The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 545, May 5, 1832 · Chapter 4Notes of a Reader
This chapter is not translated yet. You are reading the original.
It would be rather mal-apropos to write the Beauties of the Hunchback, but such a term is elliptically applicable to the following passages from Mr. Knowles's clever and original play:—
INSIGNIFICANT ENEMIES.
Is't fit you waste your choler on a burr?
The nothings of the town; whose sport it is
To break their villain jests on worthy men,
The graver still the fitter! Fie, for shame!
Regard what such would say? So would not I,
No more than heed a cur.
HONOURABLE SUCCESS.
What merit to be dropp'd on fortune's hill?
The honour is to mount it.
* * * Knowledge, industry,
Frugality, and honesty;—the sinews
The surest help the climber to the top,
And keep him there.
WISE PRECEPT.
Better owe
A yard of land to labour, than to chance
Be debtor for a rood!
THE TOWN.
Nine times in ten the town's a hollow thing,
Where what things are is naught to what they show;
Where merit's name laughs merit's self to scorn!
Where friendship and esteem that ought to be
The tenants of men's hearts, lodge in their looks
And tongues alone. Where little virtue, with
A costly keeper, passes for a heap;
A heap for none, that has a homely one!
Where fashion makes the law—your umpire which
You bow to, whether it has brains or not.
Where Folly taketh off his cap and bells,
To clap on Wisdom, which must bear the jest!
Where, to pass current you must seem the thing,
The passive thing, that others think, and not
Your simple, honest, independent self!
LOVE.
Say but a moment, still I say I love you.
Love's not a flower that grows on the dull earth;
Springs by the calendar; must wait for sun—
For rain;—matures by parts,—must take its time
To stem, to leaf, to bud, to blow. It owns
A richer soil, and boasts a quicker seed!
You look for it, and see it not; and lo!
E'en while you look, the peerless flower is up,
Consumate in the birth!
In joining contrasts lieth love's delight.
Complexion, stature, nature, mateth it,
Not with their kinds, but with their opposites.
Hence hands of snow in palms of russet lie;
The form of Hercules affects the sylph's
And breasts that case the lion's fear-proof heart,
Find their lov'd lodge in arms where tremors dwell!
Haply for this, on Afric's swarthy neck,
Hath Europe's priceless pearl been seen to hang,
That makes the orient poor! So with degrees,
Rank passes by the circlet-graced brow
Upon the forehead bare of notelessness,
To print the nuptial kiss!
COUNTRY LIFE.
The life I'd lead!
But fools would fly from it; for O! 'tis sweet!
It finds the heart out, be there one to find;
And corners in't where store of pleasures lodge,
We never dream'd were there! It is to dwell
'Mid smiles that are not neighbours to deceit;
Music whose melody is of the heart
And gifts that are not made for interest,—
Abundantly bestow'd, by nature's cheek,
And voice, and hand! It is to live on life,
And husband it! It is to constant scan
The handiwork of heaven! It is to con
Its mercy, bounty, wisdom, power! It is
To nearer see our God!
JEALOUSY.
A dreadful question is it, when we love,
To ask if love's return'd! I did believe
Fair Julia's heart was mine—I doubt it now.
But once last night she danced with me, her hand
To this gallant and that engaged, as soon
As asked for! Maid that loved would scarce do this!
Nor visit we together as we used,
When first she came to town. She loves me less
Than once she did—or loves me not at all.
Misfortune liketh company: it seldom
Visits its friends alone.
A MAIDEN HEART.
A young woman's heart,
Is not a stone to carve a posey on!
Which knows not what is writ on't—which you may buy,
Exchange or sell,—keep or give away,
It is a richer—yet a poorer thing!
Priceless to him that owns and prizes it;
Worthless when own'd, not priz'd; which makes the man
That covets it, obtains it, and discards it,—
A fool, if not a villain.
A CURATE'S SON.
Better be a yeoman's son!
Was it the rector's son, he might be known,
Because the rector is a rising man,
And may become a bishop. He goes light.
The curate ever hath a loaded back.
He may be called yeoman of the church
That sweating does his work, and drudges on
While lives the hopeful rector at his ease.
In the third and concluding volume of the Life and Reign of George IV., (a portion of Dr. Lardner's Cabinet Library,) we find the following summary of the earthly career of the late King—shaded with some admixture of severity, but, altogether, to be commended for the manliness and unflinching spirit in which it is written. Our contemporary biography sadly lacks vigorous and plain-speaking summaries of character.
"In the events and achievements which give interest and lustre to his regency and reign, George IV. had personally no share. He was but contemporary with them. To the progress of science, of literature, of legislation, he was a stranger. The jealous limitations of the regal power,—the independence, enterprise, and social advancement of the nation, would account and afford excuse for this: but were he absolute as Louis XIV.,—obeyed and imitated with the same implicit servility,—the higher purposes of intellectual being were beyond his range. With the fine arts his relations were more close and personal. The progress of architecture was sudden and astonishing, during the epoch which will bear his name. London, before his accession to the executive power, was a rich, populous, elegantly built capital, but without a due proportion of prominent structures characterized by architectural grandeur, beauty, or curiosity. In a few years magnificent lines and masses of building were begun and completed; but they were mainly the growth of wealth, vanity, speculation, and peace. Where his influence was directly felt it proved unfortunate. He lavished millions in creating vicious models, and fantastic styles of architecture, and brought into fashion artists without capacity or taste. There was not in his kingdom a more discerning judge of painting; but he had no imagination for the higher class of art. He preferred the exquisite and humorous realities of the Dutch painters to the poetic or historic schools of Italy; and, though a studious collector, he gave no great impulse to native talent. In music he had both taste and skill: he encouraged an art which formed one of his enjoyments; and if his patronage has brought forth no composer of the first order, the cause may exist in some circumstances of national inaptitude.
"It is necessary to go back some centuries for an English king to whom he bears the nearest likeness in ensemble of character. The parallel at first sight may be thought injurious, but the likeness will upon consideration be found striking and complete. George IV. had in his youth the eclat of personal endowment, education, and accomplishment,—of success in the fashionable exercises and graces of his age,—and of that reckless prodigality which obtains popular homage and applause in a prince. Henry VIII. in his youth was one of the most brilliant personages of Europe. A fine person,—the accomplishments of his time in literature and the arts,—the display of gorgeous prodigality,—raised him to a sort of chivalrous rivalry with Francis I. In mental culture he excelled George IV., who owes much of his reputation for capacity and acquirement to an imposing manner, and the eagerness to applaud a prince: stripped of this charm, his ideas and language appeared worse than common when he put them on paper. Both had the same dominant ambition to be distinguished and imitated, as the arbiters of fashion in dress for the costliness, splendour, or novelty of their toilet. Henry VIII. and George IV. surrounded themselves with the men most distinguished for wit and talent, with a remarkable coincidence of motive, as ministering to their vanity or pleasures; but as soon as they became troublesome or useless, both cast them off with the same careless indifference. Henry VIII., it is true, sacrificed to his own caprices, or to court intrigue, the lives of those whom he had chosen for his social familiarity;—whilst George IV. merely turned off his so called friends, and thought of them no more. But such is the difference between barbarism and tyranny on the one side, and civilization and freedom on the other: that which was death in the former, is but court disgrace in the latter. George IV. was not cruel—he had even a certain susceptibility; the spectacle of human suffering revolted him: but suffering to affect him must have been present to his sense. Was Henry VIII. gratuitously cruel? That does not appear. He took no pleasure for itself in shedding blood, and avoided being a witness of it. Had he been obliged to look on whilst Anne Boleyn and Sir Thomas More were bleeding, he probably would have spared them. He sacrificed them to his impulses from mere selfish indifference. With their wives and mistresses Henry VIII. and George IV. were governed by the same self-indulgent despotism—the same animal disgusts. Henry VIII. had six wives, and sent one to the scaffold as the prelude to his marriage with another. George IV. had only one wife, but she suffered the persecutions of six; and if she escaped decapitation or divorce, it was from no failure of inclination or instruments. Henry VIII. was the tyrant of his people, and George IV. was not: yet is there even here a similitude. Both surrendered their understandings to their ministers, upon the condition of subserviency to their personal desires. What George would have been in the age of Henry it might be ungracious to suppose; but it may be asserted that Henry, had he been reserved for the close of the eighteenth century, would have a very different place in opinion and history as a king and as a man,—such are the beneficent, humanizing influences of knowledge, civilization, the spirit of religious tolerance, and laws mutually guarding and guarded by public liberty!"
"About ten o'clock at night, when we were sleeping on our mats, we were suddenly awoke by a great cry of distress from innumerable voices, attended by a horrid clashing and clattering noise, which the hour of the night tended to make more terrific. Before we had time to recover from our surprise, old Pascoe rushed breathless into our hut, and informed us with a trembling voice that 'the sun was dragging the moon across the heavens.' Wondering what could be the meaning of so strange and ridiculous a story, we ran out of the hut half dressed, and we discovered that the moon was totally eclipsed. A number of people were gathered together in our yard, in dreadful apprehension that the world was at an end, and that this was but the 'beginning of sorrows.' We learnt from them that the Mahomedan priests residing in the city, having personified the sun and moon, had told the king and the people that the eclipse was occasioned through the obstinacy and disobedience of the latter luminary. They said that for a long time previously the moon had been displeased with the path she had been compelled to take through the heavens, because it was filled with thorns and briers, and obstructed with a thousand other difficulties; and therefore that, having watched for a favourable opportunity, she had this evening deserted her usual track, and entered into that of the sun. She had not, however, travelled far up the sky, on the forbidden road, before the circumstance was discovered by the sun, who immediately hastened to her in his anger, and punished her dereliction by clothing her in darkness, forcing her back to her own territories, and forbidding her to shed her light upon the earth. This story, whimsical as it may seem, was received with implicit confidence in its truth by the king and queen and most of the people of Boossà; and the cause of the noises which we had heard, and which were still continuing with renewed vehemence, was explained to us by the fact that they were all 'assembled together in the hope of being able to frighten away the sun to his proper sphere, and leave the moon to enlighten the world as at other times.' This is much after the manner of many savage nations.
"While our informant was yet speaking to us, a messenger arrived at our yard from the king, to tell us the above tale, and with an invitation to come to see him immediately. Therefore, slipping on the remainder of our clothes, we followed the man to the residence of his sovereign, from outside of which the cries proceeded, and here we found the king and his timid partner sitting on the ground. Their usual good spirits and cheerful behaviour had forsaken them entirely; both appeared overwhelmed with apprehension, and trembled at every joint. Like all their subjects, in the hurry of fear and the suddenness of the alarm, they had come out of their dwellings half dressed, the head and legs, and the upper part of their persons, being entirely exposed. We soon succeeded in quelling their fears, or at least in diminishing, their apprehension. The king then observed, that neither himself nor the oldest of his subjects recollected seeing but one eclipse of the moon besides the one he was gazing at; that it had occurred exactly when the Falátahs began to be formidable in the country, and that it had forewarned them of all the wars, disasters, and calamities, which subsequently took place.
"We had seated ourselves opposite to the king and queen, and within two or three feet of them, where we could readily observe the moon and the people without inconvenience, and carry on the conversation at the same time. If the royal couple shuddered, with terror on beholding the darkened moon, we were scarcely less affected by the savage gestures of those within a few yards of us and by their repeated cries, so wild, so loud, and so piercing, that an indescribable sensation of horror stole over us, and rendered us almost as nervous as those whom we had come to comfort. The earlier part of the evening had been mild, serene, and remarkably pleasant; the moon had arisen with uncommon lustre, and being at the full, her appearance was extremely delightful. It was the conclusion of the holidays, and many of the people were enjoying the delicious coolness of a serene night, and resting from the laborious exertions of the day; but when the moon became gradually obscured, fear overcame every one. As the eclipse increased, they became more terrified. All ran in great distress to inform their sovereign of the circumstance, for there was not a single cloud to cause so deep a shadow, and they could not comprehend the nature or meaning of an eclipse. The king was as easily frightened as his people, being equally simple and ignorant; he would not therefore suffer them to depart. Numbers sometimes beget courage and confidence, he thought; so he commanded them to remain near his person, and to do all in their power to restore the lost glory of the moon.
"In front of the king's house, and almost close to it, are a few magnificent cotton-trees, round which the soil had been freed from grass, &c., for the celebration of the games. On this spot were the terrified people assembled, with every instrument capable of making a noise which could be procured in the whole town. They had formed themselves into a large treble circle, and continued running round with amazing velocity, crying, shouting, and groaning with all their might. They tossed and flung their heads about, twisted their bodies into all manner of contortions, jumped into the air, stamped with their feet on the ground, and flourished their hands above their heads. No scene in the romance of Robinson Crusoe was so wild and savage as this; and a large wood fire, with a few men spitted and roasting before it, was alone wanting to render it complete! Little boys and girls were outside the ring, running to and fro, clashing empty calabashes against each other, and crying bitterly; groups of men were blowing on trumpets, which produced a harsh and discordant sound; some were employed in beating old drums; others again were blowing on bullock's horns; and in the short intervals between the rapid succession of all these fiend-like noises, was heard one more dismal than the rest, proceeding from an iron tube, accompanied by the clinking of chains. Indeed, everything that could increase the uproar was put in requisition on this memorable occasion; nor did it cease till midnight, when the eclipse had passed away. Never have we witnessed so extraordinary a scene as this. The diminished light, when the eclipse was complete, was just sufficient to enable us to distinguish the various groups of people, and contributed in no small degree to render the scene still more imposing. If an European, a stranger to Africa, were to be placed on a sudden in the midst of the terror-struck people, he would imagine himself to be among a legion of demons, holding a revel over a fallen spirit; so peculiarly unearthly wild, and horrifying was the appearance of the dancing group, and the clamour which they made. It was perhaps fortunate for us that we had an almanac with us, which foretold the eclipse; for although we neglected to inform the king of this circumstance, we were yet enabled to tell him and his people the exact time of its disappearance. This succeeded in some measure in suppressing their fears, for they would believe anything we might tell them; and perhaps, also, it has procured for us a lasting reputation 'and a name.' 'Oh,' said the king, 'there will be sorrow and crying this night from Wowow to Yàoorie. The people will have no one to comfort or condole with them; they will fancy this eclipse to be the harbinger of something very dreadful; and they will be in distress and trouble till the moon shall have regained her brightness.' It was nearly one o'clock when we left the king and queen, to return to our hut; everything was then calm and silent, and we lay down to rest in peace."