heir, and so balk my father and
his issue of the inheritance. There was
one little proviso, in which he mentioned,
that, having discovered his nephew to
have a pretty turn for poetry, he presumed
he had no occasion for wealth;
he recommended him, however, to the
patronage of the heir, and requested that
he might have a garret, rent-free, in
Doubting Castle.

GRAVE REFLECTIONS
OF
A DISAPPOINTED MAN.

Mr. Buckthorne had paused at the
death of his uncle, and the downfall of
his great expectations, which formed, as
he said, an epoch in his history; and it
was not until some little time afterwards,
and in a very sober mood, that he resumed
his party-coloured narrative.

After leaving the remains of my defunct
uncle, said he, when the gate closed
between me and what was once to have
been mine, I felt thrust out naked into
the world, and completely abandoned to
fortune. What was to become of me?
I had been brought up to nothing but expectations,
and they had all been disappointed.
I had no relations to look to
for counsel or assistance. The world
seemed all to have died away from me.
Wave after wave of relationship had
ebbed off, and I was left a mere hulk
upon the strand. I am not apt to be
greatly cast down, but at this time I felt
sadly disheartened. I could not realize
my situation, nor form a conjecture how
I was to get forward. I was now to endeavour
to make money. The idea was
new and strange to me. It was like
being asked to discover the philosopher's
stone. I had never thought about money
otherwise than to put my hand into my
pocket and find it; or if there were none
there, to wait until a new supply came
from home. I had considered life as a
mere space of time to be filled up with
enjoyments: but to have it portioned out
into long hours and days of toil, merely

that I might gain bread to give me
strength to toil on—to labour but for the
purpose of perpetuating a life of labour,
was new and appalling to me. This
may appear a very simple matter to
some; but it will be understood by every
unlucky wight in my predicament, who
has had the misfortune of being born to
great expectations.

I passed several days in rambling
about the scenes of my boyhood; partly
because I absolutely did not know what
to do with myself, and partly because I
did not know that I should ever see them
again. I clung to them as one clings to
a wreck, though he knows he must
eventually cast himself loose and swim
for his life. I sat down on a little hill
within sight of my paternal home, but I
did not venture to approach it, for I felt
compunction at the thoughtlessness with
which I had dissipated my patrimony:
yet was I to blame, when I had the rich
possessions of my curmudgeon of an
uncle in expectation?

The new possessor of the place was
making great alterations. The house
was almost rebuilt. The trees which
stood about it were cut down: my mother's
flower-garden was thrown into a
lawn—all was undergoing a change. I
turned my back upon it with a sigh, and
rambled to another part of the country.

How thoughtful a little adversity makes
one! As I came within sight of the
schoolhouse where I had so often been
flogged in the cause of wisdom, you
would hardly have recognised the truant
boy, who, but a few years since, had
eloped so heedlessly from its walls. I
leaned over the paling of the play-ground,
and watched the scholars at their games,
and looked to see if there might not be
some urchin among them like what I was
once, full of gay dreams about life and
the world. The play-ground seemed
smaller than when I used to sport about
it. The house and park, too, of the
neighbouring squire, the father of the
cruel Sacharissa, had shrunk in size and
diminished in magnificence. The distant
hills no longer appeared so far off, and,
alas! no longer awakened ideas of a fairy
land beyond.

As I was rambling pensively through
a neighbouring meadow, in which I had
many a time gathered primroses, I met
the very pedagogue who had been the
tyrant and dread of my boyhood. I had
sometimes vowed to myself, when suffering
under his rod, that I would have my
revenge if I ever met him when I had
grown to be a man. The time had come;
but I had no disposition to keep my vow.
The few years which had matured me
into a vigorous man had shrunk him into
decrepitude. He appeared to have had a
paralytic stroke. I looked at him, and
wondered that this poor helpless mortal
could have been an object of terror to
me; that I should have watched with
anxiety the glance of that failing eye, or
dreaded the power of that trembling
hand. He tottered feebly along the path,
and had some difficulty in getting over a
stile. I ran and assisted him. He looked
at me with surprise, but did not recognise
me, and made a low bow of humility
and thanks. I had no disposition to make
myself known, for I felt that I had
nothing to boast of. The pains he had
taken, and the pains he had inflicted,
had been equally useless. His repeated
predictions were fully verified, and I felt
that little Jack Buckthorne, the idle boy,
had grown to be a very good-for-nothing
man.

This is all very comfortless detail; but
as I have told you of my follies, it is
meet that I show you how for once I was
schooled for them. The most thoughtless
of mortals will some time or other
have his day of gloom, when he will be
compelled to reflect.

I felt on this occasion as if I had a
kind of penance to perform, and I made
a pilgrimage in expiation of my past
levity. Having passed a night at Leamington,
I set off by a private path, which
leads up a hill through a grove and
across quiet fields, till I came to the
small village, or rather hamlet, of Lenington.
I sought the village church. It
is an old low edifice of gray stone, on
the brow of a small hill, looking over
fertile fields, towards where the proud
towers of Warwick Castle lift themselves
against the distant horizon.

A part of the churchyard is shaded by
large trees. Under one of them my
mother lay buried. You have no doubt
thought me a light, heartless being. I

thought myself so; but there are moments
of adversity which let us into some
feelings of our nature to which we might
otherwise remain perpetual strangers.

I sought my mother's grave: the weeds
were already matted over it, and the
tombstone was half hid among nettles.
I cleared them away, and they stung my
hands; but I was heedless of the pain, for
my heart ached too severely. I sat down
on the grave, and read over and over
again the epitaph on the stone.

It was simple,—but it was true. I
had written it myself. I had tried to
write a poetical epitaph, but in vain; my
feelings refused to utter themselves in
rhyme. My heart had gradually been
filling during my lonely wanderings; it
was now charged to the brim, and overflowed.
I sunk upon the grave, and
buried my face in the tall grass, and
wept like a child. Yes, I wept in manhood
upon the grave, as I had in infancy
upon the bosom of my mother. Alas!
how little do we appreciate a mother's
tenderness while living! how heedless are
we in youth of all her anxieties and kindness!
But when she is dead and gone;
when the cares and coldness of the world
come withering to our hearts; when we
find how hard it is to find true sympathy;
—how few love us for ourselves; how
few will befriend us in our misfortune—
then it is that we think of the mother we
have lost. It is true I had always loved
my mother, even in my most heedless
days; but I felt how inconsiderate and
ineffectual had been my love. My heart
melted as I retraced the days of infancy,
when I was led by a mother's hand, and
rocked to sleep in a mother's arms, and
was without care or sorrow. "O my
mother!" exclaimed I, burying my face
again in the grass of the grave; "O that
I were once more by your side; sleeping,
never to wake again on the cares and
troubles of this world."

I am not naturally of a morbid temperament,
and the violence of my emotion
gradually exhausted itself. It was
a hearty, honest, natural discharge of
grief which had been slowly accumulating,
and gave me wonderful relief. I
rose from the grave as if I had been offering
up a sacrifice, and I felt as if that
sacrifice had been accepted.

I sat down again on the grass, and
plucked, one by one, the weeds from her
grave: the tears trickled more slowly
down my cheeks, and ceased to be bitter.
It was a comfort to think that she had
died before sorrow and poverty came
upon her child, and that all his great expectations
were blasted.

I leaned my cheek upon my hand,
and looked upon the landscape. Its quiet
beauty soothed me. The whistle of a
peasant from an adjoining field came
cheerily to my ear. I seemed to respire
hope and comfort with the free air that
whispered through the leaves, and played
lightly with my hair, and dried the tears
upon my cheek. A lark, rising from
the field before me, and leaving as it
were a stream of song behind him as he
rose, lifted my fancy with him. He
hovered in the air just above the place
where the towers of Warwick Castle
marked the horizon, and seemed as if
fluttering with delight at his own melody.
"Surely," thought I, "if there were such
a thing as transmigration of souls, this
might be taken for some poet let loose
from earth, but still revelling in song,
and carolling about fair fields and lordly
towers."

At this moment the long-forgotten feeling
of poetry rose within me. A thought
sprung at once into my mind.—"I will
become an author!" said I. "I have
hitherto indulged in poetry as a pleasure,
and it has brought me nothing but pain;
let me try what it will do when I cultivate
it with devotion as a pursuit."

The resolution thus suddenly aroused
within me heaved a load from off my
heart. I felt a confidence in it from the
very place where it was formed. It
seemed as though my mother's spirit
whispered it to me from her grave. "I
will henceforth," said I, "endeavour to
be all that she fondly imagined me. I
will endeavour to act as if she were witness
of my actions; I will endeavour to
acquit myself in such a manner that,
when I revisit her grave, there may at
least be no compunctious bitterness in
my tears."

I bowed down and kissed the turf in
solemn attestation of my vow. I plucked
some primroses that were growing there,
and laid them next my heart. I left the

100

churchyard with my spirits once more
lifted up, and set out a third time for
London in the character of an author.—

Here my companion made a pause,
and I waited in anxious suspense, hoping
to have a whole volume of literary life
unfolded to me. He seemed, however,
to have sunk into a fit of pensive musing,
and when, after some time, I gently
roused him by a question or two as to
his literary career,

"No," said he, smiling, "over that
part of my story I wish to leave a cloud.
Let the mysteries of the craft rest sacred
for me. Let those who have never ventured
into the republic of letters still look
upon it as a fairy land. Let them suppose
the author the very being they picture
him from his works—I am not the
man to mar their illusion. I am not
the man to hint, while one is admiring
the silken web of Persia, that it has been
spun from the entrails of a miserable
worm."

"Well," said I, "if you will tell me
nothing of your literary history, let me
know at least if you have had any further
intelligence from Doubting Castle."

"Willingly," replied he, "though I
have but little to communicate."

THE BOOBY SQUIRE.

A long time elapsed, said Buckthorne,
without my receiving any accounts of
my cousin and his estate. Indeed, I felt
so much soreness on the subject, that I
wished if possible to shut it from my
thoughts. At length chance took me to
that part of the country, and I could not
refrain from making some inquiries.

I learnt that my cousin had grown up
ignorant, self-willed, and clownish. His
ignorance and clownishness had prevented
his mingling with the neighbouring
gentry: in spite of his great fortune,
he had been unsuccessful in an attempt
to gain the hand of the daughter of the
parson, and had at length shrunk into
the limits of such society as a mere man
of wealth can gather in a country neighbourhood.

He kept horses and hounds, and a
roaring table, at which were collected
the loose livers of the country round, and
the shabby gentlemen of a village in the
vicinity. When he could get no other
company, he would smoke and drink
with his own servants, who in turn
fleeced and despised him. Still, with all
his apparent prodigality, he had a leaven
of the old man in him which showed that
he was his true-born son. He lived far
within his income, was vulgar in his expenses,
and penurious in many points
wherein a gentleman would be extravagant.
His house-servants were obliged
occasionally to work on his estate,
and part of the pleasure-grounds were
ploughed up and devoted to husbandry.

His table, though plentiful, was coarse;
his liquors strong and bad; and more
ale and whisky were expended in his
establishment than generous wine. He
was loud and arrogant at his own table,
and exacted a rich man's homage from
his vulgar and obsequious guests.

As to Iron John, his old grandfather,
he had grown impatient of the tight hand
his own grandson kept over him, and
quarrelled with him soon after he came
to the estate. The old man had retired
to the neighbouring village, where he
lived on the legacy of his late master,
in a small cottage, and was as seldom
seen out of it as a rat out of his hole in
daylight.

The cub, like Caliban, seemed to have
an instinctive attachment to his mother.
She resided with him, but, from long
habit, she acted more as a servant than
as mistress of the mansion; for she toiled
in all the domestic drudgery, and was
oftener in the kitchen than in the parlour.
Such was the information which
I collected of my rival cousin, who had
so unexpectedly elbowed me out of all
my expectations.

I now felt an irresistible hankering to
pay a visit to this scene of my boyhood,
and to get a peep at the odd kind of life
that was passing within the mansion of
my maternal ancestors. I determined
to do so in disguise. My booby cousin
had never seen enough of me to be very
familiar with my countenance, and a
few years make great difference between
youth and manhood. I understood he
was a breeder of cattle, and proud of his
stock; I dressed myself therefore as a

101

substantial farmer, and with the assistance
of a red scratch that came low
down on my forehead, made a complete
change in my physiognomy.

It was past three o'clock when I arrived
at the gate of the park, and was
admitted by an old woman, who was
washing in a dilapidated building which
had once been a porter's lodge. I advanced
up the remains of a noble avenue,
many of the trees of which had been cut
down and sold for timber. The grounds
were in scarcely better keeping than
during my uncle's lifetime. The grass
was overgrown with weeds, and the trees
wanted pruning and clearing of dead
branches. Cattle were grazing about the
lawns, and ducks and geese swimming in
the fish-ponds. The road to the house
bore very few traces of carriage wheels,
as my cousin received few visiters but
such as came on foot or horseback, and
never used a carriage himself. Once
indeed, as I was told, he had the old
family carriage drawn out from among
the dust and cobwebs of the coach-house,
and furbished up, and had driven, with
his mother, to the village church, to take
formal possession of the family pew; but
there was such hooting and laughing
after them, as they passed through the
village, and such giggling and bantering
about the church-door, that the pageant
had never made a re-appearance.

As I approached the house, a legion of
whelps sallied out, barking at me, accompanied
by the low howling, rather than
barking, of two old worn-out bloodhounds,
which I recognised for the ancient
life-guards of my uncle. The house
had still a neglected random appearance,
though much altered for the better since
my last visit. Several of the windows
were broken and patched up with boards,
and others had been bricked up to save
taxes. I observed smoke, however, rising
from the chimneys, a phenomenon rarely
witnessed in the ancient establishment.
On passing that part of the house where
the dining-room was situated, I heard
the sound of boisterous merriment, where
three or four voices were talking at once,
and oaths and laughter were horribly
mingled.

The uproar of the dogs had brought a
servant to the door, a tall hard-fisted
country clown, with a livery-coat put
over the under garments of a ploughman.
I requested to see the master of the house,
but was told he was at dinner with some
"gemmen" of the neighbourhood. I
made known my business, and sent in to
know if I might talk with the master
about his cattle, for I felt a great desire
to have a peep at him in his orgies.

Word was returned that he was engaged
with company, and could not
attend to business, but that if I would
step in and take a drink of something, I
was heartily welcome. I accordingly
entered the hall, where whips and hats
of all kinds and shapes were lying on
an oaken table; two or three clownish
servants were lounging about; every
thing had a look of confusion and carelessness.

The apartments through which I
passed had the same air of departed
gentility and sluttish housekeeping. The
once rich curtains were faded and dusty,
the furniture greased and tarnished. On
entering the dining-room I found a number
of odd, vulgar-looking, rustic gentlemen
seated round a table, on which were
bottles, decanters, tankards, pipes, and
tobacco. Several dogs were lying about
the room, or sitting and watching their
masters, and one was gnawing a bone
under a side-table. The master of the
feast sat at the head of the board. He
was greatly altered. He had grown
thickset and rather gummy, with a fiery
foxy head of hair. There was a singular
mixture of foolishness, arrogance,
and conceit, in his countenance. He
was dressed in a vulgarly fine style,
with leather breeches, a red waistcoat,
and green coat, and was evidently, like
his guests, a little flushed with drinking.
The whole company stared at me with a
whimsical muzzy look, like men whose
senses were a little obfuscated by beer
rather than wine.

My cousin (God forgive me! the appellation
sticks in my throat), my cousin
invited me with awkward civility, or, as
he intended it, condescension, to sit to
the table and drink. We talked, as
usual, about the weather, the crops, politics,
and hard times. My cousin was a
loud politician, and evidently accustomed
to talk without contradiction at his own

102

table. He was amazingly loyal, and
talked of standing by the throne to the
last guinea, "as every gentleman of fortune
should do." The village exciseman,
who was half asleep, could just
ejaculate "very true" to every thing he
said. The conversation turned upon
cattle; he boasted of his breed, his mode
of crossing it, and of the general management
of his estate. This unluckily drew
on a history of the place and of the
family. He spoke of my late uncle with
the greatest irreverence, which I could
easily forgive. He mentioned my name,
and my blood began to boil. He described
my frequent visits to my uncle,
when I was a lad; and I found the varlet,
even at that time, imp as he was, had
known that he was to inherit the estate.
He described the scene of my uncle's
death, and the opening of the will, with
a degree of coarse humour that I had
not expected from him; and, vexed as I
was, I could not help joining in the
laugh, for I have always relished a joke,
even though made at my own expense.
He went on to speak of my various pursuits,
my strolling freak, and that somewhat
nettled me; at length he talked of
my parents. He ridiculed my father; I
stomached even that, though with great
difficulty. He mentioned my mother
with a sneer, and in an instant he lay
sprawling at my feet.

Here a tumult succeeded: the table
was nearly overturned; bottles, glasses,
and tankards, rolled crashing and clattering
about the floor. The company
seized hold of both of us, to keep us from
doing any further mischief. I struggled
to get loose, for I was boiling with fury.
My cousin defied me to strip and fight
him on the lawn. I agreed, for I felt the
strength of a giant in me, and I longed
to pommel him soundly.

Away then we were borne. A ring
was formed. I had a second assigned
me in true boxing style. My cousin, as
he advanced to fight, said something
about his generosity in showing me such
fair play, when I had made such an unprovoked
attack upon him at his own
table. "Stop there," cried I, in a rage.
"Unprovoked! know that I am John
Buckthorne, and you have insulted the
memory of my mother."

The lout was suddenly struck by what
I said: he drew back, and thought for a
moment.

"Nay, damn it," said he, "that's too
much—that's clean another thing—I've
a mother myself—and no one shall speak
ill of her, bad as she is."

He paused again; nature seemed to
have a rough struggle in his rude bosom.

"Damn it, cousin," cried he, "I'm
sorry for what I said. Thou'st served
me right in knocking me down, and I
like thee the better for it. Here's my
hand: come and live with me, and damn
me but the best room in the house, and
the best horse in the stable, shall be at
thy service."

I declare to you I was strongly moved
at this instance of nature breaking her
way through such a lump of flesh. I
forgave the fellow in a moment his two
heinous crimes, of having been born in
wedlock, and inheriting my estate. I
shook the hand he offered me, to convince
him that I bore him no ill will;
and then making my way through the
gaping crowd of toad-eaters, bade adieu
to my uncle's domains for ever. This
is the last I have seen or heard of my
cousin, or of the domestic concerns of
Doubting Castle.

THE STROLLING MANAGER.

As I was walking one morning with
Buckthorne near one of the principal
theatres, he directed my attention to a
group of those equivocal beings that may
often be seen hovering about the stage-doors
of theatres. They were marvellously
ill-favoured in their attire, their
coats buttoned up to their chins; yet
they wore their hats smartly on one
side, and had a certain knowing, dirty-gentlemanlike
air, which is common to
the subalterns of the drama. Buckthorne
knew them well by early experience.

"These," said he, "are the ghosts of
departed kings and heroes; fellows who
sway sceptres and truncheons; command
kingdoms and armies; and after
giving away realms and treasures over
night, have scarce a shilling to pay for

103

a breakfast in the morning. Yet they
have the true vagabond abhorrence of all
useful and industrious employment; and
they have their pleasures too; one of
which is to lounge in this way in the
sunshine, at the stage-door, during rehearsals,
and make hackneyed theatrical
jokes on all passers-by. Nothing is
more traditional and legitimate than the
stage. Old scenery, old clothes, old
sentiments, old ranting, and old jokes,
are handed down from generation to generation;
and will probably continue to
be so until time shall be no more.
Every hanger-on of a theatre becomes a
wag by inheritance, and flourishes about
at tap-rooms and sixpenny clubs with
the property jokes of the green-room."

While amusing ourselves with reconnoitring
this group, we noticed one in
particular who appeared to be the oracle.
He was a weatherbeaten veteran, a little
bronzed by time and beer, who had no
doubt grown gray in the parts of robbers,
cardinals, Roman senators, and
walking noblemen.

"There is something in the set of that
hat, and the turn of that physiognomy,
that is extremely familiar to me," said
Buckthorne. He looked a little closer.
"I cannot be mistaken," added he, "that
must be my old brother of the truncheon,
Flimsey, the tragic hero of the Strolling
Company."

It was he in fact. The poor fellow
showed evident signs that times went
hard with him, he was so finely and
shabbily dressed. His coat was somewhat
threadbare, and of the Lord Townley
cut; single-breasted, and scarcely
capable of meeting in front of his body,
which, from long intimacy, had acquired
the symmetry and robustness of a beer
barrel. He wore a pair of dingy-white
stockinet pantaloons, which had much
ado to reach his waistcoat; a great
quantity of dirty cravat; and a pair of
old russet-coloured tragedy boots.

When his companions had dispersed,
Buckthorne drew him aside, and made
himself known to him. The tragic
veteran could scarcely recognise him, or
believe that he was really his quondam
associate, "little gentleman Jack."
Buckthorne invited him to a neighbouring
coffee-house to talk over old times;
and in the course of a little while we
were put in possession of his history in
brief.

He had continued to act the heroes in
the strolling company for some time after
Buckthorne had left it, or rather had
been driven from it so abruptly. At
length the manager died, and the troop
was thrown into confusion. Every one
aspired to the crown, every one was for
taking the lead; and the manager's
widow, although a tragedy queen, and a
brimstone to boot, pronounced it utterly
impossible for a woman to keep any control
over such a set of tempestuous rascallions.

"Upon this hint, I spake," said Flimsey.
I stepped forward, and offered my
services in the most effectual way.
They were accepted. In a week's time
I married the widow, and succeeded to
the throne. "The funeral baked meats
did coldly furnish forth the marriage
table," as Hamlet says. But the ghost
of my predecessor never haunted me;
and I inherited crowns, sceptres, bowls,
daggers, and all the stage-trappings and
trumpery, not omitting the widow, without
the least molestation.

I now led a flourishing life of it; for
our company was pretty strong and attractive,
and as my wife and I took the
heavy parts of tragedy, it was a great
saving to the treasury. We carried off
the palm from all the rival shows at
country fairs; and I assure you we have
even drawn full houses, and been applauded
by the critics at Bartlemy Fair
itself, though we had Astley's troop, the
Irish giant, and "the death of Nelson"
in wax-work, to contend against.

I soon began to experience, however,
the cares of command. I discovered that
there were cabals breaking out in the
company, headed by the clown, who
you may recollect was a terribly peevish,
fractious fellow, and always in ill-humour.
I had a great mind to turn him
off at once, but I could not do without
him, for there was not a droller scoundrel
on the stage. His very shape was
comic, for he had but to turn his back
upon the audience, and all the ladies
were ready to die with laughing. He
felt his importance, and took advantage
of it. He would keep the audience in a

104

continual roar, and then come behind
the scenes, and fret and fume, and play
the very devil. I excused a great deal
in him, however, knowing that comic
actors are a little prone to this infirmity
of temper.

I had another trouble of a nearer and
dearer nature to struggle with, which
was the affection of my wife. As ill-luck
would have it, she took it into her
head to be very fond of me, and became
intolerably jealous. I could not keep a
pretty girl in the company, and hardly
dared embrace an ugly one, even when
my part required it. I have known her
reduce a fine lady to tatters, "to very
rags," as Hamlet says, in an instant,
and destroy one of the very best dresses
in the wardrobe, merely because she saw
me kiss her at the side scenes; though I
give you my honour it was done merely
by way of rehearsal.

This was doubly annoying, because I
have a natural liking to pretty faces, and
wish to have them about me; and because
they are indispensable to the success
of a company at a fair, where one
has to vie with so many rival theatres.
But when once a jealous wife gets a freak
in her head, there's no use in talking of
interest or any thing else. Egad, sir,
I have more than once trembled when,
during a fit of her tantrums, she was
playing high tragedy, and flourishing
her tin dagger on the stage, lest she
should give way to her humour, and stab
some fancied rival in good earnest.

I went on better, however, than could
be expected, considering the weakness of
my flesh, and the violence of my rib. I
had not a much worse time of it than old
Jupiter, whose spouse was continually
ferreting out some new intrigue, and
making the heavens almost too hot to
hold him.

At length, as luck would have it, we
were performing at a country fair, when
I understood the theatre of a neighbouring
town to be vacant. I had always
been desirous to be enrolled in a settled
company, and the height of my desire
was to get on a par with a brother-in-law,
who was manager of a regular
theatre, and who had looked down upon
me. Here was an opportunity not to
be neglected. I concluded an agreement
with the proprietors, and in a few days
opened the theatre with great eclat.

Behold me now at the summit of my
ambition, "the high top-gallant of my
joy," as Romeo says. No longer a
chieftain of a wandering tribe, but a
monarch of a legitimate throne, and entitled
to call even the great potentates of
Covent Garden and Drury Lane cousins.
You, no doubt, think my happiness complete.
Alas, sir! I was one of the most
uncomfortable dogs living. No one
knows, who has not tried, the miseries
of a manager; but above all of a country
manager. No one can conceive the contentions
and quarrels within doors, the
oppressions and vexations from without.
I was pestered with the bloods and
loungers of a country town, who infested
my green-room, and played the mischief
among my actresses. But there was no
shaking them off. It would have been
ruin to affront them; for though troublesome
friends, they would have been dangerous
enemies. Then there were the
village critics and village amateurs, who
were continually tormenting me with advice,
and getting into a passion if I
would not take it; especially the village
doctor and the village attorney, who had
both been to London occasionally, and
knew what acting should be.

I had also to manage as arrant a crew
of scapegraces as ever were collected together
within the walls of a theatre. I
had been obliged to combine my original
troop with some of the former troop of
the theatre, who were favourites of the
public. Here was a mixture that produced
perpetual ferment. They were all
the time either fighting or frolicking with
each other, and I scarcely know which
mood was least troublesome. If they
quarrelled, every thing went wrong; and
if they were friends, they were continually
playing off some prank upon each
other, or upon me; for I had unhappily
acquired among them the character of
an easy good-natured fellow—the worst
character that a manager can possess.

Their waggery at times drove me
almost crazy; for there is nothing so
vexatious as the hackneyed tricks and
hoaxes and pleasantries of a veteran
band of theatrical vagabonds. I relished
them well enough, it is true, while

105

I was merely one of the company, but
as manager I found them detestable.
They were incessantly bringing some
disgrace upon the theatre by their tavern
frolics, and their pranks about the
country town. All my lectures about
the importance of keeping up the dignity
of the profession and the respectability
of the company were in vain. The villains
could not sympathize with the delicate
feelings of a man in station. They
even trifled with the seriousness of stage
business. I have had the whole piece
interrupted, and a crowded audience of
at least twenty-five pounds kept waiting,
because the actors had hid away the
breeches of Rosalind; and have known
Hamlet to stalk solemnly on to deliver
his soliloquy, with a dishclout pinned to
his skirts. Such are the baleful consequences
of a manager's getting a character
for good-nature.

I was intolerably annoyed, too, by the
great actors who came down starring, as
it is called, from London. Of all baneful
influences, keep me from that of a
London star. A first-rate actress going
the rounds of the country theatres is as
bad as a blazing comet whisking about
the heavens, and shaking fire and plagues
and discords from its tail.

The moment one of these "heavenly
bodies" appeared in my horizon, I was
sure to be in hot water. My theatre
was overrun by provincial dandies, copper-washed
counterfeits of Bond Street
loungers, who are always proud to be in
the train of an actress from town, and
anxious to be thought on exceeding good
terms with her. It was really a relief
to me when some random young nobleman
would come in pursuit of the bait,
and awe all this small fry at a distance.
I have always felt myself more at ease
with a nobleman than with the dandy of
a country town.

And then the injuries I suffered in my
personal dignity and my managerial
authority from the visits of these great
London actors! 'Sblood, sir, I was no
longer master of myself on my throne.
I was hectored and lectured in my own
green-room, and made an absolute nincompoop
on my own stage. There is
no tyrant so absolute and capricious as
a London star at a country theatre. I
dreaded the sight of all of them, and yet
if I did not engage them, I was sure of
having the public clamorous against me.
They drew full houses, and appeared to
be making my fortune; but they swallowed
up all the profits by their insatiable
demands. They were absolute tapeworms
to my little theatre; the more it
took in the poorer it grew. They were
sure to leave me with an exhausted
public, empty benches, and a score or
two of affronts to settle among the
town's folk, in consequence of misunderstandings
about the taking of places.

But the worse thing I had to undergo
in my managerial career was patronage.
Oh, sir! of all things deliver me from
the patronage of the great people of a
country town. It was my ruin. You
must know that this town, though small,
was filled with feuds, and parties, and
great folks; being a busy little trading
and manufacturing town. The mischief
was that their greatness was of a kind
not to be settled by reference to the court
calendar, or college of heraldry; it was
therefore the most quarrelsome kind of
greatness in existence. You smile, sir,
but let me tell you there are no feuds
more furious than the frontier feuds which
take place in these "debatable lands" of
gentility. The most violent dispute that
I ever knew in high life was one which
occurred at a country town, on a question
of precedence between the ladies of
a manufacturer of pins and a manufacturer
of needles.

At the town where I was situated there
were perpetual altercations of the kind.
The head manufacturer's lady, for instance,
was at daggers-drawings with the
head shopkeeper's, and both were too
rich and had too many friends to be
treated lightly. The doctor's and lawyer's
ladies held their heads still higher;
but they in their turn were kept in check
by the wife of a country banker, who
kept her own carriage: while a masculine
widow of cracked character and
secondhand fashion, who lived in a large
house, and claimed to be in some way
related to nobility, looked down upon
them all. To be sure, her manners were
not over elegant, nor her fortune over
large; but then, sir, her blood—oh, her
blood carried it all hollow: there was no

106

withstanding a woman with such blood
in her veins.

After all, her claims to high connexion
were questioned, and she had frequent
battles for precedence at balls and assemblies
with some of the sturdy dames of
the neighbourhood, who stood upon their
wealth and their virtue; but then she
had two dashing daughters, who dressed
as fine as dragons, had as high blood as
their mother, and seconded her in every
thing: so they carried their point with
high heads, and every body hated, abused,
and stood in awe of the Fantadlins.

Such was the state of the fashionable
world in this self-important little town.
Unluckily, I was not as well acquainted
with its politics as I should have been. I
had found myself a stranger and in great
perplexities during my first season; I
determined, therefore, to put myself under
the patronage of some powerful name,
and thus to take the field with the prejudices
of the public in my favour. I cast
round my thoughts for the purpose, and
in an evil hour they fell upon Mrs. Fantadlin.
No one seemed to me to have
a more absolute sway in the world of
fashion. I had always noticed that her
party slammed the box-door the loudest
at the theatre; that her daughters entered
like a tempest with a flutter of red shawls
and feathers; had most beaus attending
on them; talked and laughed during the
performance, and used quizzing-glasses
incessantly. The first evening of my
theatre's re-opening, therefore, was announced
in staring capitals on the playbills,
as under the patronage of "The
Honourable Mrs. Fantadlin."

Sir, the whole community flew to
arms! Presume to patronise the theatre!
Insufferable! And then for me to
dare to term her "The Honourable!"
What claim had she to the title, forsooth!
The fashionable world had long groaned
under the tyranny of the Fantadlins, and
were glad to make a common cause
against this new instance of assumption.
All minor feuds were forgotten. The
doctor's lady and the lawyer's lady met
together, and the manufacturer's lady
and the shopkeeper's lady kissed each
other: and all, headed by the banker's
lady, voted the theatre a bore, and determined
to encourage nothing but the
Indian Jugglers and Mr. Walker's Eidouranion.

Such was the rock on which I split. I
never got over the patronage of the Fantadlin
family. My house was deserted;
my actors grew discontented because
they were ill paid; my door became a
hammering place for every bailiff in the
country; and my wife became more and
more shrewish and tormenting the more
I wanted comfort.

I tried for a time the usual consolation
of a harassed and henpecked man: I took
to the bottle, and tried to tipple away my
cares, but in vain. I don't mean to decry
the bottle; it is no doubt an excellent
remedy in many cases, but it did not
answer in mine. It cracked my voice,
coppered my nose, but neither improved
my wife nor my affairs. My establishment
became a scene of confusion and
peculation. I was considered a ruined
man, and of course fair game for every
one to pluck at, as every one plunders a
sinking ship. Day after day some of the
troop deserted, and, like deserting soldiers,
carried off their arms and accoutrements
with them. In this manner my
wardrobe took legs and walked away,
my finery strolled all over the country,
my swords and daggers glittered in every
barn, until, at last, my tailor made "one
fell swoop," and carried off three dress
coats, half a dozen doublets, and nineteen
pair of flesh-coloured pantaloons.
This was the "be all and the end all" of
my fortune. I no longer hesitated what
to do. Egad, thought I, since stealing is
the order of the day, I'll steal too: so I
secretly gathered together the jewels of
my wardrobe, packed up a hero's dress
in a handkerchief, slung it on the end of
a tragedy sword, and quietly stole off at
dead of night, "the bell then beating
one," leaving my queen and kingdom to
the mercy of my rebellious subjects, and
my merciless foes the bumbailiffs.

Such, sir, was the "end of all my
greatness." I was heartily cured of all
passion for governing, and returned once
more into the ranks. I had for some time
the usual run of an actor's life: I played
in various country theatres, at fairs, and
in barns; sometimes hard pushed, sometimes
flush, until, on one occasion, I
came within an ace of making my fortune,

107

and becoming one of the wonders
of the age.

I was playing the part of Richard the
Third in a country barn, and in my best
style; for, to tell the truth, I was a little
in liquor, and the critics of the company
always observed that I played with most
effect when I had a glass too much.
There was a thunder of applause when I
came to that part where Richard cries
for "a horse! a horse!" My cracked
voice had always a wonderful effect here;
it was like two voices run into one; you
would have thought two men had been
calling for a horse, or that Richard had
called for two horses. And when I flung
the taunt at Richmond, "Richard is
hoarse with calling thee to arms," I
thought the barn would have come down
about my ears with the raptures of the
audience.

The very next morning a person waited
upon me at my lodgings. I saw at once
he was a gentleman by his dress; for he
had a large brooch in his bosom, thick
rings on his fingers, and used a quizzingglass.
And a gentleman he proved to
be; for I soon ascertained that he was a
kept author, or kind of literary tailor to
one of the great London theatres; one
who worked under the manager's directions,
and cut up and cut down plays,
and patched and pieced, and new-faced,
and turned them inside out: in short, he
was one of the readiest and greatest
writers of the day.

He was now on a foraging excursion
in quest of something that might be got
up for a prodigy. The theatre, it seems,
was in desperate condition—nothing but
a miracle could save it. He had seen
me act Richard the night before, and had
pitched upon me for that miracle. I had
a remarkable bluster in my style and
swagger in my gait. I certainly differed
from all other heroes of the barn: so the
thought struck the agent to bring me out
as a theatrical wonder, as the restorer of
natural and legitimate acting, as the only
one who could understand and act Shakspeare
rightly.

When he opened his plan I shrunk
from it with becoming modesty, for, well
as I thought of myself, I doubted my
competency to such an undertaking.

I hinted at my imperfect knowledge of
Shakespeare, having played his characters
only after mutilated copies, interlarded
with a great deal of my own talk by
way of helping memory or heightening
the effect.

"So much the better," cried the gentleman
with rings on his fingers; "so
much the better. New readings, sir!—
new readings! Don't study a line—let
us have Shakespeare after your own
fashion."

"But then my voice was cracked; it
could not fill a London theatre."

"So much the better! so much the
better! The public is tired of intonation
the ore rotundo has had its day. No, sir,
your cracked voice is the very thing—
spit and splutter, and snap and snarl,
and `play the very dog' about the stage,
and you'll be the making of us."

"But then,"—I could not help blushing
to the end of my very nose as I said
it, but I was determined to be candid;—
"but then," added I, "there is one awkward
circumstance; I have an unlucky
habit—my misfortunes, and the exposures
to which one is subjected in country
barns, have obliged me now and then to—
to—take a drop of something comfortable—and
so—and so—"

"What! you drink?" cried the agent
eagerly.

I bowed my head in blushing acknowledgment.

"So much the better! so much the
better! The irregularities of genius! A
sober fellow is commonplace. The public
like an actor that drinks. Give me
your hand, sir. You're the very man
to make a dash with."

I still hung back with lingering diffidence,
declaring myself unworthy of such
praise.

"'Sblood, man," cried he, "no praise
at all. You don't imagine I think you a
wonder; I only want the public to think
so. Nothing is so easy as to gull the
public, if you only set up a prodigy.
Common talent any body can measure
by common rule; but a prodigy sets all
rule and measurement at defiance."

These words opened my eyes in an
instant; we now came to a proper understanding;
less flattering, it is true, to my
vanity, but much more satisfactory to
my judgment.

108

It was agreed that I should make my
appearance before a London audience, as
a dramatic sun just bursting from behind
the clouds: one that was to banish all
the lesser lights and false fires of the
stage. Every precaution was to be taken
to possess the public mind at every avenue.
The pit was to be packed with
sturdy clappers; the newspapers secured
by vehement puffers; every theatrical
resort to be haunted by hireling talkers.
In a word, every engine of theatrical
humbug was to be put in action. Wherever
I differed from former actors, it was
to be maintained that I was right and
they were wrong. If I ranted, it was to
be pure passion; if I were vulgar, it was
to be pronounced a familiar touch of nature;
if I made any queer blunder, it
was to be a new reading. If my voice
cracked, or I got out in my part, I was
only to bounce, and grin, and snarl at
the audience, and make any horrible
grimace that came into my head, and
my admirers were to call it "a great
point," and to fall back and shout and
yell with rapture.

"In short," said the gentleman with
the quizzing-glass, "strike out boldly
and bravely: no matter how or what
you do, so that it be but odd and strange.
If you do but escape pelting the first
night, your fortune and the fortune of
the theatre is made."

I set off for London, therefore, in company
with the kept author, full of new
plans and new hopes. I was to be the
restorer of Shakespeare and Nature, and
the legitimate drama; my very swagger
was to be heroic, and my cracked voice
the standard of elocution. Alas, sir, my
usual luck attended me: before I arrived
at the metropolis a rival wonder had appeared;
a woman who could dance the
slack-rope, and run up a cord from the
stage to the gallery with fireworks all
round her. She was seized on by the
manager with avidity. She was the saving
of the great national theatre for the
season. Nothing was talked of but Madame
Saqui's fireworks and flesh-coloured
pantaloons; and Nature, Shakespeare,
the legitimate drama, and poor Pilgarlick
were completely left in the lurch.

When Madame Saqui's performance
grew stale, other wonders succeeded:
horses, and harlequinades, and mummery
of all kinds; until another dramatic
prodigy was brought forward to play
the very game for which I had been
intended. I called upon the kept author
for an explanation, but he was deeply
engaged in writing a melo-drama or a
pantomime, and was extremely testy on
being interrupted in his studies. However,
as the theatre was in some measure
pledged to provide for me, the manager
acted, according to the usual phrase,
"like a man of honour," and I received
an appointment in the corps. It had
been a turn of a die whether I should
be Alexander the Great or Alexander
the coppersmith—the latter carried it.
I could not be put at the head of the
drama, so I was put at the tail of it. In
other words, I was enrolled among the
number of what are called useful men;
those who enact soldiers, senators, and
Banquo's shadowy line. I was perfectly
satisfied with my lot; for I have always
been a bit of a philosopher. If my situation
was not splendid, it at least was
secure; and in fact I have seen half a
dozen prodigies appear, dazzle, burst
like bubbles and pass away, and yet
here I am, snug, unenvied and unmolested,
at the foot of the profession.

No, no, you may smile; but let me
tell you, we useful men are the only
comfortable actors on the stage. We
are safe from hisses, and below the hope
of applause. We fear not the success
of rivals, nor dread the critic's pen. So
long as we get the words of our parts,
and they are not often many, it is all we
care for. We have our own merriment,
our own friends, and our own admirers
—for every actor has his own friends
and admirers, from the highest to the
lowest. The first-rate actor dines with
the noble amateur, and entertains a
fashionable table with scraps and songs,
and theatrical slipslop. The second-rate
actors have their second-rate friends
and admirers, with whom they likewise
spout tragedy and talk slipslop—and so
down even to us; who have our friends
and admirers among spruce clerks and
aspiring apprentices—who treat us to a
dinner now and then, and enjoy at tenth
hand the same scraps and songs and
slipslop that have been served up by our

109

more fortunate brethren at the tables of
the great.

I now, for the first time in my theatrical
life, experience what true pleasure
is. I have known enough of notoriety
to pity the poor devils who are called
favourites of the public. I would rather
be a kitten in the arms of a spoiled child,
to be one moment patted and pampered,
and the next moment thumped over the
head with the spoon. I smile to see our
leading actors fretting themselves with
envy and jealousy about a trumpery renown,
questionable in its quality, and
uncertain in its duration. I laugh, too,
though of course in my sleeve, at the
bustle and importance, and trouble and
perplexities of our manager, who is harassing
himself to death in the hopeless
effort to please every body.

I have found among my fellow-subalterns
two or three quondam managers,
who like myself have wielded the sceptres
of country theatres, and we have
many a sly joke together at the expense
of the manager and the public. Sometimes
too, we meet, like deposed and exiled
kings, talk over the events of our
respective reigns, moralize over a tankard
of ale, and laugh at the humbug of
the great and little world; which, I take
it, is the essence of practical philosophy.

Thus end the anecdotes of Buckthorne
and his friends. It grieves me much that
I could not procure from him further particulars
of his history, and especially of
that part of it which passed in town.
He had evidently seen much of literary
life; and, as he had never risen to eminence
in letters, and yet was free from
the gall of disappointment, I had hoped
to gain some candid intelligence concerning
his contemporaries. The testimony
of such an honest chronicler
would have been particularly valuable
at the present time; when, owing to the
extreme fecundity of the press, and the
thousand anecdotes, criticisms, and biographical
sketches that are daily poured
forth concerning public characters, it is
extremely difficult to get at any truth
concerning them.

He was always, however, excessively
reserved and fastidious on this point, at
which I very much wondered, authors
in general appearing to think each other
fair game, and being ready to serve each
other up for the amusement of the public.

A few mornings after our hearing the
history of the ex-manager, I was surprised
by a visit from Buckthorne before
I was out of bed. He was dressed for
travelling.

"Give me joy! give me joy!" said
he, rubbing his hands with the utmost
glee, "my great expectations are realized!"

I gazed at him with a look of wonder
and inquiry.

"My booby cousin is dead!" cried he;
"may he rest in peace! he nearly broke
his neck in a fall from his horse in a
fox-chase. By good luck, he lived long
enough to make his will. He has made
me his heir, partly out of an odd feeling
of retributive justice, and partly because,
as he says, none of his own family or
friends know how to enjoy such an estate.
I'm off to the country to take possession.
I've done with authorship. That
for the critics!" said he, snapping his
fingers. "Come down to Doubting Castle,
when I get settled, and, egad, I'll give
you a rouse." So saying, he shook me
heartily by the hand, and bounded off in
high spirits.

A long time elapsed before I heard
from him again. Indeed, it was but
lately that I received a letter, written in
the happiest of moods. He was getting
the estate into fine order; every thing
went to his wishes, and, what was more,
he was married to Sacharissa, who it
seems had always entertained an ardent
though secret attachment for him, which
he had fortunately discovered just after
coming to his estate.

"I find," said he, "you are a little
given to the sin of authorship, which I
renounce: if the anecdotes I have given
you of my story are of any interest,
you may make use of them; but come
down to Doubting Castle, and see how
we live, and I'll give you my whole
London life over a social glass; and a
rattling history it shall be about authors
and reviewers."

If ever I visit Doubting Castle and get
the history he promises, the public shall
be sure to hear of it.

University of Virginia Library

II. PART II.

BUCKTHORNE AND HIS FRIENDS.