unparalleled incidents, that I was like one thunder-struck; but coming presently to myself, and clasping her in my arms, with as much love and passion as I was capable of expressing, 'Are you returned again, kind angel,' said I, 'to bless a wretch who can only be happy in adoring you? Can it be that you, who have so many advantages over me, should quit all the pleasures that nature has formed you for, and all your friends and relations, to take an asylum in my arms? But I here make you a tender of all I am able to bestow, my love and constancy.' Come, come,' says she, no more raptures; I find you are a worthier man than I thought I had reason to take you for; and I beg your pardon for my distrust whilst I was ignorant of your imperfections; but now, I verily believe all you have said is true; and I promise you, as you have seemed so much to delight in me, I will never quit you till death or other as fatal accident shall part us. But we will now, if you choose, go home, for I know you have been some time uneasy in this gloom, though agreeable to me. For, giving my eyes the pleasure of looking eagerly on you, it conceals my blushes from your sight.' In this manner, exchanging mutual endearments and soft speeches, hand in hand, we arrived at the grotto. Youwarkee's discomfort at the glare of light is explained by the fact that in the regions of the flying people it was always twilight. Crashee means 'slit' in the language of the flying regions, where criminals were punished by having their wings slit and so made useless for flight. Henry Brooke (1703?-83), born at Rantavan in County Cavan, the son of a wealthy clergyman, went (1724) from Trinity College, Dublin, to study law in London, and there became the chosen friend of Pope and Lyttelton. From the heart of this brilliant literary society he was recalled to Ireland by a dying aunt, who left him guardian of her child, a girl of twelve, whom he sent to school, and two years afterwards, to the consternation of his friends, secretly married. His childwife brought him three children before she was eighteen, but of the large family of twenty-two only one survived the father. Brooke's first notable work, the poem Universal Beauty (1735), 'a sort of Bridgewater Treatise in rhyme,' was said to have been revised by Pope, and is supposed to have supplied the foundation for Erasmus Darwin's Botanic Garden. In 1739 he published his play, Gustavus Vasa, full of the noblest sentiments and the most inconceivable characters, the acting of which was prohibited at Drury Lane on political grounds, Sir Robert Walpole suspecting himself to be the prototype of a very unamiable character in the play. Dr Johnson wrote ironical vindication of the licensers of the stage; but on its publication in book form the play was bought in large numbers, and it was afterwards produced in Dublin as The Patriot. Brooke translated part of Tasso, projected a series of old Irish tales and an Irish history, wrote an Irish historic fragment in a style closely resembling that afterwards adopted by Ossian Macpherson, and having finally returned to Ireland, was given a post as barrack-master of Mullingar by Lord Chesterfield, largely in consideration of his an Farmer's Letters to the Protestants of Ireland. The Earl of Essex, a tragedy, was produced both at Dublin and in London; from this play (and not, as Kingsley said, from Gustavus) came the line not too correctly quoted by Boswell as 'Who rules o'er freemen should himself be free,' parodied by Johnson in Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat.' Near the close of the first act of Essex, Queen Elizabeth says: I shall henceforth seek For other lights to truth; for righteous monarchs, Justly to judge, with their own eyes should see; To rule o'er freemen, should themselves be free. Philanthropy and agricultural experiments compelled Brooke to sell his property, and he settled in Kildare (1763). Here he wrote the best remembered of all his books-the only one, indeed, not utterly dead-The Fool of Quality, or the History of the Earl of Moreland (5 vols. 1766–70. His first political pamphlets had been strongly anti-Catholic; later he wrote pleas for the fairer treatment of the Catholics and the relaxation of the penal laws. In 1774 he issued a poor novel, Juliet Grenville, or the History of the Human Heart. Several years before his death, when living at Dublin, he sank into a condition of increasing mental debility. His devoted daughter Charlotte (died 1793), who had seen the decay of her father's intellect in the last part of the Fool of Quality, was herself an authoress, and published in 1789 The Reliques of Irish Poetry. The Fool of Quality so commended itself to John Wesley that amidst his multitudinous labours he found time to prepare an abridged edition of it (1780); and in 1859 Charles Kingsley, who was no Methodist, published a complete edition with an enthusiastic preface and sketch of Brooke's life. Of the story he has recorded this opinion: In it we have the whole man: the education of an ideal nobleman by an ideal merchant-prince has given him room for all his speculations on theology, political economy, the relations of sex and family, and the training, moral and physical, of a Christian gentleman; and to them plot and probability are too often sacrificed. Its pathos is, perhaps, of too healthy and simple a kind to be considered very touching by a public whose taste has been palled by the aesthetic brandy and cayenne' of French novels. . . . Nevertheless, overmuch striving for pathos is the defect of the book. . . . The cause of its failure. . . is patent. The plot is extravagant as well as ill-woven, and broken, besides, by episodes as extravagant as itself. The morality is Quixotic, and practically impossible. The sermonising, whether theological or social, is equally clumsy and obtrusive. . . . By that time also one may hope the earnest reader will have begun to guess at the causes which have made this book forgotten for a while; and perhaps to find them not in its defects but in its excellences; in its deep and grand ethics, in its broad and genial humanity, in the divine value which it attaches to the relations of husband and wife, father and child; and to the utter absence both of that sentimentalism and that superstition which have been alternately debauching of late years the minds of the young. And if he shall have arrived at this discovery, he will be able possibly to regard at least with patience those who are rash enough to affirm that they have learnt from this book more which is pure, sacred, and eternal, than from any which has been published since Spenser's Fairy Queen. Few will give the book this high praise; but if it is odd, it is a remarkable book. Some of its digressions are as surprising, if not quite as amusing, as Sterne's; the heroic fist battles are described with the zest of Borrow; the venerable man who 'drops the tear of generosity' on the smallest provocation, like Mackenzie's 'Man of Feeling,' nevertheless cheers and regales the afflicted and the destitute with a brimming cup (or several cups) of good ale and a hearty meal, as Borrow might have done; and many of the scattered thoughts are sagacious and suggestive as Meredith's. Again one is reminded of Borrow's highly muscular Christianity when we find that, with the author's entire approbation, the philanthropical protector, Mr Fenton, 'had already provided his favourite with a dancing-master, the most approved for skill in his profession; as also with a noted fencing-master, who further taught him the noble science of the cudgel and quarterstaff. He was now on the search for the most distinguished champion of the Bear-garden, in order to accomplish our hero in the mysteries of bruising, of wrestling, and of tripping.' There is many a Borrovian touch in the dialogues; and the good man takes a very lenient view of all the mischievous tricks played off by his protégés on a cruel and pedantic schoolmaster. Within the story are many stories-the earlier adventures of the minor characters, classical and historical stories dramatically retold, and moral apologues or allegories. At the end of many of the chapters Brooke provides a curious kind of Greek chorus. Without warning, the reader finds himself listening to an animated debate between 'Author' and 'Friend,' many of the most interesting things coming in as defence by 'Author' against the criticisms of Friend,' who is a sort of Advocatus Diaboli. The humour is genuine if sometimes a little obvious, and the satire trenchant and effective. The style frequently combines simplicity, vigour, and point in singular degree. The prose extracts are all from the Fool of Quality. From 'Universal Beauty.' Emergent from the deep view nature's face, And dwell immense within the minim shrine ; Plant within plant, and seed enfolding seed, And these again, the tree, the trunk, the root, The Fool's Outset in Life. With his lady, he again retreated to the country, where, in less than a year, she made him the exulting father of a fine boy, whom he called Richard. Richard speedily became the sole centre of all his mother's solicitudes and affections. And though within the space of the two succeeding years she was delivered of a second boy, yet, as his infant aspect was less promising and more uninformed than his brother's, she sent him forth to be nursed by the robust wife of a neighbouring farmer, where, for the space of upwards of four years, he was honoured with no token from father or mother, save some casual messages to know from time to time if the child was in health. This boy was called Henry, after his uncle by the father's side. The earl had lately sent to London to make inquiry after his brother, but could learn no manner of tidings concerning him. Meanwhile, the education of the two children was extremely contrasted. Richard, who was already entitled my little lord, was not permitted to breathe the rudeness of the wind. On his slightest indisposition, the whole house was in alarms; his passions had full scope in all their infant irregularities; his genius was put into a hotbed, by the warmth of applauses given to every flight of his opening fancy; and the whole family conspired, from the highest to the lowest, to the ruin of promising talents and a benevolent heart. Young Harry, on the other hand, had every member as well as feature exposed to all weathers; would run about, mother naked, for near an hour, in a frosty morning; was neither physicked into delicacy, nor flattered into pride; scarce felt the convenience, and much less understood the vanity of clothing; and was daily occupied in playing and wrestling with the pigs and two mongrel spaniels on the common; or in kissing, scratching, or boxing with the children of the village. When Harry had passed his fifth year, his father, on a festival day, humbly proposed to send for him to his nurse, in order to observe how the boy might turn out; and my lady, in a fit of goodhumour, assented. Nurse, accordingly, decked him out in his holiday petticoats, and walked with our hero to the great house, as they called it. A brilliant concourse of the neighbouring gentry were met in a vast parlour, that appeared to be executed after the model of Westminster Hall. . . These were the principal characters. The rest could not be said to be of any character at all. The cloth had been lately removed, and a host of glasses and decanters glowed on the table, when in comes young Harry, escorted by his nurse. All the eyes of the company were instantly drawn upon him; but he advanced, with a vacant and unobserving physiognomy, and thought no higher of the assembly than as of so many peasants at a country wake. Dicky, my dear, says my lady, go and welcome your brother; whereat Dick went up, took Harry by the hand, and kissed him with much affection. Harry, thereupon, having eyed his brother-I don't know you, said he, bluntly, but at the same time held up his little mouth to kiss him again. Dick, says my lady, put your laced hat upon Harry, that we may see how it becomes him, which he immediately did; but Harry, feeling an unusual encumbrance on his head, took off the hat, and, having for some time looked contemptuously at it, he cast it from him with a sudden and agile jerk, as he used to cast flat stones to make ducks and drakes in the mill-pond. The hat took the glasses and decanters in full career; smash go the glasses, abroad pours the wine on circling laces, Dresden aprons, silvered silks, and rich brocades; female screams filled the parlour; the rout is equal to the uproar; and it was long ere most of them could be composed to their places. In the meanwhile, Harry took no kind of interest in their outcries or distresses; but spying a large Spanish pointer, that just then came from under the table, he sprung at him like lightning, seized him by the collar, and vaulted on his back with inconceivable agility. The dog, wholly disconcerted by so unaccustomed a burden, capered and plunged about in a violent manner; but Harry was a better horseman than to be so easily dismounted: whereon the dog grew outrageous, and, rushing into a group of little misses and masters, the children of the visitants, he overthrew them like nine-pins; thence proceeding with equal rapidity between the legs of Mrs Dowdy, a very fat and elderly lady, she instantly fell back with a violent shriek, and, in her fall, unfortunately overthrew Frank the foxhunter, who overthrew Andrew the angler, who overthrew Bob the beau, who closed the catastrophe. Our hero, meantime, was happily dismounted by the intercepting petticoats, and fairly laid, without damage, in the fallen lady's lap. From thence he arose at his leisure, and strolled about the room with as unconcerned an aspect as if nothing had happened amiss, and as though he had neither art nor part in this frightful discomfiture. When matters were once more, in some measure, set to rights-My heavens! exclaimed my lady, I shall faint! The boy is positively an idiot; he has no apprehension or conception of places or things. Come hither, sirrah, she cried, with an angry tone; but, instead of complying, Harry cast on her a look of resentment, and sidled over toward his nurse. Dicky, my dear, said my lady, go and pretend to beat his foster-mother, that we may try if the child has any kind of ideas. Here her ladyship, by ill fortune, was as much unadvised as her favourite was unhappy in the execution of her orders; for while Dick struck at the nurse with a counterfeited passion, Harry instantly reddened, and gave his brother such a sudden push in the face, that his nose and mouth gushed out with blood. the roar; my lady screamed out, and, rising and running at Harry with all imaginable fury, she caught him up as a falcon would truss a robin, turned over his petticoats, and chastised him with all the violence of which her delicacy was capable. Our hero, however, neither uttered cry nor dropped a tear; but, being set down, he turned round on the company an eye of indignation, then cried -Come away, mammy, and issued from the assembly. Harry had scarce made his exit when his mother exclaimed after him—Ay, ay, take him away, nurse! take him away, the little wretch, and never let me see his face more! Dick set up I shall not detain my reader with a tedious detail of the many and differing opinions that the remaining company expressed with regard to our hero; let it suffice to observe, that they generally agreed that, though the boy did not appear to be endowed by nature with a single faculty of the animal rationale, he might, nevertheless, be rendered capable, in time, of many places of very honourable and lucrative employment. Mr Meekly alone, though so gentle and complying at other times, now presumed to dissent from the sense of the company. I rather hold, said he, that this infant is the promise of the greatest philosopher and hero that our age is likely to produce. By refusing his respect to those superficial distinctions which fashion has inadequately substituted as expressions of human greatness, he approves himself the philosopher; and by the quickness of his feelings for injured innocence, and his boldness in defending those to whom his heart is attached, he approves himself at once the hero and the man. The Gentleman. Friend. This, I presume, must be some very respectable personage, some extraordinary favourite of yours; since, within a few lines, you style him three or four times by your most venerable of all titles, the title of a gentleman.' Author. Sir, I would not hold three words of conver sation with any man who did not deserve the appellation of gentleman by many degrees better than this man does. Friend. Why, then, do you write or speak with such acknowledged impropriety? Author. I think for myself, but I speak for the people. I may think as I please, for I understand my own thoughts; but, would I be understood when I speak to others also, I must speak with the people; I must speak in common terms, according to their common or general acceptation. There is no term in our language more common than that of gentleman; and, whenever it is heard, all agree in the general idea of a man some way elevated above the vulgar. Yet, perhaps, no two living are precisely agreed respecting the qualities they think requisite for constituting this character. When we hear the epithets of a 'fine gentleman, a pretty gentleman, much of a gentleman, gentleman-like, something of a gentleman, nothing of a gentleman,' and so forth; all these different appellations must intend a peculiarity annexed to the ideas of those who express them; though no two of them, as I said, may agree in the constituent qualities of the character they have formed in their own mind. There have been ladies who deemed a bag-wig, a tasselled waistcoat, new-fashioned snuff-box, and swordknot, very capital ingredients in the composition of-a gentleman. A certain easy impudence acquired by low people, by being casually conversant in high life, has passed a man through many companies for—a gentleman. In the country a laced hat and long whip make-a gentleman. With heralds, every esquire is indisputably -a gentleman. And the highwayman, in his manner of taking your purse, may, however, be allowed to have much of the gentleman. Friend. As you say, my friend, our ideas of this matter are very various and adverse. In our own minds, perhaps, they are also undetermined; and I question if any man has formed to himself a conception of this character with sufficient precision. Pray-was there any such character among the philosophers? Author. Plato, among the philosophers, was 'the most of a man of fashion;' and therefore allowed at he court of Syracuse to be the most of a gentleman. But, seriously, I apprehend that this character is pretty much upon the modern. In all ancient or dead languages e have no term any way adequate whereby we may xpress it. In the habits, manners, and characters of d Sparta and old Rome, we find an antipathy to all me elements of modern gentility. Among those rude nd unpolished people, you read of philosophers, of rators, patriots, heroes, and demigods; but you never ear of any character so elegant as that of a pretty entleman. When those nations, however, became fined into what their ancestors would have called orruption; when luxury introduced, and fashion gave sanction to certain sciences, which cynics would have randed with the ill-mannered appellations of debauchery, runkenness, gambling, cheating, lying, &c., the practioners assumed the new title of gentlemen, till such gentlemen became as plenteous as stars in the milky way, and lost distinction merely by the confluence of their ustre. Wherefore, as the said qualities were found to be of ready acquisition, and of easy descent to the popu ace from their betters, ambition judged it necessary to add further marks and criterions for severing the general herd from the nobler species-of gentlemen. Accordingly, If the commonalty were observed to have a propensity to religion, their superiors affected a disdain of such vulgar prejudices, and a freedom that cast off the restraints of morality, and a courage that spurned at the fear of God, were accounted the distinguishing characteristics of a gentleman. If the populace, as in China, were industrious and ingenious, the grandees, by the length of their nails and the cramping of their limbs, gave evidence that true dignity was above labour or utility, and that to be born to no end was the prerogative of a gentleman. If the common sort by their conduct declare a respect for the institutions of civil society and good government, their betters despise such pusillanimous conformity, and the magistrates pay becoming regard to the distinction, and allow of the superior liberties and privileges of a gentleman. If the lower set show a sense of common honesty and common order, those who would figure in the world think it incumbent to demonstrate that complaisance to inferiors, common manners, common equity, or any thing common, is quite beneath the attention or sphere of a gentleman. Now, as underlings are ever ambitious of imitating and usurp ing the manners of their superiors, and as this state of mortality is incident to perpetual change and revolution; it may happen, that when the populace, by encroaching on the province of gentility, have arrived to their ne plus ultra of insolence, debauchery, irreligion, &c., the gentry, in order to be again distinguished, may assume the station that their inferiors had forsaken, and, however ridiculous the supposition may appear at present, humanity, equity, utility, complaisance and piety, may in time come to be the distinguishing characteristics of -a gentleman. Friend. From what you have said, it appears that the most general idea which people have formed of a gentleman is that of a person of fortune, above the vulgar, and embellished by manners that are fashionable in high life. In this case, fortune and fashion are the two constituent ingredients in the composition of modern gentlemen; for, whatever the fashion may be, whether moral or immoral, for or against reason, right or wrong, it is equally the duty of a gentleman to conform. Author. And yet I apprehend that true gentility is altogether independent of fortune or fashion, of time, customs, or opinions of any kind. The very same qualities that constituted a gentleman in the first age of the world, are permanently, invariably, and indispensably necessary to the constitution of the same character to the end of time. The Lawyer. It is greatly to be lamented that the learned in our laws are not as immortal as the suits for which they are retained. It were therefore to be wished that an act of parliament might be especially passed for that purpose; a matter no way impracticable, considering the great interest those gentlemen have in the House. In truth, it seems highly expedient that an infinity of years should be assigned to each student of the belles lettres of our laws, to enable them to read over that infinity of volumes which have already been published; to say nothing of the infinity that are yet to come, which will be held equally necessary for understanding the profession, of critically distinguishing and oratorically expatiating on law against law, case against case, authority against authority, precedent against precedent, statute against statute, and argument against reason. In matters of no greater moment than life and death, juries, as at the beginning, are still permitted to enter directly on the hearing and decision; but in matters so sacred as that of property, our courts are extremely cautious of too early an error in judgment. In order, therefore, to sift and boult them to the very bran, they are delivered over to the lawyers, who are equally the affirmers and disputers, the pleaders and impleaders, representers and misrepresenters, explainers and confounders of our laws; our lawyers, therefore, maintain their right of being paid for their ingenuity in putting and holding all properties in debate. Debated properties consequently become the properties of the lawyers, as long as answers can be given to bills, or replies to answers, or rejoinders to replies, or rebutters to rejoinders; as long as the battledores can strike and bandy, and till the shuttlecock falls of itself to the ground. Soberly and seriously speaking, English property, when once debated, is merely a carcase of contention, upon which interposing lawyers fall as customary prize and prey during the combat of the claimants. While any flesh remains on a bone, it continues a bone of contention; but so soon as the learned practitioners have picked it quite clean, the battle is over, and all again is peace and settled neighbourhood. It is worthy of much pleasantry and shaking of sides to observe that, in intricate, knotty, and extremely perplexing cases, where the sages of the gown and coif are so puzzled as not to know what to make of the matter, they then bequeath it to the arbitration and award of two or three plain men; or, by record, to the judgment of twelve simple honest fellows, who, casting aside all regard to the form of writs and declarations, to the lapse of monosyllables, verbal mistakes and misnomers, enter at once upon the pith and marrow of the business, and in three hours determine, according to equity and truth, what had been suspending in the dubious scales of ratiocination, quotation, altercation, and pecuniary consideration, for three and twenty years. Neither do I see any period to the progress of this evil; the avenue still opens, and leads on to further mischiefs; for the distinctions in law are, like the Newtonian particles of matter, divisible ad infinitum. They have been dividing and subdividing for some centuries past, and the subdivisions are as likely to be subdividing for ever; insomuch that law, thus divisible, debateable, and delayable, is become a greater grievance than all that it was intended to redress. I lately asked a pleasant gentleman of the coif if he thought it possible for a poor man to obtain a decree, in matter of property, against a rich man. He smiled, and answered according to scripture, that with man it was impossible, but that all things were possible to God.' I suppose he meant that the decrees of the courts of Westminster were hereafter to be reversed. Edward Moore (1712-57), author of Fables for the Female Sex, was a native of Abingdon in Berkshire, son of a Dissenting minister. He was for some years a linen-draper, but having failed in business, adopted literature as a profession. He wrote several plays, of which The Foundling (1748) and Gil Blas (1751) were not successes, whereas The Gamester (1753) was translated into French, Dutch, and German, and is still sometimes performed. The prologue and some of the best parts of it were by Garrick, who played in it. Moore, under the name of Adam Fitz-adam, edited a series of essays called The World (1753-56), for which he himself wrote only some sixty out of two hundred and ten numbers, the rest being by patrons and wits such as Lyttelton, Chesterfield, Soame Jenyns, and Horace Walpole. Moore's poem, The Trial of Selim the Persian, is largely flattery of Lyttelton. The Fables of Moore rank next to those of Gay, but are inferior to them both in choice of subject and in poetical merit; they are rather didactic. The three last are by Henry Brooke. Goldsmith thought that justice had not been done to Moore as a poet: 'It was upon his Fables he founded his reputation, but they are by no means his best production.' His (prose) tragedy of the Gamester, even apart from Garrick's additions, is a much better bit of work, and some of his verses—such as the following—are finished with greater care. The Happy Marriage. How blest has my time been, what joys have I known, Through walks grown with woodbines, as often we stray, To try her sweet temper sometimes am I seen, What though on her cheek the rose loses its hue, Ye shepherds so gay, who make love to ensnare And cheat with false vows the too credulous fair; In search of true pleasure, how vainly you roam! To hold it for life, you must find it at home. As a jeu d'esprit, the following is sprightly enough, and not without some basis in truth: A Hymn to Poverty. O Poverty! thou source of human art, Thou giv'st the organ sound: by thee the flute Thy powerful touch. The warbling voice is thine; And every charm to Farinelli's song. By thee the lawyer pleads. The soldier's arm I sink beneath the terrors of thy face! It is a curious fact that Moore died while the last number of the collected edition of his periodical, the World, which described the fatal but imaginary illness of the author, was passing through the press. Isaac Bickerstaffe, play-writer, was born in Ireland about 1735, and at eleven became page to Lord Chesterfield, the Lord-Lieutenant. He was afterwards an officer of marines, but was dismissed the service, and in 1772 had to flee the country on a capital charge. Nothing is certainly known regarding his after-life, but he is supposed to have Idied on the Continent in or soon after 1812. Of his numerous pieces, produced between 1766 and 1771, the best known is The Maid of the Mill. He constantly works into his plays all manner of proverbial sayings, familiar scraps from the poets, and tags of every kind. In The Sultan we have: Let men say whate'er they will, Woman, woman rules them still. 'We all love a pretty girl-under the rose' is a song in Love in a Village.-There is no known connection between this playwright, odd though it seems, and the nom-de-guerre of 'Isaac Bickerstaffe' used by Swift in his attacks on Partridge the bookseller and quack concoctor of prophecy almanacs (1707-9). Swift took the name, he said, from a locksmith's sign in Longacre; and with Swift's assent Steele adopted the pseudonym for the eponymous hero of his Tatler, started in 1709 while the pamphlet-war was still being waged. It is of course quite natural to suppose that in any Dublin family of the name of Bickerstaffe the Tatler's Christian name might have been given to a boy born a few years after Steele's death. |