DAY BY THE FIRE. 



4^- 

DAY BY THE FIRE; 

&n& ©tfjer papers, 

HITHERTO UNCOLLECTED. 

BY 

^L-- •- IWujl LEIGH V HUNT. 

" Matchless as a fireside companion." — Elia. 



47 



BOSTON: 

ROBERTS BROTHERS. 

1870. 



of 

) &7<> 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the 
District of Massachusetts. 



CAMBRIDGE I 
PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 




JHE papers here first collected were originally 
published in "The Reflector," "The Ex- 
aminer," "The Indicator,"* "The London 
Journal," " The Monthly Chronicle," and 
" The New Monthly Magazine ; " and were written at 
widely different periods of the author's life — in his early 
manhood, middle life, and old age. 

If there is any intelligent person who professes not to 
like Leigh Hunt, it is probably for precisely the same rea- 
son that Charles Lamb professed not to like the W s, 

— because he did not know them. For Leigh Hunt is one 
of the most delightful of authors, and all who read him 
admire him for his scholarly tastes and literary amenities, 
his nimble wit, bright fancy, and subtle perception of 
beauty ; and love him for his glad heart and sunny dis- 
position, his large and generous sympathies, and noble, 
Christian faith in the innate goodness of man. 

This volume of essays and sketches, — written in the 
author's pleasant, characteristic manner, and full of what 
Hawthorne happily calls "his unmeasured poetry," — will, 
I hope, be acceptable to the old admirers of Leigh Hunt, 
and introduce him to many new and appreciative readers. 

J. E. B. 

Chelsea, November 18, 1869. 



* The little weekly periodical, from which the well-known delightful work 
of the same name is a selection. 



Something not to be replaced would be struck out of the gentler literature 
of our century, could the mind of Leigh Hunt cease to speak to us in a book. 

Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton. 

Into whatever he has written he has put a living soul ; and much of what 
he has produced is brilliant either with wit and humor, or with tenderness and 
beauty. George L. Craik. 

Leigh Hunt seems the very opposite of Hazlitt. He loves everything, he 
catches the sunny side of everything, and, excepting that he has a few polemical 
antipathies, finds everything beautiful. 

Henry Crabb Robinson. 

He is, in truth, one of the pleasantest writers of his time, — easy, colloquial, 
genial, human, full of fine fancies and verbal niceties, possessing a loving if not 
a " learned spirit,'* with hardly a spice of bitterness in his composition. 

E. P. Whipple. 

I have been reading some of Leigh Hunt's works lately, and am surprised 
at the freshness, and sweetness, and Christian, not lax, spirit of human benev- 
olence and toleration which existed in the heart of one who was the contempo- 
rary, and even colleague, of Byron. 

Frederick W. Robertson. 



CONTENTS. 



Prefatory Note 3 

A Day by the Fire 13 

On Commonplace People 42 

A Popular View of the Heathen Mythology ... 47 
On the Genii of the Greeks and Romans, and the 

Spirit that was said to have waited on Socrates . 59 

On the Genii of Antiquity and the Poets 70 

Fairies Si 

Genii and Fairies of the East, the Arabian Nights, &c. 124 

The Satyr of Mythology and the Poets 155 

The Nymphs of Antiquity and of the Poets .... 170 

The Sirens and Mermaids of the Poets 1S8 

Tritons and Men of the Sea 206 

On Giants, Ogres, and Cyclops 231 

Gog and Magog, and the Wall of Dhoulkarnein . . 252 

Aeronautics, Real and Fabulous 260 

On the Talking of Nonsense 284 

A Rainy Day 292 

The True Enjoyment of Splendor 299 



12 CONTENTS. 

Retrospective Review — Men Wedded to Books — The 

Contest between the Nightingale and Musician . 302 

The Murdered Pump 315 

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 319 

New Year's Gifts 326 

Sale of the late Mr. West's Pictures 33 1 

Translation from Milton into Welsh 334 

The Bull-Fight; or, The Story of Don Alphonso de 

Melos and the Jeweller's Daughter 343 

Love and Will 353 



A DAY BY THE FIRE. 




AM one of those that delight in a fireside, and 
can enjoy it without even the help of a cat or 
a tea-kettle. To cats, indeed, I have an aver- 
sion, as animals that only affect a sociality, 
without caring a jot for any thing but their 
own luxury ; * and my tea-kettle, I frankly confess, has 
long been displaced, or rather dismissed, by a bronze-col- 
ored and graceful urn ; though, between ourselves, I am 
not sure that I have gained any thing by the exchange.. 
Cowper, it is true, talks of the " bubbling and loud-hissing 
urn," which — 

" Throws up a steamy column ; " 

but there was something so primitive and unaffected, so 
warm-hearted and unpresuming, in the tea-kettle, — its 
song was so much more cheerful and continued, and it 
kept the water so hot and comfortable as long as you 
wanted it, — that I sometimes feel as if I had sent off a 
good, plain, faithful old friend, who had but one wish to 
serve me, for a superficial, smooth-faced upstart of a fel- 
low, who, after a little promising and vaporing, grows cold 



* This was written in the early days of Leigh Hunt's literary career ; but 
years after, when he was older and wiser, he did full and complete justice to the 
familiar household cat, in an admirable paper, entitled, "The Cat by the 
Fire," published in "The Seer." — Ed. 



14 A DAY BY THE FIRE. 

and contemptuous, and thinks himself bound to do noth- 
ing but stand on a rug and have his person admired by the 
circle. To this admiration, in fact, I have been obliged to 
resort, in order to make myself think well of my bargain, 
if possible ; and, accordingly, I say to myself every now 
and then during the tea, " A pretty look with it, — that 
urn ; " or, " It's wonderful what a taste the Greeks had ; " 
or, " The eye might have a great many enjoyments, if peo- 
ple would but look after forms and shapes." In the mean 
while, the urn leaves off its "bubbling and hissing," — but 
then there is such an air with it ! My tea is made of cold 
water, — - but then, the Greeks were such a nation ! 

If there is any one thing that can reconcile me to the 
loss of my kettle, more than another, it is that my fire has 
been left to itself: it has full room to breathe and to blaze, 
and I can poke it as I please. What recollections does 
that idea excite ? — Poke it as I please ! Think, benevo- 
lent reader, — think of the pride and pleasure of having 
in your hand that awful, but at the same time artless, 
weapon, a poker, — of putting it into the proper bar, gently 
levering up the coals, and seeing the instant and bustling 
flame above ! * To what can I compare that moment ? 
that sudden, empyreal enthusiasm ? that fiery expression 
of vivification ? that ardent acknowledgment, as it were, 
of the care and kindliness of the operator ? Let me con- 
sider a moment : it is very odd ; I was always reckoned a 
lively hand at a simile ; but language and combination 
absolutely fail me here. If it is like any tiling, it must be 
something beyond every thing in beauty and life. Oh, I 
have it now : think, reader, if you are one of those who 



* Charles Lamb's friend and school-mate, Le Grice, wrote a book on the 
" Art of Poking the Fire." — Ed. 



A DAY BY THE FIRE. 



15 



can muster up sufficient sprightliness to engage in a game 
of forfeits, — on Twelfth night, for instance, — think of a 
blooming girl who is condemned to "open her mouth and 
shut her eyes, and see what heaven," in the shape of a 
mischievous young fellow, " will send her." Her mouth 
is opened accordingly, the fire of her eyes is dead, her 
face assumes a doleful air ; up walks the aforesaid heaven 
or mischievous young fellow (young Ouranos, Hesiod 
would have called him), and, instead of a piece of paper, a 
thimble, or a cinder, claps into her mouth a peg of orange 
or a long slice of citron ; then her eyes above instantly 
light up again, the smiles wreath about, the sparklings 
burst forth, and all is warmth, brilliancy, and delight. I 
am aware that this simile is not perfect ; but if it would 
do for an epic poem, as I think it might, after Virgil's 
whipping-tops and Homer's jackasses and black-pud- 
dings, the reader, perhaps, will not quarrel with it. 

But to describe my feelings in an orderly manner, I 
must request the reader to go with me through a day's 
enjoyments by the fireside. It is part of my business to 
look about for helps to reflection ; and, for this reason, 
among many others, I indulge myself in keeping a good 
fire from morning till night. I have also a reflective turn 
for an easy chair, and a very thinking attachment to com- 
fort in general. But of this as I proceed. Imprimis, 
then : the morning is clear and cold ; time, half-past sev- 
en ; scene, a breakfast-room. Some persons, by the by, 
prefer a thick and rainy morning, with a sobbing wind, 
pnd the clatter of pattens along the streets; but I confess, 
for my own part, that being a sedentary person, and too 
apt to sin against the duties of exercise, I have somewhat 
too sensitive a consciousness of bad weather, and feel a 
heavy sky go over me like a feather-bed, or rather like a 



1 6 A DAY BY THE FIRE. 

huge brush which rubs all my nap the wrong way. I am 
growing better in this respect, and, by the help of a stout 
walk at noon, and getting, as it were, fairly into a favorite 
poet and a warm fire of an evening, begin to manage a 
cloud or an east wind tolerably well ; but still, for perfec- 
tion's sake on the present occasion, I must insist upon my 
clear morning, and will add to it, if the reader pleases, a 
little hoar-frost upon the windows, a bird or two coming 
after the crumbs, and the light smoke from the neighboring 
chimneys brightening up into the early sunshine. Even 
the dustman's bell is not unpleasant from its association ; 
and there is something absolutely musical in the clash of 
the milk-pails suddenly unyoked, and the ineffable, ad libi- 
tum note that follows. 

The waking epicure rises with an elastic anticipation ; 
enjoys the freshening cold water which endears what is to 
come ; and even goes placidly through the villanous scrap- 
ing process which we soften down into the level and lawny 
appellation of shaving. He then hurries down stairs, 
rubbing his hands, and sawing the sharp air through his 
teeth ; and, as he enters the breakfast-room, sees his old 
companion glowing through the bars, the life of the apart- 
ment, and wanting only his friendly hand to be lightened 
a little, and enabled to shoot up into dancing brilliancy. 
(I find I am getting into a quantity of epithets here, and 
must rein in my enthusiasm.) What need I say? The 
poker is applied, and would be so whether required or 
not, for it is impossible to resist the sudden ardor inspired 
by that sight ? The use of the poker, on first seeing one's 
fire, is as natural as shaking hands with a friend. At that 
movement a hundred little sparkles fly up from the coal- 
dust that falls within, while from the masses themselves, a 
roaring flame mounts aloft with a deep and fitful sound as 



A DAY BY THE FIRE. 1 7 

of a shaken carpet, — epithets again ; I must recur to 
poetry at once : — 

Then shine the bars, the cakes in smoke aspire, 

A sudden glory bursts from all the fire. 

The conscious wight, rejoicing in the heat, 

Rubs the blithe knees, and toasts th' alternate feet* 

The utility, as well as beauty, of the fire during breakfast, 
need not be pointed out to the most unphlogistic observer. 
A person would rather be shivering at any time of the day 
than at that of his first rising ; the transition would be too 
unnatural, — he is not prepared for it, as Barnardine says, 
when he objects to being hanged. If you eat plain bread 
and butter with your tea, it is fit that your moderation 
should be rewarded with a good blaze ; and if you indulge 
in hot rolls or toast, you will hardly keep them to their 
warmth without it, particularly if you read ; and then, if 
you take in a newspaper, what a delightful change from 
the wet, raw, dabbing fold of paper when you first touch 
it, to the dry, crackling, crisp superficies which, with a 
skilful spat of the finger-nails at its upper end, stands at 
once in your hand, and looks as if it said, " Come read 
me." Nor is it the look of the newspaper only which the 
fire must render complete : it is the interest of the ladies 
who may happen to form part of your family, — of your 
wife in particular, if you have one, — to avoid the niggling 
and pinching aspect of cold ; it takes away the harmony 
of her features, and the graces of her behavior ; while, on 
the other hand, there is scarcely a more interesting sight 
in the world than that of a neat, delicate, good-humored 



* Parody upon part of the well-known description of night, with which 
Pope has swelled out the passage in Homer, and the faults of which have long 
been appreciated by general readers. 

2 



iS A DAY BY THE FIRE. 

female presiding at your breakfast-table, with hands taper- 
ing out of her long sleeves, eyes with a touch of Sir Peter 
Lely in them, and a face set in a little oval frame of mus- 
lin tied under the chin, and retaining a certain tinge of the 
pillow without its cloudiness. This is, indeed, the finish- 
ing grace of a fireside, though it is impossible to have it 
at all times, and perhaps not always politic, — especially 
for the studious. 

From breakfast to dinner, the quantity and quality of 
enjoyment depend very much on the nature of one's con- 
cerns ; and occupation of any kind, if we pursue it prop- 
erly, will hinder us from paying a critical attention to the 
fireside. It is sufficient, if our employments do not take 
us away from it, or at least from the genial warmth of a 
room which it adorns, — unless, indeed, we are enabled to 
have recourse to exercise ; and in that case, I am not so 
unjust as to deny that walking or riding has its merits, and 
that the general glow they diffuse throughout the frame 
has something in it so extremely pleasurable and encour- 
aging ; nay, I must not scruple to confess that, without 
some preparation of this kind, the enjoyment of the fire- 
side, humanly speaking, is not absolutely perfect, as I have 
latterly been convinced by a variety of incontestable argu- 
ments in the shape of headaches, rheumatisms, mote-haunt- 
ed eyes, and other logical appeals to one's feelings which 
are in great use with physicians. Supposing, therefore, the 
morning to be passed, and the due portion of exercise to 
have been taken, the firesider fixes rather an early hour 
for dinner, particularly in the winter-time ; for he has not 
only been early at breakfast, but there are two luxurious 
intervals to enjoy between dinner and the time of candles : 
one that supposes a party round the fire with their wine 
and fruit ; the other, the hour of twilight, of which it has 



A DAY BY THE FIRE. 1 9 

been reasonably doubted whether it is not the most luxu- 
rious point of time which a fireside can present ; but opin- 
ions will naturally be divided on this as on all other 
subjects, and every degree of pleasure depends upon so 
many contingencies, and upon such a variety of associa- 
tions, induced by habit and opinion, that I should be as 
unwilling as I am unable to decide on the matter. This, 
however, is certain, that no true firesider can dislike an 
hour so composing to his thoughts, and so cherishing 
to his whole faculties ; and it is equally certain that 
he will be little inclined to protract the dinner beyond 
what he can help, for if ever a fireside becomes unpleas- 
ant, it is during that gross and pernicious prolongation 
of eating and drinking, to which this latter age has given 
itself up, and which threatens to make the rising genera- 
tion regard a meal of repletion as the ultimatum of enjoy- 
ment. 

The inconvenience to which I allude is owing to the 
way in which we sit at dinner, for the persons who have 
their backs to the fire are liable to be scorched, while," at 
the same time, they render the persons opposite them 
liable to be frozen : so that the fire becomes uncomfortable 
to the former, and tantalizing to the latter ; and thus three 
evils are produced, of a most absurd and scandalous na- 
ture : in the first place, the fireside loses a degree of its 
character, and awakens feelings the very reverse of what 
it should ; secondly, the position of the back towards it is 
a neglect and affront, which it becomes it to resent ; and 
finally, its beauties, its proffered kindness, and its sprightly 
social effect are at once cut off from the company by the 
interposition of those invidious and idle surfaces called 
screens. This abuse is the more ridiculous, inasmuch as 
the remedy is so easy : for we have nothing to do but to 



20 A DAY BY THE FIRE. 

use semicircular dining-tables, with the base unoccupied 
towards the fireplace, and the whole annoyance vanishes at 
once ; the master or mistress might preside in the middle, 
as was the custom with the Romans, and thus propriety 
would be observed, while everybody had the sight and 
benefit of the fire ; not to mention that, by this fashion, 
the table might be brought nearer to it, that the servants 
would have better access to the dishes, and that screens, 
if at all necessary, might be turned to better purpose as 
a general enclosure instead of a separation. 

But I hasten from dinner, according to notice ; and can- 
not but observe that, if you have a small set of visitors 
who enter into your feelings on this head, there is no 
movement so pleasant as a general one from the table to 
the fireside, each person taking his glass with him, and a 
small, slim-legged table being introduced into the circle 
for the purpose of holding the wine, and perhaps a poet 
or two, a glee-book, or a lute. If this practice should be- 
come general among those who know how to enjoy luxur- 
ies in such temperance as not to destroy conversation, it 
would soon gain for us another social advantage, by put- 
ting an end to the barbarous custom of sending away the 
ladies after dinner, — a gross violation of those chivalrous 
graces of life, for which modern times are so highly in- 
debted to the persons whom they are pleased to term 
Gothic. And here I might digress, with no great impro- 
priety, to show the snug notions that were entertained by 
the knights and damsels of old in all particulars relating 
to domestic enjoyment, especially in the article of mixed 
company ; but I must not quit the fireside, and will only 
observe that, as the ladies formed its chief ornament, so 
they constituted its most familiar delight. 



A DAY BY THE FIRE. 2 1 

e minstralcie, the service at the : 
The grete yeftes to the most and les 
The riche array of Theseus' paleis, 
Ne who sate first, ne last upon the deis, 
What ladies fairest ben, or best dancing, 
Or which of hem can carole best or sing, 
Ne who most felingly speketh of love ; 
What haukis sitten on the perch above, 

houndis liggen on the flour adoun. — 
Of ail this now make I no mencioun.*' 

JCER. 

The word snug, however, reminds me that amidst all 
the languages, ancient and modern, it belongs exclusively 
to our own ; and that nothing but a want of ideas sug- 

:ed by that soul-wrapping epithet could have induced 
certain frigid connoisseurs to tax our climate with want of 
genius. — supposing, forsooth, that because we have not 
the sunshine of the Southern countries, we have no other 
warmth for our veins, and that, because our skies are not 
hot enough to keep us in doors, we have no excursive:: 
of wit and range of imagination. It seems to me that a 
great deal of good argument in refutation of these calum- 

- has been wasted upon Monsieur du Bos and the Herr 
Winckelman : the one a narrow-minded, pedantic French- 
man, to whom the freedom of our genius was incompre- 
hensible ; the other, an Italianized German, who being 
suddenly transported into the sunshine, began frisking 
about with urn ivacity. and concluded that nobody- 

could be great or bewitching out of the pale of his advan- 
tages. Milton, it is true, in his " Paradise Lost.'' ex- 
presses an injudicious apprehension lest — 

" An age too late, or cold 
Climate, or years, damp his intended wi: - 

but the very complaint which foreign critics bring against 
him, as well as Shakespeare,, is that his wing was not 



22 A DAY BY THE FIRE. 

damped enough, — that it was too daring and unsubdued ; 
and he not only avenges himself nobly of his fears by a 
flight beyond all Italian poetry, but shows, like the rest of 
his countrymen, that he could turn the coldness of his 
climate into a new species of inspiration, as I shall pres- 
ently make manifest. Not to mention, however, that the 
Greeks and Romans, Homer in particular, saw a great 
deal worse weather than these critics would have us imag- 
ine ; the question is, would the poets themselves have 
thought as they did ? Would Tyrtaeus, the singer of 
patriotism, have complained of being an Englishman ? 
Would Virgil, who delighted in husbandry, and whose 
first wish was to be a philosopher, have complained of 
living in our pastures, and being the countryman of New- 
ton ? Would Homer, the observer of character, the pan- 
egyrist of freedom, the painter of storms, of landscapes, 
and of domestic tenderness, — aye, and the lover of snug 
house-room and a good dinner, — would he have com- 
plained of our humors, of our liberty, of our shifting 
skies, of our ever-green fields, our conjugal happiness, 
our firesides, and our hospitality ? I only wish the reader 
and I had him at this party of ours after dinner, with a 
lyre on his knee, and a goblet, as he says, to drink as he 
pleased, — 

"Piein, hote thumos anogoi." 

Odyss. lib. viii. v. 70. 

I am much mistaken if our blazing fire and our freedom 
of speech would not give him a warmer inspiration than 
ever he felt in the person of Demodocus, even though 
placed on a lofty seat, and regaled with slices of brawn 
from a prince's table. The ancients, in fact, were by no 
means deficient in enthusiasm at sight of a good fire ; and 
it is to be presumed that, if they had enjoyed such firesides 



A DAY BY THE FIRE. 



2 3 



as ours, they would have acknowledged the advantages 
which our genius presents in winter, and almost been 
ready to conclude, with old Cleveland, that the sun him- 
self was nothing but — 

" Heaven's coalery ; — 
A coal-pit rampant, or a mine on flame." 

The ancient hearth was generally in the middle of the 
room, the ceiling of which let out the smoke ; it was sup- 
plied with charcoal or faggots, and consisted sometimes 
of a brazier or chafing-dish (the focus of the Romans), 
sometimes of a mere elevation or altar (the Sana or eaxapa 
of the Greeks). We may easily imagine the smoke and 
annoyance which this custom must have occasioned, — 
not to mention the bad complexions which are caught by 
hanging over a fuming-pan, as the faces of the Spanish la- 
dies bear melancholy witness. The stoves, however, in use 
with the countrymen of Mons. du Bos and Winckelman 
are, if possible, still worse, having a dull, suffocating ef- 
fect, with nothing to recompense the eye. The abhorrence 
of them which Ariosto expresses in one of his satires, 
when, justifying his refusal to accompany Cardinal d'Este 
into Germany, he reckons up the miseries of its winter- 
time, may have led M. Winckelman to conclude that all 
the Northern resources against cold were equally intolera- 
ble to an Italian genius ; but Count Alfieri, a poet, at least 
as warmly inclined as Ariosto, delighted in England ; and 
the great romancer himself, in another of his satires, 
makes a commodious fireplace the climax of his wishes 
with regard to lodging. In short, what did Horace say, 
or rather what did he not say, of the raptures of in-door 
sociality, — Horace, who knew how to enjoy sunshine in 
all its luxury, and who nevertheless appears to have 
snatched a finer inspiration from absolute frost and snow ? 



24 A DAY BY THE FIRE. 

I need not quote all those beautiful little invitations he 
sent to his acquaintances, telling one of them that a neat 
room and a sparkling fire were waiting for him ; describ- 
ing to another the smoke springing out of the roof in 
curling volumes, and even congratulating his friends in 
general on the opportunity of enjoyment afforded them by 
a stormy day ; but, to take leave at once of these frigid 
connoisseurs, hear with what rapture he describes one of 
those friendly parties, in which he passed his winter even- 
ings, and which only wanted the finish of our better mor- 
ality and our patent fireplaces, to resemble the one I am 
now fancying. 

" Vides. ut alta stet nive candidum 
Soracte, nee jam sustineant onus 
Silvae laborantes, geluque 
Flumina constiterint acuto : 

Dissolve frigus ligna super foco 
Large reponens, atque benignius 
Deprome quadrimum Sabina, 
O Thaliarche, merum diota. 

Permitte Divis caetera ; . . 



Donee virenti canities abest 
Morosa. Nunc et campus, et areae, 
Lenesque sub noctem susurri 
Composite repetantur hora ; 

Nunc et latentis proditor intimo 
Gratus pnellae risus ab angulo, 
Pignusque dereptum lacertis 
Aut digito male pertinaci." 

Lib. I. Od. 9. 

' Behold yon mountain's hoary height 

Made higher with new mounts of snow ; 
Again behold the winter's weight 
Oppress the lab'ring woods below, 



A DAY BY THE FIRE. 25 

And streams with icy fetters bound 
Benumb'd and crampt to solid ground. 

With well-heap'd logs dissolve the cold, 

And feed the genial hearth with fires, 
Produce the wine that makes us bold, 

And sprightly wit and mirth inspires. 
For what hereafter shall betide, 
Jove, if 'tis worth his care, provide. 



Th' appointed hour of promis'd bliss, 

The pleasing whisper in the dark, 
The half unwilling, willing kiss, 

The laugh that guides thee to the mark, 
When the kind nymph would coyness feign, 
And hides but to be found again, 
These, these are joys the gods for youth ordain." 

Dryden. 

The Roman poet, however, though he occasionally 
boasts of his temperance, is too apt to lose sight of the 
intellectual part of his entertainment, or at least to make 
the sensual part predominate over the intellectual. Now, 
I reckon the nicety of social enjoyment to consist in the 
reverse; and, after partaking with Homer of his plenti- 
ful boiled and roast, and with Horace of his flower- 
crowned wine-parties, the poetical reader must come at 
last to us barbarians of the North for the perfection of 
fireside festivity, — that is to say, for the union of practi- 
cal philosophy with absolute merriment, — for light meals 
and unintoxicating glasses ; for refection that administers 
to enjoyment, instead of repletions that at once constitute 
and contradict it. I am speaking, of course, not of our 
commonplace eaters and drinkers, but of our classical 
arbiters of pleasure, as contrasted with those of other 
countries ; these, it is observable, have all delighted in 
Horace, and copied him as far as their tastes were con- 



26 A DAY BY THE FIRE, 

genial ; but, without relaxing a jot of their real comfort, 
how pleasingly does their native philosophy temper and 
adorn the freedom of their conviviality, — feeding the fire, 
as it were, with an equable fuel that hinders it alike from 
scorching and from going out, and, instead of the artificial 
enthusiasm of a heated body, enabling them to enjoy the 
healthful and unclouded predominance of a sparkling in- 
telligence ! It is curious, indeed, to see how distinct fiom 
all excess are their freest and heartiest notions of relaxa- 
tion. Thus our old poet, Drayton, reminding his favorite 
companion of a fireside meeting, expressly unites freedom 
with moderation : — 

" My dearly loved friend, how oft have we 
In winter evenings, meaning to be free, 
To some well-chosen place us'd to retire, 
And there with moderate meat, and wine, and fire, 
Have pass'd the hours contentedly in chat, 
Now talk'd of this, and then dist:ours'd of that, — 
Spoke our own verses 'twixt ourselves, — if not 
Other men's lines, which we by chance had got.'* 
Epistle to Henry Reynolds, Esq., of Poets and Poe^y. 

And Milton, in his " Sonnet to Cyriack Skinner," one of 
the turns of which is plainly imitated from Horace, par- 
ticularly qualifies a strong invitation to merriment by an- 
ticipating w T hat Horace would always drive from your 
reflections, — the feelings of the day after : — 

" Cyriack, whose Grandsire, on the royal bench 

Of British Themis, with no mean applause 

Pronounc'd, and in his volumes taught, our laws, 
Which others at their bar so often wrench ; 
To-day deep thoughts resolve ivith me to drench 

In mirth, that, after, no repenting draws. 

Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause, 
And what the Swede intends, and what the French 
To measure life learn thou betimes, and know 

Tow'rd solid good what leads the nearest way • 



A DAY BY THE FIRE. 27 

For other things mild Heav'n a time ordains, 
And disapproves that care, though wise in show, 
That with superfluous burden loads the day, 
And when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains." 

But the execution of this sonnet is not to be compared in 
gracefulness and a finished sociality with the one addressed 
to his friend Lawrence, which, as it presents us with the 
acme of elegant repast, may conclude the hour which I 
have just been describing, and conduct us complacently 
to our twilight, — 

" Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son, 

Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire, 

Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire 
Help waste a sullen day, — what may be won 
From the hard season gaining ? Time will run 

On smoother, till Favonius re-inspire 

The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire 
The lily and rose, that neither sow'd nor spun, 
What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, 

Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise 
To hear the lute well-touch'd, and artful voice 

Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air? 

He who of these delights can judge, and spare 
To interpose them oft, is not unwise." 

But twilight comes : and the lover of the fireside, for 
the perfection of the moment, is now alone. He was 
reading a minute or two ago, and for some time was un- 
conscious of the increasing dusk, till, on looking up, he 
perceived the objects out of doors deepening into massy 
outline, while the sides of his fireplace began to reflect the 
light of the flames, and the shadow of himself and his 
chair fidgeted with huge obscurity on the wall. Still wish- 
ing to read, he pushed himself nearer and nearer the win- 
dow, and continued fixing on his book till he happened to 
take another glance out of doors, and on returning to it, 
could make out nothing. He therefore lays it aside, and 



28 A DAY BY THE FIRE. 

restoring his chair to the fireplace, seats himself right 
before it in a reclining posture, his feet apart upon the 
fender, his eyes bent down towards the grate, his arms on 
the chair's elbows, one hand hanging down, and the palm 
of the other turned up and presented to the fire, — not to 
keep it from him, for there is no glare or scorch about 
it, but to intercept and have a more kindly feel of its 
genial warmth. It is thus that the greatest and wisest of 
mankind have sat and meditated ; a homely truism, per- 
haps, but such a one as we are apt enough to forget. We 
talk of going to Athens or to Rome to see the precise ob- 
jects which the Greeks and Romans beheld ; and forget 
that the moon, which may be looking upon us at the mo- 
ment, is the same identical planet that enchanted Homer 
and Virgil, and that has been contemplated and admired 
by all the great men and geniuses that have existed : by 
Socrates and Plato in Athens, by the Antonines in Rome, 
by the Alfreds, the 1' Hospitals, the Miltons, Newtons, and 
Shakespeares. In like manner, we are anxious to dis- 
cover how these great men and poets appeared in com- 
mon, what habits they loved, in what way they talked and 
meditated, nay, in what postures they delighted to sit, and 
whether they indulged in the same tricks and little com- 
forts that we do. Look at nature and their works, and we 
shall see that they did ; and that, when we act naturally 
and think earnestly, we are reflecting their commonest 
habits to the life. Thus we have seen Horace talking of 
his blazing hearth and snug accommodations like the jol- 
liest of our acquaintances ; and thus we may safely imag- 
ine that Milton was in some such attitude as I have 
described, when he sketched that enchanting little picture 
which beats all the cabinet portraits that have been pro- 
duced, — 



A DAY BY THE FIRE. 29 

" Or if the air will not permit, 
Some still removed place will fit, 
Where glowing embers through the room 
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom, 
Far from all resort of mirth, 
Save the cricket on the hearth, 
Or the bellman's drowsy charm 
To bless the doors from nightly harm." 

But to attend to our fireside. The evening is beginning 
to gather in. The window, which presents a large face of 
watery gray, intersected by strong lines, is imperceptibly 
becoming darker; and as that becomes darker, the fire 
assumes a more glowing presence. The contemplatist 
keeps his easy posture, absorbed in his fancies ; and every 
thing around him is still and serene. The stillness would 
even ferment in his ear, and whisper, as it were, of what 
the air contained ; but a minute coil, just sufficient to hin- 
der that busier silence, clicks in the baking coal, while 
every now and then the light ashes shed themselves be- 
low, or a stronger, but still a gentle, flame flutters up with 
a gleam over the chimney. At length, the darker objects in 
the room mingle ; the gleam of the fire streaks with a rest- 
less light the edges of the furniture, and reflects itself in 
the blackening window ; while his feet take a gentle move 
on the fender, and then settle again, and his face comes 
out of the general darkness, earnest even in indolence, 
and pale in the very ruddiness of what it looks upon. 
This is the only time, perhaps, at which sheer idleness is 
salutary and refreshing. How observed with the smallest 
effort is every trick and aspect of the fire ! A coal falling 
in, a fluttering flame, a miniature mockery of a flash of 
lightning, — nothing escapes the eye and the imagination. 
Sometimes a little flame appears at the corner of the grate 
like a quivering spangle ; sometimes it swells out at top 



30 A DAY BY THE FIRE. 

into a restless and brief lambency ; anon it is seen only 
by a light beneath the grate, or it curls around one of the 
bars like a tongue, or darts out with a spiral thinness and 
a sulphurous and continued puffing as from a reed. The 
glowing coals meantime exhibit the shifting forms of hills 
and vales and gulfs, — of fiery Alps, whose heat is unin- 
habitable even by spirit, or of black precipices, from which 
swart fairies seem about to spring away on sable wings ; 
then heat and fire are forgotten, and walled towns appear, 
and figures of unknown animals, and far-distant countries 
scarcely to be reached by human journey ; then coaches 
and camels, and barking dogs as large as either, and forms 
that combine every shape and suggest every fancy, till at 
last, the ragged coals tumbling together, reduce the vision 
to chaos, and the huge profile of a gaunt and grinning face 
seems to make a jest of all that has passed. 

During these creations of the eye, the thought roves 
about into a hundred abstractions, some of them sug- 
gested by the fire, some of them suggested by that sugges- 
tion, some of them arising from the general sensation of 
comfort and composure, contrasted with whatever the 
world affords of evil, or dignified by high wrought medita- 
tion on whatsoever gives hope to benevolence and inspira- 
tion to wisdom. The philosopher at such moments plans 
his Utopian schemes, and dreams of happy certainties 
which he cannot prove ; the lover, happier and more cer- 
tain, fancies his mistress with him, unobserved and confid- 
ing, his arm round her waist, her head upon his shoulder, 
and earth and heaven contained in that sweet possession ; 
the poet, thoughtful as the one, and ardent as the other, 
springs off at once above the world, treads every turn of 
the harmonious spheres, darts up with gleaming wings 
through the sunshine of a thousand systems, and stops 



A DAY BY THE FIRE. 3 1 

not till he has found a perfect paradise, whose fields are 
of young roses, and whose air is music, whose waters are 
the liquid diamond, whose light is as radiance through 
crystal, whose dwellings are laurel bowers, whose language 
is poetry, whose inhabitants are congenial souls, and to 
enter the very verge of whose atmosphere strikes beauty 
on the face, and felicity on the heart. Alas, that flights so 
lofty should ever be connected with earth by threads as 
slender as they are long, and that the least twitch of the 
most commonplace hand should be able to snatch down 
the viewless wanderer to existing comforts ! The entrance 
of a single candle dissipates at once the twilight and the 
sunshine, and the ambitious dreamer is summoned to his 
tea! 

" Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, 
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, 
And, while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn 
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups 
That cheer, but not inebriate, wait on each, 
So let us welcome peaceful evening in." 

Never was snug hour more feelingly commenced ! Cow- 
per was not a great poet ; his range was neither wide nor 
lofty ; but such as it was, he had it completely to himself, 
— he is the poet of quiet life and familiar observation. 
The fire, we see, is now stirred, and becomes very differ- 
ent from the one we have just left ; it puts on its liveliest 
aspect in order to welcome those to whom the tea-table is 
a point of meeting, and it is the business of the firesider 
to cherish this aspect for the remainder of the evening. 
How light and easy the coals look ! How ardent is the 
roominess within the bars ! How airily do the Volumes 
of smoke course each other up the chimney, like so many 
fantastic and indefinite spirits, while the eye in vain en- 



32 A DAY BY THE FIRE. 

deavors to accompany any one of them ! The flames are 
not so fierce as in the morning, but still they are active 
and powerful ; and if they do not roar up the chimney, 
they make a constant and playful noise, that is extremely 
to the purpose. Here they come out at top with a leafy 
swirl ; there they dart up spirally and at once ; there 
they form a lambent assemblage that shifts about on its 
own ground, and is continually losing and regaining its 
vanishing members. I confess I take particular delight 
in seeing a good blaze at top ; and my impatience to pro- 
duce it will sometimes lead me into great rashness in the 
article of poking ; that is to say, I use the poker at the 
top instead of the middle of the fire, and go probing it 
about in search of a flame. A lady of my acquaintance, 
— "near and dear," as they say in Parliament, — will tell 
me of this fault twenty times in a day, and every time so 
good-humoredly that it is mere want of generosity in me 
not to amend it ; but somehow or other I do not. The 
consequence is that, after a momentary ebullition of blaze, 
the fire becomes dark and sleepy, and is in danger of go- 
ing out. It is like a boy at school in the hands of a bad 
master, who, thinking him dull, and being impatient to 
render him brilliant, beats him about the head and ears 
till he produces the very evil he would prevent. But, on 
the present occasion, I forbear to use the poker ; there is 
no need of it : every thing is comfortable, — every thing 
snug and sufficient. How equable is the warmth around 
us ! How cherishing this rug to one's feet ! How com- 
placent the cup at one's lip ! What a fine broad light is 
diffused from the fire over the circle, gleaming in the urn 
and the polished mahogany, bringing out the white gar- 
ments of the ladies, and giving a poetic warmth to their 
face and hair! I need not mention all the good things 



A DAY BY THE FIRE. 33 

that are said at tea, — still less the gallant. Good humor 
never has an audience more disposed to think it wit, nor 
gallantry an hour of service more blameless and elegant. 
Ever since tea has been known, its clear and gentle 
powers of inspiration have been acknowledged, from Wal- 
ler paying his court at the circle of Catharine of Braganza, 
to Dr. Johnson receiving homage at the parties of Mrs. 
Thrale. The former, in his lines, upon hearing it " com- 
mended by her Majesty," ranks it at once above myrtle- 
and laurel, and her Majesty, of course, agreed with 
him : — 

" Venus her myrtle, Phoebus has his bays ; 
Tea both excels, which she vouchsafes to praise. 
The best of queens, and best of herbs, we owe 
To that bold nation, which the way did show 
To the fair region where the sun does rise, 
Whose rich productions we so justly prize. 
The Muse's friend, Tea, does our fancy aid, 
Repress those vapours which the head invade, 
And keeps that palace of the soul serene, 
Fit, on her birth -day, to salute the Queen. 7 ' 

The eulogies pronounced on his favorite beverage by 
Dr. Johnson, are too well known to be repeated here ; and 
the commendatory inscription of the Emperor Kien Long, 
to an European taste at least, is somewhat too dull, un- 
less his Majesty's teapot has been shamefully translated. 
For my own part, though I have the highest respect, as 
I have already shown, for this genial drink, which is warm 
to the cold, and cooling to the warm, I confess, as Mon- 
taigne would have said, that I prefer coffee, — particularly 
in my political capacity : — 

" Coffee, that makes the Politician wise 
To see through all things with his half-shut eyes." 

There is something in it, I think, more lively, and, at the 
same time, more substantial. Besides, I never see it but 

3 



34 A DAY BY THE FIRE. 

it reminds me of the Turks and their Arabian tales, — an 
association infinitely preferable to any Chinese ideas ; and, 
like the king who put his head into the tub, I am trans- 
ported into distant lands the moment I dip into the coffee- 
cup, —at one minute ranging the valleys with Sindbad, at 
another encountering the fairies on the wing by moonlight, 
at a third exploring the haunts of the cursed Maugraby, 
or wrapt into the silence of that delicious solitude from 
which Prince Agib was carried by the fatal horse. Then, 
if I wish to poeticize upon it at home, there is Belinda, 
with her sylphs, drinking it in such state as nothing but 
poetry can supply : — 

" For lo ! the board with cups and spoons is crown'd, 
The berries crackle, and the mill turns round : 
On shining altars of japan they raise 
The silver lamp ; the fiery spirits blaze ; 
From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide, 
And China's earth receives the smoking tide : 
At once they gratify the scent and taste, 
And frequent cups prolong the rich repast. 
Straight hover round the fair her airy band ; 
Some, as she sipp'd, the fuming liquor fann'd ; 
Some o'er her lap their careful plumes display'd, 
Trembling, and conscious of the rich brocade." 

It must be acknowledged, however, that the general asso- 
ciation of ideas is at present in favor of tea, which, on 
that account, has the advantage of suggesting no confine- 
ment to particular ranks or modes of life. Let there be 
but a fireside, and anybody, of any denomination, may be 
fancied enjoying the luxury of a cup of tea, from the 
duchess in the evening drawing-room, who makes it the 
instrument of displaying her white hand, to the washer- 
woman at her early tub, who, having had nothing to signify 
since five, sits down to it with her shining arms and cor- 
rugated fingers at six. If there is any one station of life 



A DAY BY THE FIRE. 35 

in which it is enjoyed to most advantage, it is that of medi- 
ocrity : that in which all comfort is reckoned to be best 
appreciated, because, while there is taste to enjoy, there 
is necessity to earn the enjoyment; and I cannot conclude 
the hour before us with a better climax of snugness than 
is presented in the following pleasing little verses. The 
author, I believe, is unknown, and may not have been 
much of a poet in matters of fiction ; but who will deny 
his taste for matters of reality, or say that he has not 
handled his subject to perfection ? — 

" The hearth was clean, the fire was clear, 
The kettle on for tea, 
Palemon in his elbow-chair, 
As blest as man could be. 

Clarinda, who his heart possess' d, 

And was his new-made bride, 
With head reclin'd upon his breast 

Sat toying by his side. 

Stretch' d at his feet, in happy state, 

A fav'rite dog was laid, 
By whom a little sportive cat 

In wanton humour play'd. 

Clarinda's hand he gently prest ; 

She stole an amorous kiss, 
And, blushing, modestly confess'd 

The fulness of her bliss. 

Palemon, with a heart elate, 

Pray'd to Almighty Jove 
That it might ever be his fate, 

Just so to live and love. 

Be this eternity, he cried, 

And let no more be given : 
Continue thus my lov'd fireside, 

I ask no other heaven." 

The Happy Fireside. 



36 A DAY BY THE FIRE. 

There are so many modes of spending the remainder of 
the evening between tea-time and bed-time (for I protest 
against all suppers that are not light enough to be taken 
on the knee), that a general description would avail me 
nothing, and I cannot be expected to enter into such a 
variety of particulars. Suffice it to say that, where the 
fire is duly appreciated, and the circle good humored, none 
of them can be unpleasant, whether the party be large or 
small, young or old, talkative or contemplative. If there 
is music, a good fire will be particularly grateful to the 
performers, who are often seated at the farther end of the 
room ; for it is really shameful that a lady who is charm- 
ing us all with her voice, or firing us, at the harp or piano, 
with the lightning of her fingers, should at the very mo- 
ment be trembling with cold. As to cards, which were 
invented for the solace of a mad prince, and which are 
only tolerable, in my opinion, when we can be as mad as 
he was, that is to say, at a round game, I cannot by any 
means patronize them, as a conscientious firesider : for, 
not to mention all the other objections, the card-table is as 
awkward, in a fireside point of view, as the dinner-table, 
and is not to be compared with it in sociality. If it be 
necessary to pay so ill a compliment to the company as to 
have recourse to some amusement of the kind, there is 
chess or draughts, which may be played on a tablet by the 
fire ; but nothing is like discourse, freely uttering the 
fancy as it comes, and varied, perhaps, with a little music, 
or with the perusal of some favorite passages which excite 
the comments of the circle. It is then, if tastes happen 
to be accordant, and the social voice is frank as well as 
refined, that the " sweet music of speech " is heard in its 
best harmony, differing only for apter sweetness, and 
mingling but for happier participation, while the mu- 



A DAY BY THE FIRE. 37 

tual sense smilingly blends in with every rising meas- 
ure, — 

" And female stop smoothens the charm o'er all." 

This is the finished evening ; this the quickener at once 
and the calmer of tired thought ; this the spot where our 
better spirits await to exalt and enliven us, when the daily 
and vulgar ones have discharged their duty ! 

" Questo e il Paradiso, 
Piu dolce, che fra 1' acque, e fra P arene 
In ciel son le Sirene." 

Tasso. — Rime A morose. 

" Here, here is found 
A sweeter Paradise of sound 
Than where the Sirens take their summer stands 
Among the breathing waters and glib sands." 

Bright fires and joyous faces ; and it is no easy thing 
for philosophy to say good night. But health must be 
enjoyed or nothing will be enjoyed, and the charm should 
be broken at a reasonable hour. Far be it, however, from 
a rational flresider not to make exceptions to the rule, 
when friends have been long asunder, or when some do- 
mestic celebration has called them together, or even when 
hours peculiarly congenial render it difficult to part. At all 
events, the departure must be a voluntary matter ; and here 
I cannot help exclaiming against the gross and villanous 
trick which some people have, when they wish to get rid of 
their company, of letting their fires go down, and the 
snuffs of their candles run to seed : it is paltry and palpa- 
ble, and argues bad policy as well as breeding ; for such 
of their friends as have a different feeling of things, may 
chance to be disgusted with them altogether, while the 
careless or unpolite may choose to revenge themselves on 
the appeal, and face it out gravely till the morning. If a 



38 A DAY BY THE FIRE. 

common visitor be inconsiderate enough, on an ordinary 
occasion, to sit beyond all reasonable hour, it must be 
reckoned as a fatality, as an ignorance of men and things, 
against which you cannot possibly provide : as a sort of 
visitation, which must be borne with patience, and which 
is not likely to recur often, if you know whom you invite, 
and those who are invited know you. But with an occa- 
sional excess of the fireside what social virtue shall quar- 
rel ? A single friend, perhaps, loiters behind the rest ; 
you are alone in the house ; you have just got upon a sub- 
ject delightful to you both ; the fire is of a candent bright- 
ness ; the wind howls out of doors ; the rain beats ; the 
cold is piercing ! Sit down. This is a time when the 
most melancholy temperament may defy the clouds and 
storms, and even extract from them a pleasure that will 
take no substance by daylight. The ghost of his happi- 
ness sits by him, and puts on the likeness of former hours ; 
and if such a man can be made comfortable by the mo- 
ment, what enjoyment may it not furnish to an unclouded 
spirit ! If the excess belong not to vice, temperance does 
not forbid it when it only grows out of the occasion. The 
great poet, whom I have quoted so often for the fireside, 
and who will enjoy it with us to the last, was, like the rest 
of our great poets, an ardent recommender of temperance 
in all its branches ; but though he practised what he 
preached, he could take his night out of the hands of 
sleep as well as the most entrenching of us. To pass 
over, as foreign to our subject in point of place, his noble 
wish that he might " oft outwatch the bear," with what a 
wrapped-up recollection of snugness, in the elegy on his 
friend Diodati, does he describe the fireside enjoyment of 
a winter's night ? — 



A DAY BY THE FIRE. 39 

" Pectora cui credam ? Quis me lenire docebit 
Mordaces curas? Quis longam fallere noctem 
Dulcibus alloquiis, grato cum sibilat igni 
Molle pyrum, et nucibus strepitat focus, et malus Auster 
Miscet cuncta foris, et desuper intonat ulmo? " 

" In whom shall I confide ? Whose counsel find 
A balmy med'cine for my troubled mind ? 
Or whose discourse, with innocent delight, 
Shall fill me now, and cheat the wintry night, 
When hisses on my hearth the pulpy pear, 
And black' ning chestnut start and crackle there, 
While storms abroad the dreary meadows whelm, 
And the wind thunders through the neighb'ring elm." 

Cowper's Translation. 

Even when left alone, there is sometimes a charm in 
watching out the decaying fire, — in getting closer and 
closer to it with tilted chair and knees against the bars, 
and letting the whole multitude of fancies, that work in 
the night silence, come whispering about the yielding fac- 
ulties. The world around is silent ; and for a moment the 
very cares of day seem to have gone with it to sleep, leav- 
ing you to catch a waking sense of disenthralment, and to 
commune with a thousand airy visitants that come to play 
with innocent thoughts. Then, for imagination's sake, 
not for superstition's, are recalled the stories of the Secret 
World and the midnight pranks of Fairyism. The fancy 
roams out of doors after rustics led astray by the jack- 
o'-lantern, or minute laughings heard upon the wind, or 
the night-spirit on his horse that comes flouncing through 
the air on his way to a surfeited citizen, or the tiny morris- 
dance that springs up in the watery glimpses of the moon ; 
or keeping at home, it finds a spirit in every room peeping 
at it as it opens the door, while a cry is heard from upstairs 
announcing the azure marks inflicted by — 

" The nips of fairies upon maids' white hips," 



40 A DAY BY THE FIRE. 

or hearing a snoring from below, it tiptoes down into the 
kitchen, and beholds where — 

" Lies him down the lubber fiend, 



And stretch'd out all the chimney's length, 
Basks at the fire his hairy strength." 

Presently the whole band of fairies, ancient and modern, 
— the demons, sylphs, gnomes, sprites, elves, peries, 
genii, and above all, the fairies of the fireside, the sala- 
manders, lob-lie-by-the-fires, lars, lemures, larvae, come 
flitting between the fancy's eyes, and the dying coals, 
some with their weapons and lights, others with grave 
steadfastness on book or dish, others of the softer kind 
with their arch looks, and their conscious pretence of atti- 
tude, while a minute music tinkles in the ear, and Oberon 
gives his gentle order : — 

" Through this house in glimmering light 

By the dead and drowsy fire, 
Every elf and fairy sprite 

Hop as light as bird from briar ; 
And this ditty, after me, 
Sing and dance it trippingly." 

Anon, the whole is vanished, and the dreamer, turning his 
eye down aside, almost looks for a laughing sprite gazing 
at him from a tiny chair, and mimicking his face and atti- 
tude. Idle fancies these, and incomprehensible to minds 
clogged with every-day earthliness ; but not useless, either 
as an exercise of the invention, or even as adding con- 
sciousness to the range and destiny of the soul. They 
will occupy us too, and steal us away from ourselves, when 
other recollections fail us or grow painful, when friends 
are found selfish, or better friends can but commiserate, 
or when the world has nothing in it to compare with what 
we have missed out of it. They may even lead us to 



A DAY BY THE FIRE. 41 

higher and more solemn meditations, till we work up our 
way beyond the clinging and heavy atmosphere of this 
earthly sojourn, and look abroad upon the light that knows 
neither blemish nor bound, while our ears are saluted at 
that egress by the harmony of the skies, and our eyes be- 
hold the lost and congenial spirits that we have loved 
hastening to welcome us with their sparkling eyes, and 
their curls that are ripe with sunshine. 

But earth recalls us again ; the last flame is out ; the 
fading embers tinkle with a gaping dreariness ; and the 
chill reminds us where we should be. Another gaze on 
the hearth that has so cheered us, and the last, lingering 
action is to wind up the watch for the next day. Upon 
how many anxieties shall the finger of that brief chron- 
icler strike, — and upon how many comforts too ! To- 
morrow our fire shall be trimmed anew ; and so, gentle 
reader, good night : may the weariness I have caused you 
make sleep the pleasanter ! 

"Let no lamenting cryes, nor dolefull tears, 
Be heard all night within, nor yet without ; 
Ne let false whispers, breeding hidden fears, 
Break gentle sleep with misconceived doubt. 
Let no deluding dreams, nor dreadful sights, 
Make sudden, sad affrights, 

Ne let hobgoblins, names whose sense we see not, 
Fray us with things that be not ; 
But let still silence true night-watches keep, 
That sacred peace may in assurance reigne, 
And timely sleep, since it is time to sleep, 
May pour his limbs forth on your pleasant plaine." 

Spenser's Epithalamion* 



* In the new edition of "The Round Table," published in the Bayard 
Series of books, this article is given to Hazlitt. " Our style bewrays us," says 
Burton ; and " A Day by the Fire " is full of Leigh Hunt's peculiarities of 
thought and diction. The question of authorship, however, is not to be de- 



4 2 



ON COMMONPLACE PEOPLE. 




ON COMMONPLACE PEOPLE. 

GREEABLY to our chivalrous, as well as do- 
mestic, character, and in order to show further 
in what sort of spirit we shall hereafter confer 
blame and praise, whom we shall cut up for 
the benefit of humanity, and to whom apply 
our healing balsams, we have thought fit, in our present 
number, to take the part of a very numerous and ill-treated 
body of persons, known by the various appellations of 
commonplace people, — dull fellows, or people who have 
nothing to say. 

It is perhaps wrong, indeed, to call these persons com- 
monplace. Those who are the most vehement in object- 
ing to them have the truest right to the title, however 
little they may suspect it ; but of this more hereafter. It 
is a name by which the others are very commonly known ; 
though they might rather be called persons of simple 
common sense, and, in fact, have just enough of that val- 
uable quality to inspire them with the very quietness which 
brings them into so much contempt. 

We need not, however, take any pains to describe a set 
of people so well known. They are, of course, what none 
of our readers are, but many are acquainted with. They 
are the more silent part of companies, and generally the 



cided upon internal evidence ; facts prove that the essay was written by the 
author of the "Story of Rimini." The prolusion was originally published 
in the " Reflector," with Hunt's well-known signature, — ^W- It was 
afterwards re-printed in the "Examiner," as one of "The Round Table" 
papers. When these essays were collected into a volume, Leigh Hunt's ini- 
tials were printed at the end of " A Day by the Fire ; " and Hazlitt, in the 
preface to this original edition of "The Round Table," says, "out of the 
fifty-two numbers, twelve are Mr. Hunt's, with the signature, L. H." — Ed. 



ON COMMONPLACE PEOPLE. 43 

best behaved people at table. They are the best of dumb 
waiters near the lady of the house. They are always at 
leisure to help you to good things, if not to say them. 
They will supply your absence of mind for you while you 
are talking, and believe you are taking sugar for pepper. 
Above all, — which ought to recommend them to the very 
hardest of their antagonists, — they are uninquiring laugh- 
ers at jokes, and most exemplary listeners. 

Now, we do not say that these are the very best of com- 
panions, or that when we wished to be particularly amused 
or informed we should invite them to our houses, or go to 
see them at theirs ; all we demand is that they should be 
kindly and respectfully treated when they are by, and not 
insolently left out of the pale of discourse, purely because 
they may not bring with them as much as they find, or say 
as brilliant things as we imagine we do ourselves. 

This is one of the faults of over-civilization. In a stage 
of society like the present, there is an intellectual as well 
as personal coxcombry apt to prevail, which leads people 
to expect from each other a certain dashing turn of mind, 
and an appearance, at least, of having ideas, whether they 
can afford them or not. Their minds endeavor to put on 
intelligent attitudes, just as their bodies do graceful ones ; 
and every one who, from conscious modesty, or from not 
thinking about the matter, does not play the same monkey 
tricks with his natural deficiency, is set down for a dull 
fellow, and treated with a sort of scornful resentment, for 
differing with the others. It is equally painful and amus- 
ing to see how the latter will look upon an honest fellow 
of this description, if they happen to find him in a com- 
pany where they think he has no business. On the first 
entrance of one of these intolerant men of wisdom, — to 
see, of course, a brilliant friend of his, — he concludes 



44 ON COMMONPLACE PEOPLE. 

that all the party are equally lustrous ; but finding, by de- 
grees, no flashes from an unfortunate gentleman on his 
right, he turns stiffly towards him at the first commonplace 
remark, measures him from head to foot with a kind of 
wondering indifference, and then falls to stirring his tea 
with a half-inquiring glance at the rest of the company, — 
just as much as to say, " a fellow not overburdened, 
eh ? " or, " who the devil has Tom got here ? " 

Like all who are tyrannically given, and of a bullying 
turn of mind, — which is by no means confined to those 
who talk loudest, — these persons are apt to be as obse- 
quious and dumb-stricken before men of whom they have 
a lofty opinion as they are otherwise in the case above 
mentioned. This, indeed, is not always the case ; but you 
may sometimes find out one of the caste by seeing him 
waiting with open mouth and impatient eyes for the brill- 
iant things which the great gentleman to whom he has 
been introduced is bound to utter. The party, perhaps, 
are waiting for dinner, and as silent as most Englishmen, 
not very well known to each other, are upon such occa- 
sions. Our hero waits with impatience to hear the cele- 
brated person open his mouth, and is at length gratified ; 
but not hearing very distinctly, asks his next neighbor, in 
a serious and earnest whisper, what it was. 

" Pray, sir, what was it that Mr. W. said ? " 

" He says that it is particularly cold." 

" Oh, — particularly cold." 

The gentleman thinks this no very profound remark for 
so great a man, but puts on as patient a face as he can, 
and, refreshing himself with shifting one knee over the 
other, waits anxiously for the next observation. After a 
little silence, broken only by a hem or two, and by some- 
body's begging pardon of a gentleman next him for touch- 



ON COMMONPLACE PEOPLE. 45 

ing his shoe, Mr. W. is addressed by a friend, and the 
stranger is all attention. 

" By the bye, W., how did you get home last night ?" 

" Oh, very well, thank'ye ; I couldn't get a coach, but 
it was'nt very rainy, and I was soon there, and jumped 
into bed." 

"Ah, there's nothing like bed after getting one's coat 
wet." 

" Nothing, indeed. I had the clothes round me in a 
twinkling, and in two minutes was as fast as a church." 

Here the conversation drops again ; and our delighter 
in intellect cannot hide from himself his disappointment. 
The description of pulling the clothes round, he thinks, 
might have been much, more piquant ; and the simile, as 
fast as a church, appears to him wonderfully commonplace 
from a man of wit. But such is his misfortune. He has 
no eyes but for something sparkling or violent ; and no 
more expects to find any thing simple in genius, than any 
thing tolerable in the want of it. 

Persons impatient of others' deficiencies are, in fact, 
likely to be equally undiscerning of their merits ; and are 
not aware, in either case, how much they are exposing the 
deficiencies on their own side. Not only, however, do 
they get into this dilemma, but what is more, they are 
lowering their respectability beneath that of the dullest 
person in the room. They show themselves deficient, not 
merely in the qualities they miss in him, but in those which 
he really possesses, such as self-knowledge and good tem- 
per. Were they as wise as they pretend to be, they would 
equal him in these points, and know how to extract some- 
thing good from him in spite of his deficiency in the other ; 
for intellectual qualities are not the only ones that excite 
the reflections, or conciliate the regard, of the truly intel- 



46 ON COMMONPLACE PEOPLE. 

ligent, — of those who can study human nature in all its 
bearings, and love it, or sympathize with it, for all its affec- 
tions. The best part of pleasure is the communication of 
it. Why must we be perpetually craving for amusement 
or information from others (an appetite which, after all, 
will be seldom acknowledged), and never think of bestow- 
ing them ourselves ? Again, as the best part of pleasure 
is that we have just mentioned, the best proof of intel- 
lectual power is that of extracting fertility from barrenness, 
or so managing the least cultivated mind, which we may 
happen to stumble upon, as to win something from it. 
Setting even this talent aside, there are occasions when it is 
refreshing to escape from the turmoil and final nothingness 
of the understanding, and repose upon that contentedness 
of mediocrity which seems to have attained its end with- 
out the trouble of wisdom. It has often delighted me to 
observe a profound thinker of my acquaintance, when a 
good natured person of ordinary understanding has been 
present. He is reckoned severe, as it is called, in many 
of his opinions : and is thought particularly to overrate 
his intellectual qualities in general ; and yet it is beautiful 
to see how he will let down his mind to the other's level, 
taking pleasure in his harmless enjoyment, and assenting 
to a thousand truisms, one after another, as familiar to him 
as his finger-ends. The reason is that he pierces deeper 
into the nature of the human being beside him, can make 
his very deficiencies subservient to his own speculations, 
and, above all, knows that there is something worth all the 
knowledge upon earth, — which is happiness and a genial 
nature. It is thus that the sunshine of happy faces is re- 
flected upon our own. We may even find a beam of it in 
every thing that Heaven looks upon. The dullest minds do 
not vegetate for nothing, any more than the grass in a 



HEATHEN MYTHOLOGY. 47 

green lawn. We do not require the trees to talk with us, 
or get impatient at the monotonous quiet of the fields and 
hedges. We love them for their contrast to noise and 
bustle, for their presenting to us something native and 
elementary, for the peaceful thoughts they suggest to us, 
and the part they bear in the various beauty of creation. 

Is a bird's feather exhibited in company, or a piece of 
sea-weed, or a shell that contained the stupidest of created 
beings, every one is happy to look at it, and the most fas- 
tidious pretender in the room will delight to expatiate on 
its beauty and contrivance. Let this teach him charity 
and good sense, and inform him that it is the grossest of 
all coxcombry to dwell with admiration on a piece of in- 
sensibility, however beautiful, and find nothing to excite 
pleasing or profitable reflections in the commonest of his 
fellow-men. 




A POPULAR VIEW OF THE HEATHEN MY- 
THOLOGY. 

I HE divinities of the ancient mythology are of a 
very tangible order. They were personifica- 
tions of the power of the external world, and 
of the operations of the intellect; and some- 
times merged themselves into the particular 
providence of an eminent prince or reformer. Mankind 
wishing to have distinct ideas of the unknown powers of 
the universe, naturally painted them at first in their own 
shapes ; and not being able to conceive of them otherwise 
than by the light of their understanding, they as naturally 
gifted them with their own faculties, moral and intellect- 



48 HEATHEN MYTHOLOGY. 

ual. Hence, the heathen gods were reflections of the 
qualities most admired or feared during the times in which 
they originated ; and to the same cause were owing the 
inconsistencies and the vices palmed upon them by the 
stories of different ages and nations, whose gods became 
lumped together ; and hence the trouble that the philoso- 
pher had in endeavoring to reconcile the popular super- 
stitions with a theology more becoming.* Plutarch, who 
was a priest at Delphi, and a regular devout pagan, but 
good-hearted and imbued with philosophy, is shocked at 
the popular stories of the rapes and quarrels of the gods ; 
and Plato, on a similar account, was for banishing Homer 
from his republic. Plutarch will not allow that it was the 
real Apollo who fought a serpent and afterwards had to 
purify himself. He said it must have been a likeness of 
him, a demon. In other words the gods of Plutarch 
were to resemble the highest ideas which Plutarch could 
form of dignity and power. Hence, the greater philoso- 
phers whose ardor in the pursuit of truth rendered them 
still more desirous of departing from conventional degra- 
dations of it, came to agree that the nature of the deity 
was inconceivable ; and that the most exalted being they 



* Virtue or vice either if accompanied with power, will do to make a god of 
in barbarous times, and till mankind learn the perniciousness of that sort of 
apotheosis. An Eastern writer says that Pharaoh wished to pass for a divinity 
with his subjects, and had frequent conversation with the devil for that pur- 
pose. The devil put him off from time to time, till he told him one day that 
the hour was arrived. " How is that," cried Pharaoh, — "why is it time now, 
and was not before?" — "The reason is," replied the devil, " that you have 
not hitherto been quite bad enough : at length you have become intolerable, 
and there is no alternative between a revolt of your subjects, and their belief 
in your being a god. Once persuade them of that, and there is nothing so ex- 
travagant, either in word or deed, which they will not take from you with re- 
spect." D^Herbeloti article Feraoun. 



HEATHEN MYTHOLOGY. 49 

could fancy was at an incalculable distance from it, — an 
emanation, a being deputed, a sort of spiritual incarnation 
of one of the divine thoughts ; — if we may so speak with- 
out absurdity and without blame. Plato, for instance, 
observing the moral imperfections of our planet, and not 
knowing how to account for them any more than we do 
(for the first cause of evil is always left in the dark), imag- 
ined that this world was created by what he called a Dem- 
iurgus, or inferior divine energy; just as an artist less than 
Raphael might paint a fine picture though not so good as 
what might have come from the hands of the greater one. 
If you asked him how he made out that the chief creator 
did not do the work himself, he would have referred you 
to the fact of the imperfection and to the existence of dif- 
ferent degrees of skill and beauty in which we see all 
about us ; for he thought he had a right to argue from 
analogy, in default of more certain principles. This right 
he undoubtedly possessed, and it was natural and reasona- 
ble to exert it ; but considering the imperfection of the 
human faculties and the false reports they make to us, 
even of things cognizable to the senses, it is, in truth, im- 
possible to argue with any certainty from things human to 
things divine. The only service to all appearance, which 
our faculties can do for us in these questions, is to save us 
from the admission of gratuitous absurdities and dogmas 
dishonorable to the idea of a Divine Being, and to en- 
courage us to guess handsomely and to good purpose. 
For sincerity at all events must not be gainsaid ; other- 
wise belief and probability and principle and natural love 
and the earth itself slide from under our feet. The mys- 
tery of the permission of evil still remained ; the mystery 
of imperfection and of cause itself was only thrown back ; 
and in fact the invention of the Demiurgus was merely 

4 



5<3 HEATHEN MYTHOLOGY. 

shifting the whole mystery of Deity from a first cause to a 
second. The old dilemma between omnipotence and om- 
nibenevolence perplexed the understanding then, as it 
does now ; and as this world was made the reflection of 
every other, or rather as evil was supposed to render all 
the operations of the Deity imperfect, except immediately 
in his own sphere ; men seem to have overlooked among 
other guesses, the probability that evil may exist only in 
petty corners or minute portions of the universe, and even 
then be only the result of an experiment with certain ele- 
mentary compounds to see whether they cannot be made 
planets' of perfect happiness as well as the rest. For, after 
all, Plato's assumption of the innate and unconscious diffi- 
culty which matter presents in the working (or an inability 
of some sort, whatever it be, to render things perfect at 
once), is surely the best assumption among the hundreds 
that have been taken for granted on this point ; seeing 
that it sets aside malignity, encourages hope, and stimu- 
lates us to .an active and benign state of endeavor such as 
we may conceive to enlist us in the divine service. We 
must never take any thing on trust in order to make a 
handle of it for dictation or hypocrisy, or a selfish security, 
or an indolence which we may dignify with the title of res- 
ignation ; but as we are compelled to assume or conjec- 
ture something or other, unless indeed we are deficient in 
the imaginative part of our nature, it is best to assume the 
best candidly, and acknowledge it to be an assumption in 
order that we may do the utmost we can. Happy opinions 
are the wine of the heart. What if this world be an ex- 
periment, part of which consists in our own co-operation, 
that is to say, in trying how far the inhabitants of it can 
acquire energy enough, and do credit enough, to the first 
cause, to add it finally to the number of blessed stars ? 



HEATHEN MYTHOLOGY. 5 1 

and what if more direct communication with us on the 
part of the operator, would of necessity put an end to the 
experiment? The petty human considerations of pride 
and modesty have nothing to do with the cordial magni- 
tude of such guesses ; and the beauty of them consists, 
we think, not merely in their cheerfulness and real piety, 
but in their adaptation to all experimental systems of util- 
ity, those of the most exclusive utilitarians not excepted. 
Such we confess is our own creed, which we boast at the 
same time to be emphatically Christian ; and the good 
which our enthusiasm cannot help thinking such an opin- 
ion might do, will excuse us with the readers for this di- 
gression.* 

The gods of Greece, taken in the popular view of them, 
were, upon the whole a jovial company, occasionally dis- 
persed about the world, and assembling on Mount Olym- 



* The hope of a happier state of things on earth, argues nothing against a 
life hereafter. The fitness of a human soul for immortality may be a part of 
the experiment. The divinest preacher of eternity that has appeared, ex- 
pressly anticipated a happier period for mankind in their human state, though 
many who are called his followers are eager to load both themselves and the 
world they live in with contumely, — themselves as "innately vicious," and 
the world as "a vale of tears." Such are the compliments they think to 
pay their Creator ! Yet these are the persons who talk with the greatest devo- 
tion of resigning themselves to God's will, and who pique themselves upon hav- 
ing the most exalted ideas of his nature ! How much better to think it his 
will that they should bestir themselves to improve their own natures and the 
world ! How much better to think it consonant with his nature that they 
should help to drain the "vale of tears," as they call it, just as they would any 
other valley, beauteous and full of resources ! They do not think it necessary 
to be resigned when they can work for themselves; why should they when 
they can work for others? Resignation is always good, provided it means only 
patience in the midst of endeavor, or repose after it ; but when it implies a 
mere folding of the hands, and a despair of making any thing good out of 
"God's own work," it is surely the lowest and most equivocal aspect under 
which piety could wish to be drawn. 



52 HEATHEN MYTHOLOGY. 

pus. They dined and supped there, and made love like a 
party of gallants at a king's table. A pretty girl served 
instead of a butler ; and the Muse played the part of a 
band.* When they came down to earth, they behaved 
like the party going home ; made love again after their 
fashion ; interfered in quarrels, frightened the old and the 
feeble ; and next day joined a campaign, or presided at an 
orthodox meeting. In short, they did whatever the vulgar 
thought gallant and heroical, and were particularly famous 
for having their own way. If a god offended against all 
humanity, he had his reasons for it, and was a privileged 
person. He could do no wrong. But if humanity went 
counter to a god, the offender and all his generation were 
to suffer for it. A lady who had resisted the violence of 
his virtue, was not to be believed whenever she spoke the 
truth ; or your brother became an owl or a flint-stone ; or 
your son was to become a criminal, or a madman, because 
his grandfather unwittingly married against the god's con- 
sent. The vulgar thought how wilful and unjust they 
would be themselves if they had power ; they saw how 
much kings were given to those kinds of peccadilloes ; and 
therefore, if they could have become gods, how much 
more they would have been ungodly ! It is true the phi- 
losopher refined upon all this : and agreeably to the way 
in which Nature works, there was a sort of cultivation of 
energy underneath it and an instinct of something beyond 



* See the description in books and prints, the marriage of Cupid and Psyche. 
Raphael made a picture of it. Augustus is charged with having made an im- 
pious entertainment in imitation of these "charming noons and nights divine.'* 
Ben Jonson, we suppose in consideration of King James, who besides being a 
classical monarch, was devout as well as debauched, — has taken the liberty of 
misrepresenting the charge in his Poetaster, and making Augustus astonished 
at the impiety in others. 



HEATHEN MYTHOLOGY. 53 

the common theories of right and wrong. Nature's char- 
acter remained safe, and her good work proceeded. The 
divinity within us was superior to the ideas of him which 
we threw up. 

Homer makes the gods of a mighty size. His Neptune 
goes a hundred miles at a stride. This grandeur is of a 
questionable sort. Homer's men become little in propor- 
tion as the gods become great ; and Mars and Minerva 
lording it over a battle, are like giants " tempesting " 
among a parcel of mice. The less they were seen, the 
less the dignity on either side was compromised ; for their 
effect might be as gigantic as possible. 

The truest grandeur is moral. When there is a heaven- 
quake because Jupiter has bent his brows ; — when Apollo 
comes down in his wrath " like night-time," and a plague 
falls upon the people ; when a fated man in a tragedy is 
described sleeping at the foot of an altar with three tre- 
mendous looking women (the furies) keeping an eye upon 
him ; — when a doomed old man in a grove is called away 
by a voice, — after which he is never more seen; or to 
turn the brighter side of power, when Bacchus leaps out 
of his chariot in Titian's picture, looking (to our mortal 
eyes) with the fierce gravity of a wine-god's-energy, 
though he comes to comfort a mourner ; or to sum up 
all that is sweet as well as powerful, when Juno goes to 
Venus to borrow her girdle, in order that she may appear 
irresistible in the eyes of Jupiter ; it is then we feel all 
the force and beauty of the Greek fables ; and an inti- 
macy with their sculpture shows us the eternal youth of 
this beauty, and renders it a sort of personal acquaint- 
ance. 

Milton wrote some fine verses on the cessation of hea- 
then oracles, in which while he thinks he is triumphing 



54 HEATHEN MYTHOLOGY. 

over the dissolution of the gods like a proper Christian, 
he is evidently regretting and lingering over them, as was 
natural to a poet. He need not have lamented. A proper 
sense of universality knows how to reconcile the real 
beauty of all creeds ; and the gods survive in the midst of 
his own epic, lifted by his own hand above the degrada- 
tion to which he has thrust them. Vulcan, he says, was 
called Mammon in heaven, and was a fallen angel. But 
he has another name for him better than either. Hear 
how he rolls the harmony of his vowels. 

Nor was his name unheard, or imadof'd 
In ancient Greece ; and in Ausonian land 
Men call'd him Mulciber ; and how he fell 
From heav'n, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove 
Sheer o'er the crystal battlements. From morn 
To noon he fell ; — from noon to dewy eve, — 
A summer's day ; and with the setting sun 
Dropt from the zenith like a falling star 
On Lemnos th' iEgean Isle. Thus they relate, 
Erring. 

Par. Lost, Book I. 

" Not more than you did," Homer might have said to 
him in Elysium, " when you called my divine architect a 
sordid archangel fond of gold, and made him fall from a 
state of perfect holiness and bliss, which was impossible." 

" Brother, brother," Milton might have said, glancing 
at the author of the " Beggar's Opera," "we were both in 
the wrong ; — except when you were painting Helen and 
Andromache, or sending your verses forward like a de- 
vouring fire." 

" Or you," would the heroic ancient rejoin, " when you 
made us acquainted with the dignity of those two gentle 
creatures in Paradise, and wrote verses full of tranquil 
superiority, which make mine appear to me like the talk- 
ing of Mars compared with that of Jupiter." 



HEATHEN MYTHOLOGY. 55 

No heathen paradise, according to Milton, could com- 
pare with his ; yet in saying so, he lingers so fondly 
among the illegal shades that it is doubtful which he pre- 
fers. 

Not that fair field 
Of Enna, where Proserpine, gathering flowers, 
Herself a fairer flow'r by gloomy Dis 
Was gather'd ; which cost Ceres all that pain 
To seek her through the world ; nor that sweet grove 
Of Daphne, by Orontes, and the inspir'd 
Castalian spring, might with this Paradise 
Of Eden strive ; nor that Nyseian isle 
Girt with the river Triton, where old Cham, 
Whom gentiles Ammon call and Lybian Jove, 
Hid Amalthea, and her florid son, 
Young Bacchus, from his step-dame Rhea's eye. 

Milton had, in fact, settled this question of the inde- 
structibility of paganism in his youth. His college exer- 
cises showing that " nature could not grow old," showed 
also that the gods and goddesses must remain with her. 
The style of Milton's Latin verses is founded on Ovid ; 
but his love of a conscious and sonorous music renders it 
his own, and perhaps there is nothing more like the elder 
English Milton than these young exercises of his in a 
classical language. 

Dr. Johnson objects to Milton's Lycidas (which is an 
elegy on a lost companion of his studies), that "passion 
plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy ; nor calls upon 
Arethuse and Mincius ; nor tells of rough Saty?s and 
Fauns with cloven heel" To which Wharton very prop- 
erly answers, u but poetry does this : and in the hands of 
Milton does it with a peculiar and irresistible charm. Sub- 
ordinate poets exercise no invention when they tell how a 
shepherd has lost a companion, and must feed his flocks 
alone, without any judge of his skill in piping ; but Milton 



56 HEATHEN MYTHOLOGY. 

dignifies and adorns these common artificial incidents with 
unexpected touches of picturesque beauty, with the graces 
of sentiment and with the novelties of original genius." 
Wharton says further, that " poetry is not always uncon- 
nected with passion," and then gives an instance out of 
the poem where Milton speaks of the body of his lost 
friend. But he might have added that poetry itself is a 
passion; that Fleet Street and "the Mitre," though very 
good things, are not the only ones ; that these two young 
friends lived in the imaginative, as well as the every-day 
world ; that the survivor most probably missed the com- 
panion of his studies more on the banks of the Arethuse 
and the Mincius, than he did in the college grounds ; in 
short, that there is a state of poetical belief, in which the 
images of truth and beauty which are by their nature 
lasting, become visible and affecting to the mind in pro- 
portion to the truth and beauty of its own tact for univer- 
sality. Bacon, though no poet, had it, and adorned his 
house with pagan sculptures ; because, being a universal 
philosopher, he included a knowledge of what was poetical. 
All the poets have had it as a matter of course, more or 
less ; but the greatest most of all. Shakespeare included 
it for the very reason that he left no part of the world un- 
sympathized with ; namely, that he was, of all poets, the 
most universal. 

Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself; 
An eye like Mars to threaten and command ; 
A station like the herald Mercury, 
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill. 

These Miltonic lines flowed from the same pen that 
recorded the vagaries of Falstaff and Mrs. Quickly. Dr. 
Johnson would have made a bad business of the heathen 
mythology. He did so when he made a Turk pull his 



HEATHEN MYTHOLOGY. 57 

enemy out of the " Pleiad's golden chariot."* He was 
conversant only with what is called real life ; wonderfully 
well indeed, and with great wit and good sense ; but there 
he stopped. He might have as soon undertaken to de- 
scribe a real piece of old poetical beauty, or passion either, 
as clap his wig on the head of Apollo. He laughed with 
reason at Prior, for comparing his Chloes to Venus and 
Diana, and talking of their going out a hunting with ivory 
quivers graceful at their side. This was the French no- 
tion of using the Greek fables ; and with the French, in- 
deed, the heathen mythology became the most spurious 
and the most faded of drugs. They might as well have 
called a box of millinery the oracle of Delphi. The Ger- 
mans understood it better, but we do not think it has 
ever been revived to more beautiful account than in the 
young poetry and remote haunts of imagination of the late 
Mr. Keats. He lamented that he could not do it justice. 
" Oh, how unlike," he cries, speaking of the style of his 
fine poem, Hyperion, 

To that large utterance of the early gods ! 

But this was the modesty of a real poet. Milton him- 
self would have been happy to read his Hyperion aloud, 
and to have welcomed the new spirit among the choir of 
poets, with its 

Elysian beauty, melancholy grace. 

Mr. Shelley beautifully applied to his young friend the 
distich of Plato upon Agathon, who having been, he says, 
a morning star among the living, was now an evening 

* In his tragedy of Irene. Gibbon has noticed it somewhere in the Decline 
and Fall. 



58 HEATHEN MYTHOLOGY. 

star in the shades. Here, also, was the true taste of the 
antique. Nay, it is possible that the melancholy of mod- 
ern genius to the eyes of which a larger and obscurer 
' world has been thrown open, may have discovered a more 
imaginative character in the mythology of the ancient 
poets, than accompanies our usual notion of it. The 
cheerfulness of all those poets, except the dramatic ones, 
and the everlasting and visible youth of their sculptures, 
come before us, and make us think of nothing but Pan 
and Pomona, of Bacchus, Apollo, and the Graces. Nor is 
it possible to deny that this is the general and perhaps the 
just impression, though exaggerated ; and that the Pyth- 
ian organ, with all its grandeur, does not roll such peals 

Of pomp and threatening harmony 

as those of the old Gregorian chapels, and the mingling 
hierarchies of earth and heaven.* Unfortunately the 
grandest parts of all religions have hitherto appealed to 
the least respectable of our passions, — our fear. It is the 
beauty of the truly divine part of Christianity that it ap- 
peals to love ; and if it then inspires melancholy, it is one 
of a nobler sort, animating us to endeavor and promising 
a state of things, to which the grandeur both of Paganism 
and Catholicism may become as the dreams of remem- 
bered sickness in infancy. 

At all events, it is certain that some of the great modern 
poets in consequence of their remoteness from the age of 
pagan belief, and its every-day effect on the mind, often 



* On the Feast of St. Michael and All Saints, the Catholic Church believes 
that the whole of the faithful on earth and in heaven, with all the angelical 
hierarchies, are lifting up their voices in unison ! one of the sublimest and most 
beautiful fancies that ever entered into the heart of man. 



GENII OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS. 59 

write in a nobler manner upon the gods of antiquity than 
the ancients themselves. He that would run the whole 
round of the spirit of heathenism to perfection, must be- 
come intimate with the poetry of Milton and Spenser ; of 
Ovid, Homer, Theocritus, and the Greek tragedians ; 
with the novels of Wieland, the sculptures of Phidias and 
others, and the pictures of Raphael, and the Caraccis, and 
Nicholas Poussin. But a single page of Spenser or one 
morning at the Angerstein Gallery, will make him better 
acquainted with it than a dozen such folios as Spence's 
Polymetis, or all the mycologists and book-poets who 
have attempted to draw Greek inspiration from a Latin 
fount. 




ON THE GENII OF THE GREEKS AND RO- 
MANS, AND THE SPIRIT THAT WAS SAID 
TO HAVE WAITED ON SOCRATES. 

[|HE angelical or middle beings of the Greeks 
and Romans are called by the common name 
of genii, though the term is not correct, for 
the Greeks were unacquainted with the word 
genius. Their spirit was called a demon : 
and we suspect that a further distinction is to be drawn 
between the two words, for a reason which will be seen by 
and by. The ill sense in which demon is now taken, 
originated with the Fathers of the Church, who, assuming 
that a pagan intelligence must be a bad one, caused the 
word to become synonymous with devil. But there are 
few things more remarkable than the abundant use which 
the Church made of the speculations of the Greek philoso- 



60 GENII OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS. 

phers, and the contempt with which indiscreet members 
of it have treated them. Take away the subtleties of the 
Platonic theology from certain sects of Christians, and 
their very orthodoxy would tumble to pieces. 

Deinon, if it be derived, as most of the learned think, 
from a word signifying to know by inquiry, and the root 
of which signifies a torch, may be translated the enlight- 
ened, or, simply, a light or intelligence. A blessed spirit, 
eternally increasing in knowledge or illumination (which 
some think will be one of its beatitudes), gives an enlarged 
sense to the word demon. 

Plato certainly had no ill opinion of his demon, even 
when the intelligence was acting in a manner which the 
vulgar pronounced to be evil, and upon which the philoso- 
pher has delivered a sentiment equally profound and hu- 
mane. The following may be regarded as a summary of 
his notions about the spiritual world. Taking up the reli- 
gion of his country, as proclaimed by Hesiod and others, 
and endeavoring to harmonize it with reason, he conceived 
that, agreeably to the ranks and gradations which we fancy 
in nature, there must be intermediate beings between men 
and gods, — the gods themselves being far from the top of 
spirituality. We have already stated his opinions on that 
subject. Next to the gods came the demons, who partook 
of their divinity mixed with what he called the soul of the 
world, and ministered round about them as well as on 
earth ; in fact, were the angels of the Christian system 
but a little more allied to their superiors. " What other 
philosophers called demons," says the devout platonical 
Jew Philo, " Moses usually called angels." * Next to 



* There is good reason to believe that Dionysius, the pretended Arebpagite, 
who is the great authority with writers upon the angelical nature, was a Platon- 



GENII OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS. 6l 

demons, but farther apart from them than demons were 
from the gods, and yet partaking of the angelical office, 
were heroes, or spirits clothed in a light ethereal body, and 
partaking still more of the soul of the world ; perhaps the 
souls of men who had been heroical on earth, or sent 
down to embody them to that end. And lastly came the 
souls of men, which were the faintest emanation of the 
Deity, and clogged with earthly clothing in addition to 
the mundane nature of their spirits.* 

The chiefs among these spiritual beings were very like 
the gods, and often mistaken for them, which is said to 
have given them great satisfaction. It is upon the strength 
of this fancy that attempts were made to account for the 



izing Christian of the school of Alexandria. If so, there is no saying how far 
we are not indebted for our ordinary notions of angels themselves to Plato, nor 
indeed how far the Christian and Jewish angel and the demon of the Greeks 
are not one and the same spirit ; for it is impossible to say how much of the 
Jewish Cabala is not Alexandrian. On the other hand, the Platonists of that 
city mixed up their dogmas with the Oriental philosophy, so that the angel 
comes round again to the East, and is traceable to Persia and India. Nothing 
of all this need shake him ; for it is in the heart and hopes of man that his nest 
is found. Plato's angel, Pythagoras's, Philo's, Zoroaster's, and Jeremy Tay- 
lor's, are all the same spirit under different names ; and those who would love 
him properly, must know as much, or they cannot. Henry Moore and others, 
who may be emphatically styled our angelical doctors, avowedly undertook to 
unite the Platonic, Pythagorean, and Cabalistic opinion. (See Enfield's 
Abridgment of Brucker.) It is true they derived them all from the Hebrew, — 
which is about as much as if they had said that the Egyptians were skilled in 
all the learning of Moses, instead of Moses in ail the learning of the Egyp- 
tians. 

* Demons and heroes were the angels and saints of the Catholic hierarchy. 
They had their chapels, altars, feasts, and domestic worship precisely in the 
same spirit ; and the souls of the departed were from time to time added to the 
list. (See the Abbe Banier's "Mythology and Fables of the Ancients," ex- 
plained from history, vol. iii. p. 434.) The heroines were the female saints. 
We make this remark in no ironical spirit, though the Abbe would not thank 
us for it. 



62 GEXII OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS. 

stories of the gods, and their freaks upon earth ; for de- 
mons, any more than angels, were not incapable of a little 
aberration. The supposed visits, for instance, of Jupiter 
down to earth, when he came — 

" Now, like a ram, fair Helle to pervert, 
Now, like a bull, Europa to withdraw," 

were the work of those spirits about him, who may truly 
be called the jovial, and who delighted in bearing his 
name, as a Scottish clan does that of its chieftain. We 
have already mentioned the pious indignation of Plutarch 
at the indiscreet tales of the poets. It is remarkable that, 
according to Plato, these satellites encircled their master 
precisely in the manner of the angelical hierarchies. 
"But how different," it may be said, "were their na- 
tures ! " Not perhaps, quite so much so as may be fancied. 
We have already hinted a resemblance in one point ; and, 
in others, the advantage has not always been kept on the 
proper side. Milton's angels, when they let down the 
unascendable, heavenly staircase to imbitter the agonies 
of Satan, did a worse thing than any recorded of the Ju- 
piters and Apollos. We must be cautious how, in attrib- 
uting one or two virtues to a set of beings, we think we 
endow them with all the rest. 

Demons were not, as some thought them, the souls of 
men. The latter had the honor of assisting demons, but 
were a separate class. Indeed, according to Plato, the 
word soul might as well have been put for man, in opposi- 
tion to spirit ; for he held that the human being was prop- 
erly a soul using the body only as an instrument. Nor 
was this soul the guardian angel or demon, though some- 
times called a demon by reason of its superiority, but man 
himself. It was immortal, pre-existent ; and the object 



GENII OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS. 63 

of virtue was to restore it to its former state of beatitude 
in certain regions of light, from which it had fallen. This, 
among other doctrines of Plato, has been a favorite one 
with the poets, and would appear to have been seriously 
entertained by one of the present day.* What difficulty 
it clears, or what trouble it takes away, we cannot see. 
Progression is surely a better doctrine than recovery : 
especially if we look upon evil as partial, fugitive, and con- 
vertible, like a hard substance, to good. Besides, we 
should take the whole of our species with us, and not al- 
ways be looking after our own lost perfections. 

The guardian demons assigned to man, came out of the 
whole of these orders indiscriminately. Their rank was 
proportioned to the virtue and intelligence of the individ- 
ual Plotinus and others had guardian demons of a very 
high order. The demon of Socrates is said to have been 
called a god, because it was of the order that were taken 
for gods. It was the business of this spiritual attend 
to be a kind of soul in addition. The soul, or real man, 
governed the animal part of us ; and the demon governed 
the soul. He was a tutor accompanying the pupil. If the 
pupil did amiss, it was not the tutor's fault. He lamented, 
and tried to mend it, perhaps, by subjecting it to some 
misery, or even vice. The process in this case is not very 
clear. Good demons appear sometimes to be distinct 
from bad ones, sometimes to be confounded with them. 
The vulgar supposed, with the Jesuit who wrote the ; * Pan- 
theon,'-' that even* person had two demons assigned to 
him : one a good demon who incited him to virtue ; the 
other a bad one, who prompted him ;, 'to all manner of vice 



* " Our life is but a dream and a forgetting. ! ; 

IRDSWORTH. 



64 GENII OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS. 

and wickedness." * But the benign logic of Plato rejected 
a useless malignity. Evil when it came, was supposed to 
be for a good purpose : or rather not being of a nature to 
be immediately got rid of, was turned to good account ; 
and man was ultimately the better for it. The demon did 
every thing he could to exalt the intellect of his charge, 
to regulate his passions, and perfect his nature through- 
out ; in short, to teach his soul, as the soul aspired to 
teach the body ; and what is remarkable, though he could 
not supply fate itself, he is said to have supplied things 
fortuitous ; that is to say, " to give us a chance," as we 
phrase it, and put us in the way of shaping what we were 
to suppose was rough-hewn. This was reversing the 
Shakespearian order of Providence, or rather, perhaps, 
giving it a new meaning ; for we, or the untaught part of 
us, and fate, might be supposed to go blindly to the same 
end, did not our intelligence keep on the alert. 

There's a divinity that shapes our ends, 
Rough-hew them how we will.t 

* See the " Pantheon " attributed to Mr. Tooke. Tooke's " Pantheon " is 
a rifacimento of King's " Pantheon," which was a translation from a Jesuit 
of the name of Pomey. It contains "in every page, an elaborate calumny," 
says Mr. Baldwin, "upon the gods of the Greeks, and that in the coarsest 
thoughts and words that taverns could furnish. The author seems continually 
haunted by the fear that his pupil might prefer the religion of Jupiter to the 
religion of Christ." — Baldwin's " Pantheon," preface, p. 5. This philosophi- 
cal mythologist is of opinion that there was no ground for fear of that sort. 
We have observed elsewhere how little the young readers of Tooke think of 
the abuse at all ; but if they had any sense of it, undoubtedly it goes in Jupi- 
ter's favor. We believe there is one thing which is not lost upon them, and 
that is, the affected horror and secret delight with which the Jesuit dwells upon 
certain vagaries of the gayer deities. Besides, he paints sometimes in good, 
admiring earnest ; and then the boys attend to him as gravely. See, for in- 
stance, the beginning of his chapter on Venus, which, if we read once at school, 
we read a thousand times, comparing it with the engraving. 

t See Taylor's and Sydenham's " Translations of Plato," vol. i. p. 16, and 
vol. ii. p. 308. 



GENII OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS. 65 

If all this is not much clearer than attempts to explain 
such matters are apt to be, and if the parts of Plato's the- 
ology (which were derived from the national creed) do 
little honor sometimes to the general spirit of it, which 
was his own ; there is something at all times extremely 
elevating in his aspirations after the good and beautiful. 
St. Augustin complained that the reading of Plato made 
him proud. We do believe that it is impossible for read- 
ers of any enthusiasm to sit long over some of his writings 
(the Banquet for instance) and not feel an unusual exalta- 
tion of spirit, — a love of the good and beautiful, for their 
own sakes, and in honor of human nature. But there is 
no danger, we conceive, provided we correct this poetical 
state of self-aspiration with a remembrance of the admo- 
nitions of Christianity, — the sympathy with our fellow- 
creatures. The more hope we have of ourselves under 
that correction, the more we shall have of others. 

The great point is to elevate ourselves by elevating hu- 
manity at large. 

It is difficult to know what to make of the demon of 
Socrates. It is clear that he laid claim to a special con- 
sciousness of this attendant spirit — a sort of revelation, 
that we believe had never before been vouchsafed. The 
spirit gave him intimations rather what to avoid than to 
do ; for the Platonists tell us, that Socrates was led by 
his own nature to do what was right ; but out of the fer- 
vor of his desire to do it, was liable to be mistaken in the 
season. For instance, he had a tendency to give the ben- 
efit of his wisdom to all men indiscriminately ; and here 
the demon would sometimes warn him off, that he might 
not waste his philosophy upon a fool. This was at least an 
ingenious and mortifying satire. But the spirit interfered 
also on occasions that seem very trifling, though accord- 

5 



66 GENII OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS. 

ant with the office assigned to him by Plato of presiding 
over fortuitous events. Socrates was going one day to see 
a friend in company with some others, when he made a 
sudden halt, and told them that his demon had advised 
him not to go down that street, but to choose another. 
Some of them turned back, but others persisting in the 
path before them, " on purpose as 'twere, to confute Socra- 
tes his demon," encountered a herd of muddy swine, and 
came home with their clothes all over dirt. Charillus, a 
musician who had come to Athens to see the philosopher 
Cebes, got especially mudded, so that now and then, says 
Plutarch, " he and his friends would think in merriment 
on Socrates his demon, wondering that it never forsook 
the man, and that Heaven took such particular care of 
him." * It was particular enough in heaven, to be sure, 
to hinder a philosopher from having his drapery damaged ; 
but we suppose matters would have been worse, had he 
gone the way of the inferior flesh. He would have made 
it worth the pigs' while to be more tragical. 

This demon is the only doubtful thing about the char- 
acter of Socrates, for as to the common misconceptions of 
him, they are but the natural conclusions of vulgar minds ; 
and Aristophanes, who became a traitor to the graces he 
had learned at his table, and condescended to encourage 
the misconceptions in order to please the instinctive jeal- 
ousy of the men of wit and pleasure about town, was but 
a splendid buffoon. But when we reflect that the wisdom 
inculcated by Socrates was of a nature particularly 
straightforward and practical ; this supernatural twist in 

* See the story as related by Plutarch, and translated by Creech, in the 
"Morals by several Hands." Vol. II. p. 287. The street preferred by the 
philosopher was " Trunkmakers Street," and the fatal one "Gravers Row," 
says Creech, "near the Guildhall." 



GENII OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS. 6j 

his pretensions appears the more extraordinary. To 
be sure it has been well argued, that no men are more 
likely to be put out of their reckoning by a sudden incur- 
sion of fancy or demand upon their belief, than those who 
are the most mechanical and matter-of-fact on all other 
points. They are not used to it ; and have no grounds to 
go upon, the moment the hardest and dryest ones are 
taken from under them. Plato has rendered it difficult to 
believe this of Socrates ; but then we have the authority 
of Socrates for concluding that Plato put a great deal in 
his head that he never uttered ; and the Socrates of Xen- 
ophon, we think, the practical farmer and house-keeper, 
might not be supposed incapable of yielding to supersti- 
tious delusion out of a defect of imagination. Socrates 
sometimes reminds us of Dr. Johnson. He was a John- 
son on a higher scale, healthier with more self-command ; 
and instead of being intemperate and repenting all his life, 
had conquered his passions, and turned them into graces 
becoming his reason. Johnson had a sturdy every-day 
good sense and wit and words to impress it ; but it was 
only persuasion in him : in Socrates it was persuasion 
and practice. Now Johnson had a strong tendency to be 
moved by superstitious impressions and perplexities from 
within. A sudden action of the bile, not well understood, 
or taken as a moral instead of a physical intimation, would 
give rise to some painful thoughts ; and this (which is a 
weakness that many temperaments given to reflection and 
not in perfect health, have found it necessary to guard 
against), would lead him into some superstitious practice, 
or avoidance. There is a circumstance related of him, 
very like this one of Socrates ; only the sedentary, diseased, 
dinner-loving Englishman made a gloomy business of it ; 
while the sturdy gymnastic Athenian, mastering the weak- 



68 GENII OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS. 

ness of his stomach, turned the superstition on his side 
into an elegance and an exaltation. The fact we allude to 
is, that Johnson would never go down Cranbourne Alley, 
or some street thereabout. He always turned and went 
round about. Had he been gay and confident, not over- 
whelmed with scrofula, and with the more gloomy parts of 
his creed, he might have sworn as Socrates did, that it 
was his guardian angel that told him not to go that way. 
Had it been Jeremy Taylor — Jeremy the amiable and the 
handsome, the Sir Charles Grandison of Christianity, who, 
with equal comfort to his security, pronounced a pane- 
gyric upon a wedding ring, or a description of eternal tor- 
ments (so much can superstition pervert a sweet nature) 
— he, if he had thought he had an intimation from within, 
would have infallibly laid it to the account of the prettiest 
angel of the skies. Was it something of a like vanity in 
Socrates (too superior to his fellows, not to fall into some 
disadvantage of that sort) ? or was it an unhealthy move- 
ment within him happily turned ? or was it a joke which 
was to be taken for serious, by those who liked ? or did it 
arise from one of those perplexities of not knowing what to 
conclude, to which the greatest minds may be subject 
when they attain to the end of their experience, and stand 
between the known world and the unknown? or, lastly, 
was it owing (as we fear is most likely) partly to a super- 
stition retained from his nurse, and partly to a determina- 
tion to construe an occasional fancy, thus warranted, into 
a conscious certainty, and so turn his interest with heaven 
to the account of his effect among men ? Such, we fear, 
is the most reasonable conjecture, and such we take to be 
the general impression ; though with a delicacy, equally 
singular and creditable to them, mankind (with rare ex- 
ceptions) seem to have agreed to say as little about the 



GENII OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS. 69 

matter as possible, choosing rather to give so great a man 
the benefit of their ignorance, than lose any part of their 
reverence for his wisdom. One thing must not be forgot- 
ten ; that this pretension to an unusual sense of his attend- 
ant spirit assisted in getting him into trouble. He was 
accused of introducing false gods, — a singular charge, 
which shows how much the opinion of a guardian deity- 
had gone out of use. On the other hand, he argued (with 
a true look of feeling, and which must afterwards have 
had great effect), that it was not his fault if he beheld in 
omens* and intimations the immediate influence of his 
guardian angel, and not merely the omens themselves. 
That he did believe in the latter somehow or other, is 
generally admitted. 

It is not a little curious, that this is the only story of a 
good demon that has come down to us in the records of 
antiquity. Some philosophers had theirs long after- 
wards; but these were evident imitations. Stories of bad 
demons, according to the vulgar notion, are more numer- 
ous. Two are to be found in the life of Apollonius of 
Tyana. Another is in Pausanus, and a third is the fa- 
mous one of Brutus. These injurious persons were sel- 
dom however bad by nature. They become so from ill 
usage, being in fact, the souls of men who had been ill 
treated when alive. 




70 GENII OF ANTIQUITY AND THE POETS. 



ON THE GENII OF ANTIQUITY AND THE 
POETS. 

J HE bad demon was thought to be of formidable 
shape, black, frowning, and brutal. A man, 
according to Pausanias, fought with one, and 
drove him into the sea. As we have told the 
story before (in the " Indicator "),* and it is 
little to tell, we shall proceed to give the noblest passage 
ever written about demons, in the scene out of Shake- 
speare. The spirit that appeared to Brutus has been vari- 
ously represented. Some made it of the common order of 
malignant appearances ; others have described it as resem- 
bling Caesar. This was the light in which it was beheld 
by our great poet. 

With what exquisite art ; that is to say, with what ex- 
quisite nature, has he not introduced this scene, and made 
us love and admire the illustrious patriot, who having done 
what he could upon earth, and prepared for his last effort, 
is about to encounter the menaces of fate. How admira- 
bly, by the help of the little boy and the lute, has he 
painted him, who was only a dictator and a warrior be- 
cause he was a great humanist, the Platonic philosopher 
in action, the ideal, yet not passionless, man, — such a one 
as Shakespeare loved, not because he loved only select 
human nature, but because he loved all that human nature 
contained ! 

We must confess, that in our opinion the address to the 
Ghost is not so good as in simple old Plutarch. There is 
too much astonishment and agitation in it ; if not for na- 

* In the article on the " Household Gods of the Ancients." — Ed. 



GENII OF ANTIQUITY AND THE POETS. 71 

ture, at least for the superinduced and philosophic nature, 
that we are led to suppose was in Brutus ; and the same 
objection might be made to what follows. The household 
are called up in too much alarm. It is Brutus's care for 
his servants, his bidding them take their rest, and what 
he says to the little lute-player, overcome with sleep, that 
render the scene so charming. The divine scene also be- 
tween him and Cassius, where he tells him that " Portia 
is dead," has just preceded it. 

Brutus. Lucius, my gown. {Exit Lucius.] Farewell, good Messala ; 
Good night, Titinius : — noble, noble Cassius, 
Good night, and good repose. 

Cassius. O, my dear brother ! 
This was an ill beginning of the night : 
Never come such division 'tween our souls ! 
Let it not, Brutus. 

Bru. Every thing is well. 

Cas. Good night, my lord. 

Bru. Good night, good brother. 

Titinius and Messala. Good night, lord Brutus. 

Bru. Farewell, every one. 

[Exeunt Cas., Tit., and Mes. 

Re-enter Lucius with the gown. 

Give me the gown. Where is thy instrument ? 

Lucius. Here in the tent. 

Bru. What, thou speak'st drowsily ? 

Poor knave, I blame thee not ; thou art o'er- watched. 
Call Claudius, and some other of my men ; 
I'll have them sleep on cushions in my tent. 

Luc. Varro and Claudius. 

Enter Varro and Claudius. 

Varro. Calls my lord ? 

Bru. I pray you, sirs, lie in my t^nt and sleep ; 
It may be, I shall raise you by and by 
On business to my brother Cassius. 

Var. So please you, we will stand, and watch your pleasure. 

Bru. I will not have it so ; lie down, good sirs ; 



72 



GENII OF ANTIQUITY AND THE POETS. 



It may be, I shall otherwise think me. 

Look, Lucius, here's the book I sought for so ; 

I put it in the pocket of my gown. [Servants lie down. 

Luc. I was sure, your lordship did not give it me. 

Bru. Bear with me, good boy, I am much forgetful. 
Canst thou hold up thy heavy eyes awhile, 
And touch thy instrument a strain or two ? 

Luc. Ay, my lord, an it please you. 

Bru. It does, my boy. 

I trouble thee too much, but thou art willing. 

Luc. It is my duty, sir. 

Bru. I should not urge thy duty past thy might ; 
I know young bloods look for a time of rest. 

Luc. I have slept, my lord, already. 

Bru. It is well done ; and thou shalt sleep again ; 
I will not hold thee long : if I do live, 

I will be good to thee. [Music and a song. 

This is a sleepy tune : — O, murderous slumber I 
Lay'st thou thy leaden mace upon my boy, 
That plays thee music ? — Gentle knave, good night ; 
I will not do thee so much wrong to wake thee. 
If thou dost nod, thou break'st thy instrument ; 
I'll take it from thee ; and good boy, good night. 
Let me see, let me see ; is not the leaf turn'd down, 
Where I left reading ? Here it is, I think. [He sits down. 

Enter the Ghost of Caesar. 

How ill this taper burns ! Ha ! who comes here ? 
I think it is the weakness of mine eyes, 
That shapes this monstrous apparition. 
It comes upon me : — art thou any thing ? 
Art thou some god, some angel, or some devil, 
That mak'st my blood cold, and my hair to stare ? 
Speak to me, what thou art. 

Ghost. Thy evil spirit, Brutus. 

Bru. Why com'st thou ? 

Ghost. To tell thee, thou shalt see me at Philippi. 

Bru. Well; 
Then I shall see thee again ? 

Ghost. Ay, at Philippi. [Ghost vanishes. 

Bru. Why, I will see thee at Philippi then. — 
Now I have taken heart, thou vanishest : 
111 spirit, I would hold more talk with thee. — 



GENII OF ANTIQUITY AND THE POETS. 73 

Boy ! Lucius ! Varro ! Claudius ! sirs awake ! — 
Claudius ! 

Luc. The strings, my lord, are false. 

Bru. He thinks, he is still at his instrument — 
Lucius, awake. 

Luc. My lord? 

Bru. Didst thou dream that thou so cry'dst out? 

Luc. My lord, I do not know that I did cry. 

Bru. Yes, that thou didst ; didst thou see any thing ? 

Luc. Nothing, my lord. 

Bru. Sleep again, Lucius. — Sirrah, Claudius ! 
Fellow thou ! awake. 

Var. My lord. 

Clau. My lord. 

Bru. Why did you so cry out, sirs, in your sleep ? 

Var. and Clau. Did we, my lord ? 

Bru. Ay : saw you any thing ? 

Var. No, my lord, I saw nothing. 

Clau. Nor I, my lord. 

Bru. Go, and commend me to my brother Cassius ; 
Bid him set on his powers betimes before ; 
And we will follow. 

Var. and Clau. It shall be done, my lord. {Exeunt. 

The Roman genius appears to have been a very mate- 
rial sort of personage compared with the Greek demon, 
and altogether addicted to earth. We know not where it 
is found that he was first called go'ulus, or a carrier 
on of affairs : perhaps in Varro ; but whether as gerulus, 
or as genius (the spirit of things generated), the Romans 
made him after their own likeness, and gave him as little 
to do with the stars as possible. The Romans had not 
the fancy of the Greeks, and cared little for their ethereal 
pleasures. Accordingly, their attendant spirit was either 
fighting and conquering (on which occasion he took the 
wings of victory, as you may see in the imperial sculp- 
tures), or he was dining and enjoying himself: sitting 
under his plane-tree and drinking with his mistress. To 



74 GENII OF ANTIQUITY AND THE POETS. 

gratify their appetites, was called " indulging the genius; " 
not to gratify them, was "defrauding" him. They seem 
to have forgotten that he had any thing to do with re- 
straint. Ovid, the most poetical of their poets, in all his 
uses of the words genius or genii, never hints at the pos- 
sibility of their having any meaning beyond something 
local and comfortable. There is the genius of the city, 
and the genius of one's father. The Sabine women were 
" a genial prey." Crowns of flowers are genial ; a certain 
kind of musical instrument is particularly genial, and 
agrees with dulcibus Jocis, — that is to say, with double 
meanings ; Bacchus is the planter of the genial vine (gen- 
ial indeed was a name of Bacchus) ; a popular holiday, 
pleasantly described in the Fasti, where every one is eat- 
ing and drinking by the side of his lass, is a genial feast* 

Hence the acceptation of the word among ourselves, 
though we are fain to give it more grace and sentiment. 
The "genial bed" of Milton is not exactly Ovidian; 
though, by the way, the good-natured libertine was the 
favorite Latin poet of our great puritan. 

We hear little of the bad genius among the Romans. 
They seem to have agreed to treat him as bad geniuses 
ought to be, and drop his acquaintance. But he was black, 
like his brother in Greece. Voltaire has a pleasant story 
of the black and white genius. Valerius Maximus, a ser- 
vile writer, who had the luck to survive his betters and 
become a classic, tells a story (probably to please the men 
in power whom he deified) which appears to have been 
confounded with that of Brutus. " We are told by Vale- 
rius Maximus," says Mr. Tooke, " that when Cassius fled 



* " Fastorum," lib. iii. v. 523. It is the description of a modern Florentine 
holiday. 



GENII OF ANTIQUITY AND THE POETS. 75 

to Athens, after Anthony was beaten at Actium, there ap- 
peared to him a man of long stature, of a black swarthy 
complexion, with large hair, and a nasty beard. Cassius 
asked him who he was ; and the apparition answered, * I 
am your evil genius.' " * 

Spenser has placed an evil genius at the gate of his false 
bower of bliss, and old genius, or the fatherly principle 
of life and care, at the door of the great nursery-gardens 
of the universe. 

Old genius the porter of them was ; 

Old genius, the which a double nature has. 

He letteth in, he letteth out to wend, 
All that to come into this world desire ; 
A thousand thousand naked babes attend 
About him day and night, which do require 
That he with fleshly weeds would them attire. 

What follows and precedes this passage is a true piece 
of Platonical coloring, founded upon the old Greek alle- 
gories. These nursery grounds, sprouting with infants 
and with the germs of all things, would make a very happy 
place if it were not for Time, who with his " flaggy wings," 
goes playing the devil among the beds, to the great regret 
of Venus. It is an old story, and a true ; and the worst 
of it is, that Venus herself (though the poet does not here 
say so) joins with her enemies to assist him. 



Were it not that Time their troubler is, 

All that in this delightful gardin grcwes 
Should happy been, and have immortal bliss : 
For here all plenty and all pleasure flowes ; 
And swete Love gentle fitts among them throwes, 
Without fell rancour or fond gealosy : 



* Tooke's " Pantheon," part 4, chap. iii. sect. 4. The genius speaks Greek, 
which was better bred of him than having a beard. 



76 GENII OF ANTIQUITY AND THE POETS. 

Franckly each paramour his leman knowes ; 
Each bird his mate ; ne any does envy 
Their goodly meriment and gay felicity. 

There is continual spring, and harvest there 
Continuall, both meeting at one tyme : 
For both the boughes doe laughing blossoms beare, 
And with fresh colours decke the wanton pryme, 
And eke attonce the heavy trees they clyme, 
Which seeme to labour under their fruites lode : 
The whyles the joyous birdes make their pastyme 
Emongst the shady leaves, their sweet abode, 

And their trew loves without suspicion tell abrode. 

We are then presented with one of his arbors, of which 
he was the cunningest builder in all fairy-land. The pres- 
ent one belongs to Venus and Adonis. 

Right in the middest of that Paradise 
There stood a stately mount, on whose round top 
A gloomy grove of mirtle trees did rise, 
Whose shady boughes sharp Steele did never lop, 
Nor wicked beastes their tender buds did crop, 
But like a girlond compassed the hight, 
And from their fruitfull sydes sweet gum did drop, 
That all the ground, with pretious deaw bedight, 

Threw forth most dainty odours and most sweet delight. 

And in the thickest covert of that shade 

There was a pleasant arber, not by art 

But of the trees own inclination made, 

Which knitting their rancke braunches part to part, 

With wanton yvie-twine entrayled athwart, 

And eglantine and caprifole emong, 

Fashion'd above within their inmost part, 

That neither Phoebus beams could through them throng, 
Nor iEolus sharp blast could worke them any wrong. 

Fairy Queene, Book III. Canto vi. 

Here Venus was wont to enjoy the company of Adonis ; 
" Adonis," says Upton, " being matter, and Venus, form." 



GENII OF ANTIQUITY AND THE POETS. 77 

Ovid would have said, " he did not know how that might 
be, but that the allegory ' was genial.' " 

The poets are a kind of eclectic philosophers, who pick 
out of theories whatever is suitable to the truth of natural 
feeling and the candor of experience ; and thus, with due 
allowances for what is taught them, may be looked upon 
as among the truest as well as most universal of philoso- 
phers. The most opinionate of them, Milton for one, are 
continually surrendering the notions induced upon them by 
their age or country, to the cause of their greater mother- 
country, the universe ; like beings deeply sympathizing 
with man, but impatient of wearing the clothes and cus- 
toms of a particular generation. It is doubtful, consider- 
ing the whole context of Milton's life, and taking away 
the excitements of personal feelings, whether he was a jot 
more in earnest when playing the polemic, than in giving 
himself up to the dreams of Plato ; whether he felt more, 
or so much, in common with Raphael and Michael, as 
with the genius of the groves of Harefleld, listening at 
night-time to the music of the spheres. In one of his 
prose works (we quote from memory) he complains of 
being forced into public brawls and " hoarse seas of dis- 
pute ; " and asks, what but a sense of duty could have 
enabled him thus to have been " put off from beholding the 
bright countenance of Truth in the quiet and still air of de- 
lightful studies." This truth was truth universal ; this air, 
the same that haunted the room of Plato, and came breath- 
ing from Elysium. No man had a greater taste than he 
for the "religio loci," — the genius of a particular spot. 
The genius of a wood in particular, was a special friend 
of his, as indeed he has been of all poets. The following 
passage has been often quoted ; but we must not on that 
account pass it by. New beauties may be found in it every 



78 GENII OF ANTIQUITY AND THE POETS. 

time. A passage in a wood has been often trod, but we 
tread it again. The pleasure is ever young, though the 
path is old. So — 

When the sun begins to fling 

His flaring beams, me, Goddess, bring 

To arched walks of twilight groves, 

And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves, 

Of pine or monumental oak, 

Where the rude axe with heaved stroke, 

Was never heard the nymphs to daunt, 

Or fright them from their hallow'd haunt. 

There in close covert by some brook, 

Where no profaner eye may look, 

Hide me from day's garish eye, 

While the bee with honied thigh, 

That at her flowery work doth sing, 

And the waters murmuring, 

With such consort as they keep, 

Entice the dewy-feather'd sleep ; 

And let some strange mysterious dream 

Wave at his wings in aery stream 

Of lively portraiture display'd, 

Softly on my eye-lids laid. 

And as I wake, sweet music breathe 

Above, about, or underneath, 

Sent by some spirit to mortals good, 

Or the unseen genius of the wood. 

Penseroso. 

In the Arcades, a Marque performed at Harefield before 
the Countess of Derby, one of these genii makes his 
appearance. Two noble shepherds coming forward are 
met by the " genius of the wood." We will close our 
article with him as a proper harmonious personage, who 
unites the spirit of the Greek and Roman demonology. 
He need not have troubled himself, perhaps, with "curl- 
ing" the groves ; and his " tasseP d" horn is a little fine 
and particular, — not remote enough or audible. But the 






GENII OF ANTIQUITY AND THE POETS. 79 

young poet was writing to please young patricians. The 
" tassel " was for their nobility ; the rest is for his own. 

Stay, gentle swains ; for though in this disguise, 
I see bright honour sparkle through your eyes ; 
Of famous Arcady ye are, and sprung 
Of that renowned flood, so often sung, 
Divine Alpheus, who by secret sluce 
Stole under seas to meet his Arethuse ; 
And ye, the breathing roses of the wood, 
Fair silver-buskined nymphs, as great and good ; 
I know, this quest of yours, and free intent, 
Was all in honour and devotion meant 
To the great mistress of yon princely shrine, 
Whom with low reverence I adore as mine ; 
And, with all helpful service, will comply 
To further this night's glad solemnity ; 
And lead ye, where ye may more near behold 
What shallow-searching fame hath left untold ; 
Which I full oft, amidst these shades alone, 
Have sat to wonder at, and gaze upon ; 
For know, by lot from Jove, I am the power 
Of this fair wood, and live in oaken bower, 
To nurse the saplings tall, and curl the grove 
With ringlets quaint, and wanton windings wove. 
And all my plants I save from nightly ill 
Of noisome winds, and blasting vapours chill ; 
And from the boughs brush off the evil dew, 
And heal the harms of thwarting thunder blue, 
Or what the cross dire-looking planet smites, 
Or hurtful worm with canker'd venom bites. 
When evening gray doth rise, I fetch my round 
Over the mount and all this hallow' d ground ; 
And early, ere the odorous breath of morn 
Awakes the slumbering leaves, or tassel'd horn 
Shakes the high thicket, haste I all about, 
Number my ranks, and visit every sprout 
With puissant words, and murmurs made to bless. 
But else in deep of night, when drowsiness 
Hath lock'd up mortal sense, then listen I 
To the celestial Syrens' harmony, 
That sit upon the nine infolded spheres, 
And sing to those that hold the vital shears, 



80 GENII OF ANTIQUITY AND THE POETS. 

And turn the adamantine spindle round, 
On which the fate of gods and men is wound. 
Such sweet compulsion doth in musick lie, 
To lull the daughters of necessity. 

This is a passage to read at twilight ; or before put- 
ting out the candles, in some old country house. 

There is yet one more passage which we must quote 
from Milton, about a genius. It concerns also a very de- 
moniacal circumstance, the cessation of the heathen ora- 
cles. See with what regret the poet breaks up the haunt 
of his winged beauties, and sends them floating away into 
dissolution with their white bodies out of the wpods. 

The oracles are dumb, 
No voice or hideous hum 

Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. 
Apollo from his shrine 
Can no more divine, 

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. 
No nightly trance, or breathed spell, 
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetick cell, 

The lonely mountains o'er, 
And the resounding shore, 

A voice of weeping heard and loud lament ; 
From haunted spring and dale, 
Edg'd with poplar pale, 

The parting Genius is with sighing sent : 
With flower-inwoven tresses torn 
The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn 

In consecrated earth, 
And on the holy hearth, 

The Lars, and Lemures, mourn with midnight plaint ; 
In urns, and altars round, 
A drear and dying sound 

Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint ; 
And the chill marble seems to sweat, 
While each peculiar Power foregoes his wonted seat 



FAIRIES. 8 1 

He proceeds to dismiss the idols of Palestine, and the 
brute gods of Egypt, 

Trampling the unshowered grass with lowings loud. 

We do not feel for those, nor does he ; but the little 
household gods of Rome, trembling like kittens on the 
hearth, and the nymphs of Greece mourning their flowery 
shades, he loses with an air of tenderness. He forgets 
that he and the other poets had gathered them into their 
own Elysium. 




FAIRIES. 

I. 

HE word fairy, in the sense of a little minia- 
ture being, is peculiar to this country, and is 
a southern appellation applied to a northern 
idea. It is the fee and fata of the French 
and Italians ; who mean by it an imaginary 
lady of any sort, not of necessity small and generally of 
the human size. With us, it is the ^of our northern an- 
cestors, and means exclusively the little creature inhabit- 
ing the woods and caverns, and dancing on the grass. 

The progress of knowledge, which humanizes every- 
thing, and enables our fancies to pick and choose, has long 
rendered the English fairy a harmless being, rarely seen 
of eye and known quite as much, if not more, through the 
pleasant fancies of the poets, than the earthier creed of 
the common people. In Germany, also, the fairy is said 
to have become a being almost entirely benevolent. But 

6 



82 FAIRIES. 

among our kinsmen of the North, the Swedes and Danes, 
and especially the insular races of Iceland and Rugen, 
the old opinions appear to be in force ; and, generally 
speaking, the pigmy world may be divided into four 
classes. 

First, the white or good fairies, who live above ground, 
dancing on the grass, or sitting on the leaves of trees — 
the fairy of our poets. They are fond of sunshine, and 
are ethereal little creatures. 

Second, the dark or under-ground fairies (the dwarfs, 
trolls, and hill-folk of the continent), an irritable race, 
workers in mines and smithies, and doing good or evil 
offices, as it may happen. 

Third, the house or homestead fairy, our Puck, Rob- 
in Goodfellow, Hobgoblin, &c. (the Nis of Denmark and 
Norway, the kobold of Germany, the brownie of Scotland, 
and tomtegubbe, or old man of the house in Sweden). 
He is of a similar temper, but good upon the whole, and 
fond of cleanliness, rewarding and helping the servants 
for being tidy, and punishing them for the reverse. 

And fourth, the water fairy, the kelpie of Scotland, 
and Nick, Neck, Nickel, Nickar, and Nix, of other 
countries, the most dangerous of all, appearing like a 
horse, or a mermaid, or a beautiful girl, and enticing 
people to their destruction. He is supposed by some, 
however, not to do it out of ill will, but in order to 
procure companions in the spirits of those who are 
drowned. 

All the fairies have qualities in common ; and for the 
most part, eat, drink, marry, and are governed like human 
beings ; and all without exception are thieves, and fond of 
power. In other words, they are like the human beings 
that invented them. They do the same good and ill of- 



FAIRIES. S3 

fices, are subject to the same passions, and are called guid 
folk and good neighbors, out of the same feelings of fear or 
gratitude. The better sort dress in gay clothes of green, 
and are handsome ; the more equivocal are ugly, big- 
nosed little knaves, round-eyed and humpbacked, like 
Punch, or the figures in caricatures. The latter dress in 
red or brown caps, which they have a great dread of los- 
ing, as they must not rest till they get another ; and the 
hill-folk among them are great enemies to noise. They 
keep their promises, because if they did not, the Rugen 
people say they would be changed into reptiles, beetles, 
and other ugly creatures, and be obliged to wander in that 
shape many years. The ordinary German kobold, or 
house goblin, delights in a mess of grits or water-gruel, 
with a lump of butter in it. In other countries, as in 
England of old, he aspires to a cream bowl. Hear our 
great poet, who was as fond of a rustic supper as any man, 
and has recorded his roasting chestnuts with his friend 
Diodati. 

Then to the spicy nut-brown ale, 

With stories told of many a feat, 

How fairy Mab the junkets eat ; 

She was pinch'd and pull'd, she sed ; 

And he, by friar's lantern led ; 

Tells how the drudging Goblin swet, 

To earn his cream-bowl duly set, 

When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, 

His shadowy flail hath thresh'd the corn, 

That ten day-laborers could not end ; 

Then lies him down the lubbar fiend, 

And, stretch'd out all the chimney's length, 

Basks at the fire his hairy strength ; 

And crop full out of doors he flings, 

Ere the first cock his matin rings. 

Thus done the tales, to bed they creep, 

By whispering winds soon lull'd asleep. 



84 FAIRIES. 

This gigantifying of Robin Goodfellow is a sin against 
the true fairy religion ; but a poet's sins are apt to be too 
agreeable not to be forgiven.* The friar with his lantern, 
is the same Robin, whose pranks he delighted to record 
even amidst the stately solemnities of Paradise Lost, — 
philosophizing upon the nature of the ignis fatuus ; that 
he might have an excuse for bringing him in. 

Lead then, said Eve. He, leading, swiftly roll'd 
In tangles, and made intricate seem straight, 
To mischief swift. Hope elevates, and joy 
Brightens his crest ; as when a wandering fire, 
Compact of unctuous vapor, which the night 
Condenses, and the cold environs round, 
Kindled through agitation to a flame, 
Which oft, they say, some evil spirit attends, 
Hovering and blazing with delusive light, 
Misleads the amaz'd night- wanderer from his way 
To bogs and mires, and oft through pond or pool ; 
There swallow'd up and lost, from succor far. 
So glister'd the dire Snake. 

We have remarked more than once, that the belief in 
supernatural existences round about us is indigenous to 
every country, and as natural as fears and hopes. Cli- 

* " Robin Goodfellow," says Warton, "who is here made a gigantic spirit, 
fond of lying before the fire, and called the lubbar fiend, seems to be con- 
founded with the sleepy giant mentioned in Beaumont and Fletcher's ' Knight 
of the Burning Pestle,' Act iii, Sc. I. vol. vi. p. 411, edit. 1751." There is a 
pretty tale of a witch that had the devil's mark about her, God bless us, that 
had a giant to her son that was called " Lob-lye-by-the-fire. " Todd's Milton, 
vol. vi. p. 96. Burton in a passage subsequently quoted, tells us in speaking 
of these fairies, that there is " a bigger kind of them, called with us Hobgoblins 
and Robin Goodfellows, that would in those superstitious times grinde corne 
for a messe of milke, cut wood, or do any manner of drudgery worke." Me- 
lanch. part i. sec. 2, p. 42, edit. 1632. The bigness arose probably out of the 
superhuman labor ; but, though Milton has made fine use of the lubbar fiend 
with his "hairy strength," it is surprising he should have sacrificed the greater 
wonder of the little potent fairy to that of a giant. 



FAIRIES. 85 

mate and national character modify it ; parts of it may be 
borrowed ; a people may abound in it at one time, and 
outgrow the abuse of it in another : but wherever human 
nature is to be found, either in a state of superstitious ig- 
norance, or imaginative knowledge, there the belief will 
be found with it, modified accordingly. 

We shall not trouble ourselves, therefore, with attempt- 
ing to confine the origin of the fairies to this or that 
region. A bird, a squirrel, a voice, a tree nodding and 
gesticulating in the wind, was sufficient to people every 
one of them with imaginary beings. But creeds may oust 
creeds or alter them, as invaders alter a people ; and there 
are two circumstances in the nature of the popular fairy, 
assignable to that northern mythology, to which the be- 
lief itself has been traced ; we mean the smallness of its 
stature, and the supposition at one time prevailing, that it 
was little better than a devil. It is remarkable, also, that 
inasmuch as the northern mythology is traceable to the 
Eastern invaders of Europe, our fairies may have issued 
out of those same mountains of Caucasus, the great Kaf, 
to which we are indebted for the Peries and Genii. The 
Pygmies were supposed by the ancients to people the two 
ends of the earth, northern and southern, where the 
growth of nature was faint and stunted. In the north 
they were inhabitants of India, the cranes their enemies 
being Scythians : in the other quarters, they were found 
by Hercules in the desert where they assailed him with 
their bows and arrows, as the Lilliputians did Gulliver, 
and were carried off by the smiling demigod, in the skin 
of his lion. Odin, the supposed Scythian or Tartar, is 
thought to have been the importer of the northern fables. 
His wandering countrymen of the crane region, may have 
a nigher personal acquaintance with the little people of 



86 FAIRIES. 

the North, than is supposed. In the tales now extant 
among the Calmuc Tartars, and originating it seems in 
Thibet, mention is made of certain little children encoun- 
tered by a wandering Khan in a wood, and quarrelling 
about " an invisible cup." The Khan tricks them of it in 
good swindling style ; and proceeding onwards meets 
with certain Tchadkurs or evil spirits, quarrelling about 
some " boots of swiftness," of which he beguiles them in 
like manner.* 

These may be chance coincidences ; but these fictions 
are not of so universal a nature as most ; and we cannot 
help regarding them as corroborations of the Eastern rise 
of our fablers of the North. We take this opportunity, 
before we proceed, of noticing another remarkable circum- 
stance in the history of popular fictions ; which is, that it 
is doubtful whether the Greeks had any little beings in 
their mythology. They regarded the Pygmies as a real 
people, and never seem to have thought of giving them a 
lift into the supernatural. And it may be observed, that 
although the Spaniards have a house-spirit which they 
call Duende, and Tasso, in the fever of his dungeon, was 
haunted with a Folletto, which is the Follet or Lutin of 
the French, it does not appear that these southern spirits 
are of necessity small ; still less have those sunny nations 
any embodied system of fairyism. Their fairies are the 

* See an excellent article in the " Quarterly Review," entitled "Antiquities 
of Nursery Literature." Of similar merit and probably by the same hand 
(which we presume to be that of Mr. Southey) is another on the popular my- 
thology of the Middle Ages. We cannot refer to the volume, our copy happen- 
ing to form part of a selection which we made some years ago from a bundle of 
the two reigning Reviews. [These articles are in volumes 21 and 22, of the 
"Quarterly Review." They were not written by Southey, at least they are 
not in the list of his contributions to the " Review " published in his biography. 
Ed.] 



FAIRIES. 87 

enchantresses of romance. Little spirits appear to be of the 
country of little people, commented on by their larger 
neighbors. It is true that little shapes and shadows are 
seen in all countries ; but the general tendency of fear is 
to magnify. Particular circumstances must have created 
a spirit at once petty and formidable. 

We are of opinion with the author of the " Fairy My- 
thology," that the petty size of the haunted idols of antiq- 
uity argues nothing conclusive respecting the size of the 
beings they represented. Besides, they were often large 
as well as small, though the more domestic of them, or 
those that immediately presided over the hearth, were of 
a size suitable to convenience. The domestic idols of all 
nations have probably been small, for the like reason. 

Whether the Lares were supposed to be of greater stat- 
ure or not by the learned, it is not impossible that the 
constant sight of the little images generated a correspond- 
ing notion of the originals. The best argument against 
the smallness of these divinities is, that there is no men- 
tion of it in books ; and yet the only passage we remem- 
ber to have met w T ith, implying any determinate notion of * 
stature, is in favor of the little. We here give it out of an 
old and not very sage author. 

" After the victory had and gotten against the Gethes, 
the Emperor Dornitian caused many shewes and triumphs 
to be made, in signe and token of joy ; and amongst others 
hee invited publickly to dine with him, all sorts of persons, 
both noble and unnoble, but especially the Senators and 
Knights of Rome, to whom he made a feast in this fashion. 
Hee had caused a certaine house of al sides to bee painted 
black, the pavement thereof was black, so likewise were 
the hangings, or seelings, the roofe and the wals also 
black ; and within it hee had prepared a very low room, 



88 FAIRIES. 

not unlike a hollow vault or cell, ful of emptie siedges or 
seats. Into this place he caused the Senators and Knights, 
his ghests, to be brought, without suffering any of their 
pages or attendants to enter in with them. And first of 
all he caused a little square piller to be set near to every 
one of them, upon the which was written the partie's name 
sitting next it ; by which there hanged also a lamp burn- 
ing before each seat, in such sort as is used in sepulchers. 
After this, there comes into this melancholicke and dark 
place a number of yong pages, with great joy and merri- 
ment, starke naked, and spotted or painted all over with a 
die or colour as blacke as inke : who, resembling these 
spirits called Manes, and such like idols, did leape and 
skip round about those Senators and Knights, who, at 
this unexpected accident, were not a little frighted and 
afraid. After which, those pages set them down at their 
feete, against each of them one, and there stayed, whilste 
certaine other persons (ordayned there of purpose) did 
execute with great solemnity all those ceremonies that 
were usually fit and requisit at the funeralls and exequies 
of the dead. This done, there came in others, who 
brought and served in, in black dishes and platters, divers 
meats and viands, all coloured black, in such sort that 
there was not any one in the place but was in great doubt 
what would become of him, and thought himself utterly 
undone, supposing he should have his throat cut, onely to 
give pleasure and content to the Emperour. Besides, 
there was kept the greatest silence that could be imagined. 
And Domitian himself being present, did nothing else but 
(without ceasing) speake and talke unto them of murthers, 
death and tragedies. In the end, the Emperour having 
taken his pleasure of them at the full, he caused their 
pages and lackies, which attended them without the gates, 



FAIRIES. 89 

to come in unto them, and so sent them away home to 
their own houses, some in coches, others in horselitters, 
guided and conducted by strange and unknown persons, 
which gave them as great cause of fear as their former 
entertainment. And they were no sooner arrived every- 
one to his own house, and had scant taken breath from 
the feare they had conceived, but that one of their ser- 
vants came to tell them, that there were at the gates cer- 
taine which came to speake with them from the Emperour. 
God knows how this message made them stirre, what ex- 
cessive lamentations they made, and with how exceeding 
feares they were perplexed in their minds ; there was not 
any, no, not the hardiest of them all, but thought that hee 
was sent for to be put to death. But to make short, those 
which w T ere to speake with them from the Emperour, came 
to no other purpose but to bring them either a little piller 
of silver, or some such like vessel or piece of plate (which 
had beene set before them at the time of their entertain- 
ment) ; after which, everyone of them had also sent unto 
him, for a present from the Emperour, one of those pages 
that had counterfeyted those Manes or Spirits at the ban- 
quet, they being first washed and cleansed before they 
were presented unto them." 

Spirits of old could become small ; but we read of none 
that were essentially little except the fairies. It was a 
Rabbinical notion, that angelical beings could render 
themselves as small as they pleased ; a fancy of which 
Milton has not scrupled to avail himself in his" Pande- 
monium.* It was proper enough to the idea of a being 



* Milton's reduction of the size of his angels is surely a superfluity, and 
diminishes the grandeur of their meeting. It was one of the rare instances 
(theology apart) in which his learning betrayed his judgment. 



90 FAIRIES. 

made of thought or fire ; though one would think it was 
easier to make it expand like the genius when let loose, 
than be contracted into the jar or vial in the first instance. 
But if spirits went in and out of crevices, means, it was 
thought, must be taken to enable them to do so ; and this 
may serve to account for the Fairies themselves, in coun- 
tries where other circumstances disposed the fancy to create 
them : but all the attributes of the little northern being, 
its petty stature, its workmanship, its superiority to men 
in some things, its simplicity and inferiority in others, its 
.supernatural practices, and the doubt entertained by its 
believers whether it is in the way of salvation, conspire, 
we think, to render the opinion of M. Mallet, in his 
" Northern Antiquities," extremely probable ; viz., that 
the character of the fairy has been modified by the feel- 
ings entertained by our Gothic and Celtic ancestors re- 
specting the little race of the Laplanders, a people whom 
they despised for their timid peacefulness, and yet could 
not help admiring for their industry, and fearing for their 
magic. 

In the " Edda," or northern " Pantheon," the dwarfs 
are described as a species of beings bred in the dust of 
the earth, like maggots in a carcase. " It was indeed," 
says the Edda, "in the body of the Giant Ymer, that they 
were engendered and first began to move and live. At 
first they were only worms ; but by order of the gods they 
at length partook both of human shape and reason ; nev- 
ertheless, they always dwell in subterranean caverns and 
among rocks." 

Upon this passage, M. Mallet says (under correction of 
his translator), " We may discover here one of the effects 
of that ignorant prejudice, which hath made us for so 
many years regard all arts and handicrafts as the occu- 



FAIRIES. 91 

pation of mean people and slaves. Our Celtic and Gothic 
ancestors, whether Germans, Scandinavians, or Gauls, 
imagining there was something magical, and beyond the 
reach of man in mechanic skill and industry, could scarcely 
believe that an able artist was one of their own species, 
or descended from the same common origin. This, it 
must be granted, was a very foolish conceit ; but let us 
consider what might possibly facilitate the entrance of it 
in their minds. There was perhaps some neighboring 
people, which bordered upon the Celtic or Gothic tribes ; 
and which, although less warlike than themselves, and much 
inferior in strength and stature, might yet excel them in 
dexterity; and addicting themselves to the manual arts, 
might carry on commerce with them, sufficiently extensive 
to have the fame of it spread pretty far. All these circum- 
stances will agree well enough with the Laplanders, who 
are still as famous for their magic, as remarkable for the 
lowness of their stature ; pacific even to a degree of cow- 
ardice, but of a mechanic industry which formerly must 
have appeared very considerable. The stories that were 
invented concerning this people, passing through the 
mouths of so many ignorant relators, would soon acquire 
all the degrees of the marvellous of which they were sus- 
ceptible. Thus the dwarfs soon became (as all know, who 
have dipped but a little into the ancient romances) the forg- 
ers of enchanted armor, upon which neither swords nor 
conjurations could make any impression. They were pos- 
sessed of caverns full of treasure, entirely at their own 
disposal. This, to observe by the bye, hath given birth to 
one of the cabalistic doctrines, which is perhaps only one 
of the branches of the ancient northern theology. As the 
dwarfs were feeble, and but of small courage, they were 
supposed to be crafty, full of artifice and deceit. This, 



92 FAIRIES. 

which in the old romances is called disloyalty, is the char- 
acter always given of them in those fabulous narratives. 
All these fancies having received the seal of time and 
universal consent, could be no longer contested, and it 
was the business of the poets to assign a fit origin for 
such ungracious beings. This was done in their pretended 
rise from the dead carcase of a great giant. The dwarfs 
at first were only the maggots, engendered by its putre- 
faction : afterwards the gods bestowed upon them under- 
standing and cunning. By this fiction the northern warriors 
justified their contempt of them ; and at the same time 
accounted for their small stature, their industry, and for 
their supposed propensity for inhabiting caves and clefts 
of the rocks. After all, the notion is not everywhere 
exploded, that there are in the bowels of the earth Fairies, 
or a kind of dwarfish and tiny beings, of human shape, 
remarkable for their riches, their industry, and their ma- 
levolence. In many countries of the North, the people are 
still firmly persuaded of their existence. In Ireland, at 
this day, the good folks show the very rocks and hills, in 
which they maintain that there are swarms of these small 
subterranean men, of the most tiny size, but most delicate 
figures." 

When Christianity came into the North, these little 
people, who had formed part of the national faith, were 
converted by the ordinary process into devils ; but the 
converts could never heartily enter into the notion. Ac- 
cordingly, in spite of the endeavors of the clergy (which it 
is said, have been more or less exerted in vain to this day), 
a sort of half-and-half case was made out for them ; and 
the inhabitants of several northern countries are still of 
opinion that elves may be saved, and that it is cruel to tell 
them otherwise. An author, quoted in the " Fairy Mythol- 



FAIRIES. 93 

ogy " (vol. i. p. 136), has a touching theory on this subject. 
We are informed in that work, " that the common people 
of Sweden and thereabouts believe in an intermediate 
class of elves who, when they show themselves, have a 
handsome human form, and the idea of whom is connected 
with a deep feeling of melancholy, as if bewailing a half- 
quenched hope of redemption." — " Afzelius is of opinion," 
says a note on the passage, " that the superstition on this 
point is derived from the time of the introduction of Chris- 
tianity into the North ; and expresses the sympathy of the 
first converts with their forefathers, who died without a 
knowledge of the Redeemer, and lay bound in heathen 
earth, and whose unhappy spirits were doomed to wander 
about these lower regions, or sigh within their mounds, 
till the great day of redemption." 

Our old prose writers scarcely ever mention the Fairies 
without letting us see how they were confounded with 
devils, and yet distinguished from them. " Terrestrial 
devils," says Burton, "are those Lares, Genii, Faunes, 
Satyrs, Wood-nymphs, Foliots, Fairies, Robin Good- 
fellows, &c., which as they are most conversant with men, 
so they do them the most harm. Some think it was they 
alone that kept the heathen people in awe of old, and 
had so many idols and temples erected to them. Of this 
range was Dagon amongst the Philistines, Bel amongst the 
Babylonians, Astarte amongst the Sidonians, Baal amongst 
the Samaritans, I sis and Osiris amongst the Egyptians, 
&c. Some put our Fairies into this rank, which have 
been in former times adored with much superstition ; 
with sweeping their houses, and setting of a pail of water, 
good victuals, and the like ; and then they should not 
be pinched, but find money in their shoes, and be for- 
tunate in their enterprises. These are they that dance 



94 



FAIRIES. 



on heaths and greens, as Lavater thinks with Tritemius, 
and as Olaus Magnus adds, leave that green circle which 
commonly we find in plains and fields, which others hold 
to proceed from a meteor falling, or some accidental rank- 
ness of the ground, so Nature sports herself; they are 
sometimes seen by old women and children. Hierom 
Pauli in his description of the city of Bercino (in Spain), 
relates how they have been familiarly seen near that town, 
about fountains and hills. Giraldus Cambrensis gives 
instance in a monk in Wales that was so deluded. Para- 
celsus reckons up many places in Germany, where they do 
usually walk in little courts some two feet long." 

" Our mothers' maids have so frayed us," says gallant 
Reginald Scot, "with Bul-beggars, Spirits, Witches, Ur- 
chens. Elves, Hags, Fairies, Satyrs, Pans, Fauns, Syrens, 
Kit with the Canstick, Tritons, Centaurs, Dwarfs, Giants, 
Imps, Calcars, Conjurors, Nymphs, Changelings, Incubus, 
Robin Goodfellows, the Spoon, the Mare, the Man in the 
Oak, the Helwain, the Fire-drake, the Puckle, Tom 
Thumb, Hobgoblin, Tom Tumbler, Boneless,* and other 
such Bugs, that we are afraid of our own shadows : inso- 
much that some never fear the devil but in a dark night ; 



* There is a personage in Eastern history, who appears to have been of kin 
to this grim phenomenon. He was a sorcerer of the name of Setteiah. He is 
described as having his head in his bosom, and as being destitute of bone in 
every part of his body, with the exception of his skull and the ends of his 
fingers. It was only when he was in a rage that he could sit up, anger having 
the effect of swelling him ; but he could at no time be made to stand on his 
feet. When it was necessary to move him from place to place, they folded 
him like a mantle ; and when there was occasion to consult him in the exercise 
of his profession, it was the practice to roll him backwards and forwards on the 
floor, like a churning skin, till the answer was obtained. See Major Price's 
" Essay towards the History of Arabia, antecedent to the birth of Moham- 
med," p. 196. 



FAIRIES. 95 

and then a polled sheep is a perilous beast, and many times 
is taken for our father's soul, especially in a churchyard, 
where a right hardy man heretofore scant durst pass by 
night but his hair would stand upright." * 

In consequence of this opinion in the popular Mythol- 
ogy, the merry and human-like Fairies during a degrading 
portion of the history of Europe, were made tools of, in 
common with all that was thought diabolical, to worry and 
destroy thousands of miserable people ; but it is more than 
pleasant, — it is deeply interesting to an observer, to see 
what an instinctive impulse there is in human beings to 
resist the growth of the worst part of superstition, and vin- 
dicate nature and natural piety. Do but save mankind from 
taking intolerance for God's will, and exalting the impa- 
tience of being differed with into a madness, and you may 
trust to the natural good humor of the best of their opinions, 
for as favorable a view as possible of all with which they 
can sympathize. Even their madness in that respect is 
but a perversion of their natural wish to be liked and 
agreed with. The first thing that men found out in behalf 
of the Fairies, was that they were a good deal like them- 
selves ; the next was to think well of them upon the whole, 
rather than ill ; and when Reginald Scot and others helped 
us out of this cloud of folly about witchcraft, the Fairies 
became brighter than before. In England the darker 
notions of them almost entirely disappeared with the big- 



* The list of the unclean spirits in Middleton's tragicomedy of the " Witch," 
is closely copied from the passage in Reginald Scot. — See the Speech of 
Hecate. 

Urchins, elves, hags, satires, pans, fauns, silence. 

Kit with the candlestick ; tritons, centaurs, dwarfs, imps. 

The spoon, the mare, the man i' th' oak, the hellwain, the fire-drake, the 
puckle. 



96 FAIRIES. 

otries in Church and State ; and at the call of the poets, 
they came and adorned the books that had done them 
service, and became synonymous with pleasant fancies. 



n. 

It may be agreeable to follow up the growth of this 
good-humored light in something like chronological order. 
The old romances began it. Oberon, the beautiful and 
beneficent, afterwards king of the Fairies, made his appear- 
ance very early. He is the Elberich, or Rich Elf, of the 
Germans, and became Oberon, with a French termination, 
in the romance of " Huon de Bourdeaux." The general 
reader is well acquainted with him through the abridg- 
ment of the work by the Count de Tressan, and the Oberon 
of Wieland, translated by Mr. Sotheby. He is a tiny 
creature, in the likeness of a beautiful child, with a face of 
exceeding loveliness ; and wears a crown of jewels. His 
cap of invisibility, common to all the Fairies (which is the 
reason why they must not lose it), became famous as the 
Tarn-Kappe, or Daring Cap, otherwise called the Nebel 
or Mist-Cap, and the Tarn-hut, or Hat of Daring.* In 
the poem of the German Voltaire, he possesses the horn 
which sets everybody dancing. He and his brother 
dwarfs, of the Northern Mythology, are the undoubted 



* " Tarn, from taren, to dare (says Dobenell), because they gave courage 
along with invisibility. Kappe is properly a cloak, though the tarn-kappe or 
nebel-kappe is generally represented as a cap or hat." — Fairy Mythology, 
vol. ii. p. 4. Perhaps the word cape, which may include something both oi 
cap and cloak, might settle their apparent contradiction. Hood implies both ; 
and the goblin is sometimes called Robin Hood, and Hoodekin. 



FAIRIES. 97 

ancestors of the fallen but illustrious family of the Tom 
Thumbs, who became sons of tailors and victims of cows. 
Of the same stock are the Tom Hickathrifts and Jack the 
Giant Killer, if, indeed, they be not the gods themselves, 
merged into the Christian children of their former worship- 
pers. Their horrible coats, caps of knowledge, swords of 
sharpness, and shoes of swiftness, are, as the " Quarterly 
Reviewer " observes, " all out of the great heathen treasu- 
ry." Thumb looks like an Avatarkin, or little incarnation 
of Thor. Thor was the stoutest of the gods, but then the 
gods were little fellows in stature, compared with the 
giants. In a chapter of the " Edda," from which the re- 
viewer has given an amusing extract, the giant Skrymner 
rallies Thor upon his pretensions and size, and calls him 
" the little man." * As the god, nevertheless, was more 
than a match for these lubbers of the skies, his worship- 
pers might have respected the name in honor of him ; a 
panegyrical raillery not unknown to other mythologies, 
nor unpractised towards the " gods of the earth." f The 



* In the agreeable learning which the reviewer has brought to bear on 
this subject, in the " Antiquities of Nursery Literature," he has deprived us 
of our old friend the Giant Cormoran, who turns out to be a mistake of the 
printer's devil for Corinoran, " the Corina^us, probably, of Jeffery of Monmouth 
and the Brut." However, a printer's devil has a right to speak to this point ; 
and we cannot help thinking that Cormoran ought to be the word, both on ac- 
count of the devouring magnitude of the sound, and its suitability to the 
brazen tromp of a Cornish mouth — 

" Here's the valiant Cornish man, 
Who slew the giant Cormoran." 

Abraham Cann or Polkinghorn ought to speak it ; or the descendants of the 
Danish hero Kolson, who have ora rotunda in that quarter. 

t " Little Will, the scourge of France, 
No godhead but the first of men ; " — 

7 



98 FAIRIES. 

West of England, it may be observed, is a great Fairy 
country, though even the miners and their natural dark- 
ness have not been able to obscure the sunnier notions of 
Fairy- land, now prevailing in that quarter as much as any. 
The Devonshire Pixies or Pucksies are the reigning elves, 
and are among the gayest and most good-humored to be 
met with. Mr. Coleridge, in his juvenile poems, has put 
some verses into their mouths, not among his best, but 
such as he may have been reasonably loth to part with. 
The sea-air which he breathed at a distance, and " the 
Pixies' Parlour " (a grotto of the roots of trees, in which 
he found his name carved by the hands of his childhood), 
were proper nurseries for the author of the " Ancient 
Mariner." 

Chaucer's notion of Fairies was a confused mixture of 
elves and romance-ladies, and Ovid, and the Catholic 
diablerie. We had taken his fairies for the regular little 
dancers on the green (induced by a line of his to that effect 
in the following passage) ; but the author of the " Fairy 
Mythology " has led us to form a different opinion. The 
truth is, that a book in Chaucer's time was a book, and 
everything to be found in those rare authorities became a 
sort of equal religion in the eyes of the student. Chaucer, 
in one of his verses, has brought together three such names 
as never met, perhaps, before or since, — " Samson, 
Turnus, and Socrates." He calls Ovid's Epistles " The 
Saint's Legends of Cupid." Seneca and St. Paul are the 
same grave authorities in his eyes ; in short, whatever 
was written was a scripture : something clerkly, and what 



says Prior, speaking of William the 3d, and rebuking, at the same time, Boi- 
leau's deifications of Louis. So Frederick or Napoleon, or both, were called 
by their soldiers " the Little Corporal." 



FAIRIES. 99 

a monk ought to have written if he could. His Lady Ab- 
bess wears a brooch exhibiting a motto out of Virgil. 
Elves, therefore, and Provencal Enchantresses, and the 
nymphs of the Metamorphoses, and the very devils of 
the Pope and St. Anthony, were all fellows well met, all 
supernatural beings, living in the same remote regions of 
fancy, and exciting the gratitude of the poet. He is angry 
with the friars for making more solemn distinctions, and 
displacing the little elves in their walks ; and he runs a 
capital jest upon them, which has become famous. 

" In olde dayes of the kinge Artour, 
Of which that Britons speke gret honour, 
All was this land full filled of faerie ; 
The Elf-quene, with hire joly compagnie, 
Danced ful oft in many a grene mede. 
This was the old opinion as I rede ; 
I speke of many hundred yeres ago ; 
But now can no man see non elves mo, 
For now the grete charitee and prayeres 
Of limitoures and other holy freres, 
That serchen every land and every streme, 
As thikke as motes in the sonne-beme, 
Blissing halles, chambres, kichenes, and boures, 
Citees and burghes, castles highe and toures, 
Thropes and bernes, shepeness and dairies, 
This maketh that ther ben no faeries ; 
For ther as wont to walken was an elf, 
Ther walketh now the limitour himself, 
In undermeles and in monvenings, 
And sayth his matines and his holy thinges, 
As he goth in his limitation. 
Women may now go safely up and doun ; 
In every bush and under every tree, 
Ther is non other incubus but he." 

In another poem, we meet with Pluto and Proserpine as 
the King and Queen of Faerie ; where they sing and dance 
about a well, enjoying themselves in a garden, and quot- 



IOO FAIRIES. 

ing Solomon. The "ladies " that wait upon them are the 
damsels that accompanied Proserpine in the vale of Enna, 
when she was taken away by his Majesty in his "griesly 
cart." This is a very different cart from a chariot made 
of the gristle of grasshoppers. 

The national intellect, which had been maturing like an 
oak, from the time of Wickliffe, drawing up nutriment 
from every ground, and silently making the weakest things 
contribute to its strength, burst forth at last into flowers 
and fruit together, in the noonday of Shakespeare. A 
shower of fairy blossoms was the ornament of its might. 
Spenser's fairies are those of Romance, varied with the 
usual readings of his own fancy ; but Shakespeare, the 
popular poet of the world, took the little elfin globe in 
his hand, as he had done the great one, and made it a 
thing of joy and prettiness for ever. Since then the fairies 
have become part of a poet's belief, and happy ideas of 
them have almost superseded what remains of a darker 
creed in the minds of the people. The profound playful- 
ness of Shakespeare's wisdom, which humanized every 
thing it touched, and made it know its own value, found 
out the soul of an activity, convertible into good, in the 
restlessness of mischief; and Puck, or the elf malicious, 
became jester in the court of Oberon the Good Fairy, — his 
servant and his help. The " Elves " in the Tempest are 
rather the elemental spirits of the Rosicrucians, con- 
founded both with classical and popular mythology. It 
is in the " Midsummer Night's Dream " that the true 
fairies are found, as they ought to be ; and there amidst 
bowers and moonlight, will we indulge ourselves awhile 
with their company. We make no apology to the reader 
for our large quotations. They have been repeated many 
times and lately on the present subject ; yet we should 



FAIRIES. IOI 

rather have to apologize for the omission, considering 
how excellent they are. To add what novelty we could, or 
rather to make our quotations as peculiar to our work as 
possible, we had made up our minds to bring together all 
the passages in question out of Shakespeare's drama, as 
far as they could be separated from other matter, and 
present them to our readers under the title of a Fairy 
Play ; but we began to fear that the profane might have 
some color of reason for complaining of us, and accusing 
us of an intention to swell our pages. We have, there- 
fore, confined ourselves to selections which are put under 
distinct heads, so as to form a kind of gallery of Fairy 
pictures. We shall take the liberty of commenting as we 
go, even if our remarks are called forth on points not im- 
mediately belonging to the subject. It is not easy to read 
a great poet, and not indulge in exclamations of fondness. 
Besides, there is something fairy-like in having one's way. 

EMPLOYMENT OF A DAMSEL OF THE FAIRY COURT. 

Fairy. Over hill, over dale, 

Thorough bush, thorough brier, 
Over park, over pale, 

Thorough flood, thorough fire, 
I do wander every where, 
Swifter than the moon's sphere ; 
And I serve the fairy queen, 
To dew her orbs upon the green : 
The cowslips tall her pensioners be ; 
In their gold coats spots you see ; 
Those be rubies, fair} 7 favours : 
In those freckles live their savours ; 
I must go seek some dew-drops here, 
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. 

Flowers, in the proper fairy spirit, which plays betwixt 
sport and wisdom with the profoundest mysteries of na- 



102 FAIRIES. 

ture, are here made alive, and turned into fantastic ser- 
vants. 

In fairy-land, whatever may be, is. We may gather 
from this and another passage in Cymbeline, that Shake- 
speare was fond of cowslips, and had observed their graces 
with delight. It is a delicate fancy to suppose that those 
ruby spots contain the essence of the flower's odor, and 
were presents from their ruling sprite. And the hanging 
a pearl in every cowslip's ear (besides the beauty of the 
line) seems to pull the head of the tall pensioner sideways, 
and make him quaintly conscious of his new favor. 

BOWER OF QUEEN TITANIA. 

I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows, 
Where ox-lips and the nodding violet grows ; 
Quite over-canopied with lush woodbine, 
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine ; 
There sleeps Titania, some time of the night, 
Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight 

What beautiful lines are these ? Observe in the next 
the goggle-eyed owl, who is nightly astonished at the 
fairies, as if amazement were his business ; and also the 
childlike warning to the snails and daddy longlegs to 
keep aloof. 

THE QUEEN IN HER BOWER. 

Tita. Come, now a roundel, and a fairy song ; 

Then, for the third part of a minute, hence ; 
Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds ; 
Some war with rear-mice for their leathern wings, 
To make my small elves coats ; and some keep back 
The clamorous owl, that nightly hoots and wonders 
At our quaint spirits : sing me now asleep ; 
Then to your offices, and let me rest. 

SONG. 

xst Fairy. You spotted snakes, with double tongue, 
Thorny hedge-hogs, be not seen ; 



FAIRIES. IO3 

Newts and blind-worms do no wrong ; 
Come not near our fairy queen. 

Chorus. Philomel, with melody, 

Sing in our sweet lullaby ; 
Lulla, lulla, lullaby ; lulla, lulla, lullaby ; 
Never harm, nor spell nor charm, 
Come our lovely lady nigh, 
So, good night, with lullaby. 

i2d Fairy. Weaving spiders, come not here ; 

Hence, you long-legged spinners, hence ; 
Beetles black, approach not near ; 
Worm, nor snail, do no offence. 

Chorus. Philomel, with melody, &c. 

xst Fairy. Hence, away ! now all is well. 
One, aloofj stand sentineL 

TRICKS OF THE FAIRY KING ON HIS QUEEN. 

Titania, by practice of Oberon, falls in love with a 
weaver, on whom Puck has clapped an ass's head. Enter 
Puck with him and some others. Imagine the weaver to 
be Lis ton. 

Quince. O monstrous ! O strange ! we are haunted. Pray, masters ! fly, 
masters 1 help ! [Exeunt Clowns. 

Puck. I'll follow you, I'll lead you about, around, 
Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier ; 
Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound, 
A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire, 
And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn, 
Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn. [Exit. 

Bot. Why do they run away? this is a knavery of them to make me 
afeard. 

Re-enter Snout. 

Snout. O Bottom, thou art changed ! What do I see on thee ? 

{Exit Snout. 
Bot. What do you see ? You see an ass's head of your own, do you? 

Re-enter Quince. 
Quin. Bless thee, Bottom ! bless thee ! thou art translated. [Exit. 

Bot. I see their knavery : this is to make an ass of me, to fright me if they 



104 FAIRIES. 

could. But I will not stir from this place, do what they can : I will walk up 
and down here, and I will sing, that they shall hear I am not afraid. 

The ousel-cock, so black of hue, 

With orange-tawny bill ; 
The throstle with his note so true, 

The wren with little quill. 

Tita. What angel wakes me from my flowery bed ? 
Bot. The finch, the sparrow, and the lark, 

The plain-song cuckoo gray, 
Whose note full many a man doth mark, 

And dares not answer nay ; 

for, indeed, who would set his wit to so foolish a bird? — who would give a bird 
the lie, though he cry cuckoo never so ? 

Tita. I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again : 
Mine ear is much enamoured of thy note, 
So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape ; 
And thy fair virtue's force perforce doth move me, 
On the first view, to say, to swear, I love thee. 

Bot. Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that : and yet, 
to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together now-a-days : the 
more the pity, that some honest neighbours will not make them friends. Nay, 
I can gleek upon the occasion* 

Tita. Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful. 

Bot. No so, neither : but if I had wit enough to get out of this wood, I have 
enough to serve mine own turn. 

Tita. Out of this wood do not desire to go ; 

Thou shalt remain here whether thou wilt or no. 
I am a spirit of no common rate ; 
The summer still doth tend upon my state, 
And I do love thee : therefore, go with me ; 
I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee ; 
And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep, 
And sing, while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep. 
And I will purge thy mortal grossness so, 
That thou shalt like an airy spirit go. 
Peas-blossom ! Cobweb ! Moth ! and Mustard-seed ! 
ist Fairy. Ready. 
zd Fairy. And I. 

2>d Fairy. And I. 

4th Fairy. Where shall we go ? 

Tita. Be kind and courteous to this gentleman ; 
Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes ; 



FAIRIES. IO5 

Feed him with apricocks, and dewberries ; 
With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries ; 
The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees, 
And, for night-tapers, crop their waxen thighs, 
And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes, 
To have my love to bed, and to arise ; 
And pluck the wings from painted butterflies, 
To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes : 
Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies. 
1st Fairy. Hail mortal ! 
id Fairy. Hail ! 

-3,d Fairy. Hail ! 

4th Fairy. Hail ! 

Bot. I cry your worship's mercy, heartily. I beseech your worship's 
name. 

Cob. Cobweb. 

Bot. I shall desire of you more acquaintance, good Master Cobweb : if I 
cut my finger I shall make bold with you. Your name, honest gentleman ? 
Peas. Peas-blossom. 

Bot. I pray you to remember me to Mistress Squash, your mother, and to 
Master Peascod, your father. Good Master Peas-blossom, I shall desire of 
you more acquaintance too. Your name, I beseech you, sir ? 
Mus. Mustard-seed. 

Bot. Good Master Mustard-seed, I know your patience well : that same 
cowardly, giant-like, ox-beef hath devoured many a gentleman of your house : 
I promise you, your kindred hath made my eyes water ere now. I desire of 
you more acquaintance, good Master Mustard-seed. 
Tita. Come wait upon him ; lead him to my bower. 
The moon, methinks, looks with a wat'ry eye ; 
And when she weeps, weeps every little flower, 
Lamenting some enforced chastity. 
Tie up love's tongue, and bring him silently. 

The luxurious reduplication of the rhyme in this exquis- 
ite passage, has been noticed by Mr. Hazlitt 
Again, in act the fourth : — 

Tita. Come, sit thee down upon this flow'ry bed, 

While I thy amiable cheeks do coy, 

And stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head, 

And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy. 
Bot. Where's Peas-blossom? 
Peas. Ready. 



IC>6 FAIRIES. 

Bot. Scratch my head, Peas-blossom. Where's Monsieur Cobweb ? 

Cob. Ready. 

Bot. Monsieur Cobweb ; good Monsieur, get your weapons in your hands, 
and kill me a red-hipp'd humble-bee on the top of a thistle ; and good Mon- 
sieur, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret yourself too much in the action, 
Monsieur ; and, good Monsieur, have a care the honey-bag break not ; I would 
be loth to have you overflow with a honey-bag, Signor. Where's Monsieur 
Mustard-seed ? 

Mus. Ready. 

Bot. Give me your neif, Monsieur Mustard-seed. Pray you, leave your 
courtesy, good Monsieur. 

Mus. What's your will ? 

Bot. Nothing, good Monsieur, but to help Cavalero Peas-blossom to scratch. 
I must to the barber's, Monsieur ; for methinks I am marvellous hairy about the 
face : and I am such a tender ass, if my hair do but tickle me, I must scratch. 

Tita. What, wilt thou hear some music, my sweet love ? 

Bot. I have a reasonable good ear in music : let us have the tongs and the 
bones. 

Tita. Or say, sweet love, what thou desir'st to eat. 

Bot. Truly a peck of provender ; I could munch your good dry oats. Me- 
thinks I have a great desire to a bottle of hay ; good hay, sweet hay, hath no 
fellow. 

Tita. I have a venturous fairy that shall seek 

The squirrel's hoard, and fetch thee new nuts. 

Bot. I had rather have a handful or two of dried peas. But, I pray you, 
let none of your people stir me ; I have an exposition of sleep come upon me. 

Tita. Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms. 

Fairies, begone, and be always away. [Exeunt fairies. 

So doth the wood-bine the sweet honey-suckle 
Gently entwist, — the female ivy so 
Enrings the barky fingers of the elm. 
O, how I love thee ! how I dote on thee ! 

THE FAIRIES BLESS A HOUSE AT NIGHT-TIME. 

Enter Puck. 
Puck. Now the hungry lion roars, 

And the wolf behowls the moon ; 
Whilst the heavy ploughman snores, 

All with weary task fordone. 
Now the wasted brands do glow, 

Whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud, 
Puts the wretch, that lies in woe, 
In remembrance of a shroud. 



FAIRIES. I07 

Now it is the time of night, 

That the graves, all gaping wide, 
Every one lets forth his sprite, 

In the church- way paths to glide : 
And we fairies that do run 

By the triple Hecate's team, 
From the presence of the sun, 

Following darkness like a dream, 
Now are frolick ; not a mouse 
Shall disturb this hallow'd house ; 
I am sent, with broom, before, 
To sweep the dust behind the door. 

Enter Oberon and Titania with their train. 

Cberon. Through this house give glimmering light, 

By the dead and drowsy fire : 

Every elf, and fairy sprite, 

Hop as light as bird from brier ; 

And this ditty, after me, 

Sing and dance it trippingly. 
Tita. First, rehearse this song by rote, 

To each word a warbling note, 

Hand in hand, with fair}' grace, 

Will we sing, and bless this place. 

SONG AND DANCE. 

Oberon. Now, until the break of day, 

Through this house each fairy stray. 

To the best bride-bed will we, 

Which by us shall blessed be ; 

And the issue, there create, 

Ever shall be fortunate. 

So shall all the couples three 

Ever true in loving be : 

And the blots of nature's hand 

Shall not in their issue stand : 

Never mole, hare-lip, nor scar, 

Nor mark prodigious, such as are 

Despised in nativity, 

Shall upon their children be. 

With this field- dew consecrate, 

Every fairy take his gait 1 



108 FAIRIES. 

And each several chamber bless, 
Through this palace with sweet peace : 
E'er shall it in safety rest, 
And the owner of it be blest. 

Trip away ; 

Make no stay ; 
Meet me all by break of day. 

It is with difficulty that in these, and indeed in all our 
quotations, we refrain from marking particular passages. 
One longs to vent one's feelings, like positive grappling 
with the lines ; and besides, we have the temptation of 
the reader's company to express our admiration. But we 
fear to do injustice to what we should leave unmarked ; 
and indeed to be thought impatient with the others. Luck- 
ily where all is beautiful, the choice would often be difficult, 
if we stopped to make any ; and if we did not, we should 
be printing nothing but italics. 

Queen Mab, as the author of the " Fairy Mythology " 
remarks, has certainly dethroned Titania ; but we cannot 
help thinking that both he, and the poets who have helped 
to dethrone her, are in the wrong ; and that Voss is right, 
when he rejects the royalty of both monosyllables. Queen 
or quean is old English for woman, and is still applied to 
females in an ill sense. Now Mab is the fairies' midwife, 
plebeian by office, indiscriminate in her visits, and descend- 
ing so low as to make elf-locks, and plait the manes of 
horses. We have little doubt that she is styled queen in 
an equivocal sense, between a mimicry of state and some- 
thing abusive ; and that the w r ord Mab comes from the 
same housewife origin as Mop, Moppet, and Mob- Cap. 
The a was most likely pronounced broad ; as in Mall for 
Moll, Malkin for Maukin ; and Queen Mab is perhaps the 
quean in the Mob-cap, — the midwife riding in her chariot, 
but still vulgar ; and acting some such part with regard to 



FAIRIES. 



IO9 



fairies and to people's fancies, as one of Sir Walter Scott's 
fanciful personages (we forget her name) does to flesh and 
blood in the novel.* 

The passages in Ben Jonson regarding fairies want 
merit enough to be quoted ; not that he had not a fine 
fancy, but that in this instance, as in some others, he over- 
laid it with his book-reading, probably in despair of equal- 
ling Shakespeare. The passages quoted from him by the 
author of the " Fairy Mythology," rather out of respect 
than his usual good taste, are nothing better than so 
many commonplaces, in which the popular notions are set 
forth. There is, however, one striking exception, out of 
the " Sad Shepherd," — 

" There, in the stocks of trees, white fays do dwell, 
And span-long elves, that dance about a pool 
With each a little changeling in their arms." 

This is very grim, and to the purpose. The changeling, 
supernaturally diminished, adds to the ghastliness, as if 
born and completed before its time. 

For our next quotation, which is very pleasant, we are 
indebted, amongst our numerous obligations, to the same 
fairy historian. There is probably a good deal of treasure 
of the same sort in the rich mass of Old English Poetry ; 
but the truth is, we dare not trust ourselves with the 
search. We have already a tendency to exceed the limits 
assigned us ; and on subjects like these we should be 
tolled on from one search to another, as if Puck had taken 
the shape of a bee. The passage we speak of is in Ran- 
dolph's pastoral of " Amyntas, or the Impossible Dowry." 
A young rogue of the name of Dorylas " makes a fool of 



* The White Lady of Avenel, in the Monastery, was undoubtedly the per- 
sonage Hunt had in his mind. — Ed. 



IIO FAIRIES. 

a ' fantastique sheapherd,' Jocastus, by pretending to be 
Oberon, King of Fairy." In this character, having pro- 
vided a proper retinue (whom we are to suppose to be 
boys) he proposes a fairy husband for Jocastus's daughter, 
and obliges him by plundering his orchard. We take the 
former of these incidents for granted, from the context, 
for we have not seen the original. Dorylas appears some- 
times to act in his own character, and sometimes in that 
of Oberon. In the former the following dialogue takes 
place between him and his wittol, descriptive of 

a fairy's jointure. 
Thestylis. But what estate shall he assure upon me ? 
Jocastus. A royal jointure, all in Fairy land. 

Dorylas knows it. 

A curious park — 
Dorylas. Paled round about with pickteeth. 
Joe. Besides a house made all of mother of pearl. 

An ivory tennis-court. 
Dor. A nutmeg parlour. 
Joe. A sapphire dairy-room. 
Dor. A ginger hall. 
Joe. Chambers of agate. 
Dor. Kitchens all of crystal. 
A m. O, admirable ! This it is for certain. 
Joe. The jacks are gold. 
Dor. The spits are Spanish needles. 
Joe. Then there be walks — 
Dor. Of amber. 
Joe. Curious orchards — 
Dor. That bear as well in winter as in summer. 
Joe. 'Bove all, the fish-ponds, every pond is full — 
Dor. Of nectar. Will this please you ? Every grove 
Stored with delightful birds. 

Dorylas proceeds to help himself to the farmer's apples, 
his brother rogues assisting him. This license, it must 
be owned, is royal. But what is still pleasanter, we are 



FAIRIES. 1 1 I 

here presented for the first time with some fairy Latin, 
and very good it is, quaint and pithy. The Neapolitan 
Robin Goodfellow, who goes about in the shape of a little 
monk, might have written it. 

FAIRIES ROBBING AN ORCHARD, AND SINGING LATIN. 

Dor. How like you now my grace ? Is not my countenance 
Royal and full of majesty? Walk not I 
Like the young prince of pigmies ? Ha ! my knaves, 
We'll fill our pockets. Look, look yonder, elves ; 
Would not yon apples tempt a better conscience 
Than any we have, to rob an orchard ? Ha ! 
Fairies, like nymphs with child, must have the things 
They long for. You sing here a fairy catch 
In that strange tongue I taught you, while ourself 
Do climb the trees. Thus princely Oberon 
Ascends his throne of state. 

Elves. Nos beata Fauni proles, 

Quibus non est magna moles, 

Quamvis lunam incolamus, 

Hortos saepe frequentamus. 

Furto cuncta magis bella, 
Furto dulcior puella, 
Furto omnia decora, 
Furto poma dulciora. 

Cum mortales lecto jacent, 
Nobis poma noctu placent ; 
Ilia tamen sunt ingrata, 
Nisi furto sint parata. 

We the Fairies blithe and antic, 
Of dimensions not gigantic, 
Though the moonshine mostly keep us, 
Oft in orchards frisk and peep us. 

Stolen sweets are always sweeter ; 
Stolen kisses much completer ; 
Stolen looks are nice in chapels ; 
Stolen, stolen be your apples. 



112 FAIRIES. 

When to bed the world are bobbing, 
Then's the time for orchard robbing ; 
Yet the fruit were scarce worth pealing, 
Were it not for stealing, stealing. 

Jocastus's man Bromio prepares to thump these pre- 
tended elves, but the master is overwhelmed by the con- 
descension of the princely Oberon in coming to his 
orchard, when — 

His Grace had orchards of his own more precious 
Than mortals can have any. 

The elves therefore, by permission, pinched the officious 
servant, singing, — 

Quoniam per te violamur, 
Ungues hie experiamur ; 
Statim dices tibi datam 
Cutem valde variatam. 

Since by thee comes profanation, 
Taste thee, lo ! scarification. 
Noisy booby ! in a twinkling 
Thou hast got a pretty crinkling. 

Finally, when the coast is clear, Oberon cries, — 

So we are clean got off: come, noble peers 
Of Fairy, come, attend our royal Grace. 
Let's go and share our fruit with our Queen Mab 
And the other dairy-maids : where of this theme 
We will discourse amidst our capes and cream. 

Cum tot poma habeamus, 
Triumphos lceti jam canamus : 
Faunos ego credam ortos, 
Tantum ut frequentent hortos. 

I, domum, Oberon, ad illas, 
Qua2 nos manent nunc ancillas, 
Quarem osculemur sinum, 
Inter poma, lac, et vinum. 



FAIRIES. 1 13 

Now for such a stock of apples, 
Laud me with the voice of chapels. 
Fays, methinks, were gotten solely 
To keep orchard-robbing holy. 

Hence then, hence, and let's delight us 
With the maids whose creams invite us, 
Kissing them, like proper fairies, 
All amidst their fruits and dairies. 



III. 

Next comes Drayton, a proper fairy poet, with an infinite 
luxury of little fancies. Nor was he incapable of the 
greater ; but he would not blot ; and so took wisely to the 
little and capricious. His " Nymphidia," a story of fairy 
intrigue, is too long and too unequal to be given entire ; 
but it cuts out into little pictures like a penny sheet. You 
might border a paper with his stanzas, and read them 
instead of grotesque. His fairy palace is roofed with the 
skins of bats, gilded with moonshine; — a fancy of ex- 
quisite fitness and gusto. There ought to be type by itself , 
— pin-points, or hieroglyphical dots, — in which to set 
forth the following 

NAMES OF FAIRIES. 

Hop, and Mop, and Drop so clear, 
Pip, and Trip, and Skip, that were 
To Mab, the sovereign lady dear, 

Her special maids of honour ; 
Fib, and Tib, and Pinch, and Pin, 
Tick, and Quick, and Fill and Fin, 
Tit, and Wit, and Wap, and Win, 

The train that wait upon her. 

Oberon's queen (who is here called Mab) has made an 
assignation with Pigwiggen, a great fairy knight. The 



114 FAIRIES. 

king, furious with jealousy, pursues her, and is as mad as 
Orlando. He grapples with a wasp whom he mistakes for 
the enemy ; next plunges upon a glowworm, and thumps 
her for carrying fxre : then runs into a hive of bees who 
daub him all over with their honey ; then leaps upon an 
ant, and gallops her ; then scours over a mole-hill, and 
plumps into a puddle up to his neck. The queen hears of 
his pursuit, and she and all her maids of honor secrete 
themselves in a nutshell. Pigwiggen goes out to meet 
the king, riding upon a fiery earwig / 

a fairy's arms and war-horse. 
His helmet was a beetle's head 
Most horrible and full of dread, 
That able was to strike one dead, 

Yet it did well become him. 
And for his plume a horse's hair, 
Which being tossed by the air, 
Had force to strike his foe with fear, 

And turn his weapon from him. 

Himself he on an earwig set, 

Yet scarce he on his back could get, 

So oft and high he did curvet 

Ere he himself could settle ; 
He made him turn, and stop, and bound, 
To gallop and to trot the round, 
He scarce could stand on any ground,* 

He was so full of mettle. 

The queen, scandalized and alarmed at the height to 
which matters are now openly proceeding, applies to Pros- 
erpina for help. The goddess takes pity on her, and 
during a dreadful combat between the champions, comes 
up with a bag full of Stygian fog and a bottle of Lethe 
water. The contents of the bag being suddenly dis- 

* Stare loco nescit, &c — Virgil. 



FAIRIES. 115 

charged, the knights lose one another in the mist ; and 
on the latter's clearing off, the goddess steps in as herald 
on behalf of Pluto to forbid further hostilities, adding that 
the ground of complaint shall be duly investigated, but 
first recommending to the parties to take a draught of the 
liquor she has brought with her, in order to enlighten their 
understandings. They drink and forget every thing ; and 
the queen and her maids of honor, " closely smiling " at the 
jest, return with them to court, and have a grand dinner. 
Now this is " worshipful society," and a good plot. The 
"machines" as the French school used to call them, are 
in good keeping ; and the divine interference worthy. 

In the " Muses' Elysium " of the same poet is a descrip- 
tion of a fairy wedding. The bride wears buskins made 
of the shells of the lady-bird, with a head-dress of rose- 
yellows and peacock-moons, &c. ; but her bed is a thing 
to make one wish one's self only a span long, in order to 
lay one's cheek in it. The coverlid is of white and red 
rose-leaves ; the curtains and tester of the flower-imperial, 
with a border of harebells ; and the pillows are of lily, 
stuffed with butterfly-down.* 

* From "The Recreations of Christopher North," we take this beautiful 
and very poetical description of a Fairy's Funeral : — 

There it was, on a little river island, that once, whether sleeping or waking 
we know not, we saw celebrated a fairy's funeral. First we heard small 
pipes playing, as if no bigger than hollow rushes that whisper to the night 
winds ; and more piteous than aught that trills from earthly instrument was 
the scarce audible dirge ! It seemed to float over the stream, every foam-bell 
emitting a plaintive note, till the airy anthem came floating over our couch, 
and then alighted without footsteps among the heather. The pattering of little 
feet was then heard, as if living creatures were arranging themselves in order, 
and then there was nothing but a more ordered hymn. The harmoDy was like 
the melting of musical dew-drops, and song, without words, of sorrow and 
death. We opened our eyes, or rather sight came to them when closed, and 
dream was vision : Hundreds of creatures, no taller than the crest of the lap- 



Il6 FAIRIES. 

We think, with the author of the " Mythology," that Her- 
rick' s fairy poetry is inferior to that of Drayton. Herrick 
is indeed very inferior to the reputation which a few happy 
little poems have obtained for him ; and the late reprint 
of his works has done him no good. For one delicacy 
there are twenty pages of coarseness and insipidity. His 
epigrams, for the most part, are ludicrous only for the 
total absence of wit ; and inasmuch as he wanted senti- 
ment, he was incapable of his own voluptuousness. His 
passion is cold, and his decencies impertinent. In his 
offerings at pagan altars, the Greek's simplicity becomes 
a literal nothing ; though there is an innocence in the ped- 
antry that is by no means the worst thing about him. 
His verses on his maid Prue are edifying. Herrick was a 
jovial country priest, a scholar, and a friend of Ben Jon- 
son's, and we dare say had been a capital university-man. 
Scholarship and a certain quickness were his real in- 
spirers, and he had a good sense, which in one instance 
has exhibited itself very remarkably; for it led him to 
speak of his being " too coarse to love." To be sure, he 



wing, and all hanging down their veiled heads, stood in a circle on a green plat 
among the rocks ; and in the midst was a bier, framed as it seemed of flowers 
unknown to the Highland hills ; and on the bier a fairy, lying with uncovered 
face, pale as the lily, and motionless as the snow. The dirge grew fainter 
and fainter, and then died quite away ; when two of the creatures came from 
the circle, and took their station, one at the head and the other at the foot of 
the bier. They sang alternate measures, not louder than the twittering of the 
awakened wood-lark before it goes up the dewy air, but dolorous and full oi 
the desolation of death. The flower-bier stirred ; for the spot on which it lay 
sank slowly down, and in a few moments the greensward was smooth as ever 
— the very dews glittering about the buried fairy. A cloud passed over the 
moon ; and, with a choral lament, the funeral troop sailed duskily away, heard 
afar off, so still was the midnight solitude of the glen. Then the disenthralled 
Orchy began to rejoice as before through all her streams and falls ; and at the 
sudden leaping of the waters and outbursting of the moon, we awoke. — Ed. 



FAIRIES. 117 

has put the observation in the mouth of a lady, and prob- 
ably he found it there. He well deserved it for the foolish 
things he has said. He made a good hit now and then, 
when fresh from reading his favorite authors ; and among 
them, we must rank a fairy poem mentioned by the author 
of the " Legends of the South of Ireland." His office 
helped to inspire him in it, for it is a satire, and a bitter 
one, on the ceremonies of Catholic worship. We must 
own we have a regard for a Catholic chapel ; but it is not 
to be denied that some of the duties performed in it are 
strange things, and open to quaint parodies. The names 
of the saints in Herrick are worthy of Drayton. 

There is one thing in the fairies of Drayton which de- 
serves mention. He does not shirk the miscellaneous, 
and, in some respects, anti-human nature of their tastes. 
The delicacies at their table are not always such as we 
should think pleasant, or even bearable. This is good ; 
perhaps more so than he was aware, for he overdoes it. 

Milton's "pert fairies and dapper-elves" are a little too 
sophistical. They are too much like fairies acting them- 
selves ; which is overdoing the quaint nicety of their con- 
sciousness. But in addition to the well-known passages 
we have quoted from him already, there is a very fine one 
in his First Book. He is speaking of the transformation 
of the devils into a crowd in miniature. 

As bees 
In spring-time, when the sun with Taurus rides, 
Pour forth their populous youth about the hive 
In clusters : they among fresh dews and flowers 
Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank, 
The suburb of their straw-built citadel, 
New rubb'd with balm, expatiate and confer 
Their state affairs. So thick the aery crowd 
Swarm'd and were straiten'd ; till the signal given, 
Behold a wonder ! They but now who seem'd 



Il8 FAIRIES. 

In bigness to surpass earth's giant sons, 

Now less than smallest dwarfs in narrow room 

Throng numberless, like that Pygmean race, 

Beyond the Indian mount ; or faery elves, 

Whose midnight revels, by a forest side, 

Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, 

Or dreams he sees, while overhead the moon 

Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth 

Wheels her pale course ; they, on their mirth and dance 

Intent, with jocund music charm his ear ; 

At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds. 

There is a pretty fairy tale in Parnell, where a young 
man, by dint of moral beauty, loses his hump. Perhaps it 
was this poem that suggested a large prose piece to the 
same effect, written, we believe, by a descendant of the 
poet's family, and well worthy the perusal of all who are 
not acquainted with it. It is entitled " Julietta, or the 
Triumph of Mental Acquirements over Bodily Defects ; " 
and is found in most circulating libraries. But the most 
beautiful of all stories on the subject, and indeed one of 
the most beautiful stories in the world, is the celebrated 
fairy tale of " Beauty and the Beast." Of this, however, 
we may speak another time ; for the fairies of the French 
books (however minute may be their dealings occasionally) 
are not the little elves of the North, but the Fates or en- 
chantresses of Romance, paying visits to the nursery. 

We shall conclude with a few goblin anecdotes, illus- 
trative of the present state of fairy belief in its true 
northern region, that is to say, in the British and other 
islands, Scandinavia, and Germany ; and, as the creed is, 
in fact, the same throughout the whole of that part of the 
world, though modified by the customs of the different 
people, we shall not stop to make literal or national dis- 
tinctions, when the spirit of the thing is the same. Our 
authorities are the u Fairy Mythology," and the n Fairy 



FAIRIES. 119 

Legends of the South of Ireland ; " but it is proper to 
state, as the authors of these works make a point of doing, 
that the great masters of Fairy lore now living are Messrs. 
Grimm, the German writers, with whose language (the 
language of Goethe) we are, to our regret, unacquainted. 
But we are zealous students at second hand. 

A man who had a Nis, or goblin, in his house, could 
think of no other way of getting rid of him than by moving. 
He accordingly packed up his goods, and was preparing to 
set off with the cart, when the Nis put up his head from 
it, and cried out — " Eh ! Well, we're moving to-day, 
you see." 

A German, for a similar reason, set fire to his barn, 
hoping to burn the goblin with it. 

Turning round to look at the blaze, as he was driving 
away, the goblin said, "It was time to move, wasn't it ? " 

There was a Nis that was plagued by a mischievous 
boy. He went one night to the boy, as he was sleeping 
in bed by the side of a tall man, and kept pulling him up 
and down, under the pretence of not being able to make 
him fit the other's stature. When he was down he was 
too short ; and when up, not long enough. " Short and 
long don't match," said he ; and kept pulling him up and 
down all night. Being tired by daylight, he went and sat 
on a wall, and as the dog barked, but could not get at him, 
the Nis kept plaguing him, by thrusting down first one leg 
and then the other, saying, " Look at my little leg ! Look 
at my little leg ! " By this time the boy got up dreadfully 
tired with his dream, and while the Nis was wrapt up in 
his amusement, the boy went behind him, and tumbled 
him into the yard, saying, " Look at him altogether." 

Two Scotch lassies were eating a bowl of broth. They 
had but one spoon, and yet they scarcely seemed to have 



120 FAIRIES. 

tasted their mess, but they had come to the bottom of it 
" I hae got but three sups," cried the one, " and it's a' 
dune ! " " It's a' dune, indeed," cried the other. " Ha ! 
ha ! ha ! " cried a third voice, " Brownie has got the raist 
o't." 

A husband going a journey, gave a Kobold the charge 
of his wife during his absence. The good man departed, 
and Kobold had nothing to do from that day forward but 
assume frightful shapes, fling people down, and crack 
ribs. At length the husband came back, and a figure at 
the door welcomed him with a face pale, but delighted. 
" Who are you ? " cried the husband ; for he did not 
know Kobold, he had grown so thin. " I am the keeper 
of our fair friend," said the elf, " but it is for the last time. 
Whew !" continued he, blowing, "what a time I've had 
of it!" 

A Neck, or water spirit, was playing upon his harp, 
when two boys said to him, " What is the use, Neck, of 
your sitting and playing there ? you will never be saved." 
Upon this the poor spirit began to weep bitterly. The 
boys ran home, and told their father, who rebuked them ; 
so they came back again, and said, "Be of good cheer, 
Neck, father says you will be saved as well as us." The 
Neck then took his harp again, and played sweetly, long 
after it was too dark to see him. This is very beautiful. 

The most ghastly, to our taste, of all the equivocal 
fairies, are the Elle-women, or Female Elves, of Denmark. 
The male is a little old man with a low- crowned hat ; the 
female is young and fair, very womanly to all appearance, 
and with an attractive countenance, " but behind she is 
hollow, like a dough-trough. She has so many lures that 
people find it difficult to resist her ; and they must always 
follow her about, if they once fondle her ; otherwise they 



FAIRIES. 121 

lose their senses. But she is apt to bring herself into 
suspicion by trying never to let her back be seen. If you 
make the sign of the cross, she is obliged to turn round. 
We know not whether the charm remains in spite of the 
dough-trough, provided you are once beguiled. A more 
unsatisfactory charm could not be found. Think of clasp- 
ing her to your heart, and finding your hands come together 
within an ace of your breastbone ! « 

When lonely German clasps an Elle-maid, 
And finds too late a butcher's tray — 

We may laugh at such horrors at this time of day, espe- 
cially in England ; but these darker parts of superstition 
are still mischievous sometimes to those who believe in 
them ; and we have no doubt there are still believers, 
upon grounds which it would be found difficult to shake. 
To say the truth, we are among the number of those who, 
with all allowance for the lies that have been plentifully 
told on such matters, do yet believe that fairies have actu- 
ally been seen ; but then it was by people whose percep- 
tions were disturbed. It is observable that the ordinary 
seers have been the old, the diseased, or the intoxicated ; 
young people's aunts, or grandfathers, or peasants going 
home from the ale-house. When the young see them, their 
minds are prepared by a firm belief in what their elders 
have told them ; so that terrors which should pass off for 
nothing, on closer inspection, become a real perception with 
these weaker heads ; the ideas impressed upon the brain 
taking the usual morbid stand outside of it. We have no 
doabt that the case is precisely the same, in its degree, 
with the spectral illusion of faces and more horrid sights, 
experienced by opium-eaters, and others in a delicate state 
of health. We learn from a work of the late Mr. Bingley, 



122 FAIRIES. 

that the metal known by the name of cobalt, is so called 
from the German word kobold, or goblin, so often men- 
tioned in this article, the miners who dig for it appearing 
to be particularly subject to the vexations of the elf. in 
consequence of the poison which his namesake exhales.* 
If it should be asked how we can tell that any thing which 
is really seen does not really exist, we answer, that such a 
state of existence is, at all events, not a healthy one, and 
therefore its perceptions are not to be taken as proper to 
humanity. Not to mention that spectral illusions are of no 
use but to terrify, and are quite as likely, and more so, to 
happen to the conscientious and the delicately organized 
and considerate, as to those whose vices might be sup- 
posed to require them. 

The consequence of these darker parts of the belief in 
fairies, is that deliriums have frequently been occasioned 
by them; fancied announcements and forebodings have 
preyed on the spirits in domestic life, and the popular mind 
kept in a state, which bigotry and worldliness have been 
enabled to turn to the worst account. But a counter- 
charm was nevertheless growing up in secret against the 
witchcrafts of imagination, by dint of imagination itself, 
and the readiness with which it was prepared to enter into 
the thoughts of others, and sympathize with the great 
cause of knowledge and humanity. The cure for these 
and a hundred evils, is not the rooting out of imagination, 
which would be a proceeding, in fact, as impossible as 
undesirable, but the cultivation of its health and its cheer- 
fulness. Good sense and fancy need never be separated. 
Imagination is no enemy to experience, nor can experience 
draw her from her last and best holds. She stands by, 

* " Useful Knowledge," vol. i. p. 220. 



FAIRIES. 123 

willing to know every thing he can discover, and able to 
recommend it, by charms infinite, to the good will and 
sentiment of all men. What has been in the world is, 
perhaps, the best for what is to be, none of its worst evils 
excepted ; but found out and known to be evils, the latter 
have lost even their doubtful advantages ; imagination, in 
the finer excitements of sympathy and the beautiful crea- 
tions of the poets, casts off these shades of uneasy slum- 
ber ; and all that she says to knowledge is, " Discard me 
not, for your own sake as well as mine ; lest with want of 
me, want of sympathy itself return, and utility be again 
mistaken for what it is not, as superstition has already 
mistaken it." 

The sum of our creed in these matters is this : Spec- 
tral illusion, or the actual sight of spiritual appearances, 
takes place only with the unhealthy, and therefore is not 
desirable as a general condition : but spiritual or imagina- 
tive sight is consistent with the healthiest brain, and en- 
riches our sources of enjoyment and reflection. The three 
things we have to take care of, on these and all other 
occasions, are health, knowledge, and imagination. 




124 GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 



GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST, THE 
ARABIAN NIGHTS, &c. 

AIL. gorgeous East! Hail, regions of the 
colored morning ! Hail, Araby and Persia ! 
— not the Araby and Persia of the geogra- 
pher, dull to the dull, and governed by the 
foolish, — but the Araby and Persia of books, 
of the other and more real East, which thousands visit 
every day, — the Orient of poets, the magic land of the 
child, the uneffaceable recollection of the man. 

To us, the " Arabian Nights " is one of the most beau- 
tiful books in the world : not because there is nothing but 
pleasure in it, but because the pain has infinite chances of 
vicissitude, and because the pleasure is within the reach 
of all who have body and soul and imagination. The 
poor man there sleeps in a doorway with his love, and is 
richer than a king. The sultan is dethroned to-morrow, 
and has a finer throne the next day. The pauper touches 
a ring, and spirits wait upon him. You ride in the air ; 
you are rich in solitude ; you long for somebody to return 
your love, and an Eden encloses you in its arms. You 
have this world, and you have another. Fairies are in 
your moonlight. Hope and imagination have their fair 
play, as well as the rest of us. There is action heroical, 
and passion too : people can suffer, as well as enjoy, for 
love ; you have bravery, luxury, fortitude, self-devotion, 
comedy as good as Moliere's, tragedy, Eastern manners, 
the wonderful that is in a commonplace, and the verisi- 
militude that is in the wonderful calendars, cadis, robbers, 
enchanted palaces, paintings full of color and drapery, 



GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 1 25 

warmth for the senses, desert in arms and exercises to 
keep it manly, cautions to the rich, humanity for the more 
happy, and hope for the miserable. Whenever we see the 
" Arabian Nights " they strike a light upon our thoughts, 
as though they were a talisman incrusted with gems ; and 
we fancy we have only to open the book for the magic 
casket to expand, and enclose us with solitude and a 
garden. 

This wonderful work is still better for the West than 
for the East ; because it is a thing remoter, with none of 
our commonplaces ; and because, our real opinions not 
being concerned in it, we have all the benefit of its genius 
without being endangered by its prejudices. The utility 
of a work of imagination indeed must outweigh the draw- 
backs upon it in any country. It makes people go out of 
themselves, even in pursuit of their own good ; and is 
thus opposed to the worst kind of selfishness. These 
stories of vicissitude and natural justice must do good 
even to sultans, and help to keep them in order, though 
it is doubtful how far they may not also serve to keep 
them in possession. With us the good is unequivocal. 
The cultivation of hope comes in aid of the progress of 
society ; and he may safely retreat into the luxuries and 
rewards of the perusal of an Eastern tale, whom its passion 
for the beautiful helps to keep in heart with his species, 
and by whom the behavior of its arbitrary kings is seen 
in all its regal absurdity, as well as its human excuses. 

Like all matters on which the poets have exercised their 
fancy, the opinions respecting the nature of the supernat- 
ural beings of the East have been rendered inconsistent 
even among the best authorities. Sir John Malcolm says 
that Deev means a magician, whereas, in the Persian 
Dictionary of Richardson, it is rendered spirit and giant ; 



126 GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 

by custom, a devil : and Sir John uses it, in the same 
sense in general. D'Herbelot uses it in the sense of 
demon, and yet in his article on " Solomon " it is opposed 
to it, or simply means giant. Richardson tells us, that 
Peri means a beautiful creature of no sex ; whereas accord- 
ing to Sir William Ouseley, it is always female ; and Rich- 
ardson himself gives us to understand as much another 
time. Upon the whole we think the following may be 
taken as the ordinary opinion, especially among authors 
of the greatest taste and genius. 

The Persians (for all these supernatural tales originated 
with the Persians, Indians, and Chaldeans, and not with 
the Arabs, except in as far as the latter became united 
with the Persians), are of opinion, that many kings reigned, 
and many races of creatures existed, before the time of 
Adam.* The geologists ought to have a regard for this 
notion, which has an air of old knowledge beyond ours, and 
falls in with what has been conjectured respecting the 
diluvial strata. According to the Persians, a time may 
have existed, when mammoths, not men, were lords of the 
creation ; when a gigantic half-human phenomenon of a 
beast put his crown on with what was only a hand by 
courtesy ; and elephants and leviathans conversed under 
a sky in which it was always twilight. Very grand fictions 
might be founded on imaginations of this sort; — a Pre- 
adamite epic : and knowledge and sensibility might be 
represented as gradually displacing successive states of 
beings, till man and woman rose with the full orb of the 
morning, — themselves to be displaced by a finer stock, 



* Giafar the Just, sixth Imam, or Pontiff of the Mussulmans, was of opinion, 
that there had been three Adams before the one mentioned in Scripture, and 
that there were to be seventeen more. — D'Herbelot, in the article " Giafar." 



GEXII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 1 27 

if the efforts of cultivation cannot persuade them to be the 
stock themselves. 

The race immediately preceding that of human kind 
resembled them partly in appearance, but were of gigantic 
stature, various-headed, and were composed of the ele- 
ment of fire. These were the Genii, Deevs, or race of 
giga,7itic spirits {the J aim or Jinn of the Arabs, — Pers. 
Jannian or Jinnian).* They lived three thousand years 
each, and had many contests with other spirits, of whose 
nature we are left in the dark ; but the heavens appear 
to have warred with them, among other enemies. A 
dynasty of forty, or according to others of seventy-two 
Solimans, reigned over them in succession, the last of 
whom was the renowned Soliman Jan-ben-Jan. His 
buckler, says D'Herbelot, is as famous among the Orien- 

* Pronounced Jaun and Jmniaun. So Ispahaum, Goolistaun, &c. It is a 
pleasure, we think, to know how to pronounce these Eastern words, and there- 
fore we give the reader the benefit of our ABC learning. There is a couplet 
in Sir William Ouseley's " Travels " which Juzunted us for a month, purely 
because we had found out how to pronounce it, and liked the spirit of it We 
repeat it from memory — 

Haun sheer khaun ! 
Belkeh sheer dendaun ! 

(Written — Han shir khan 

Belkeh shir dendan.) 

The real spelling ought to be kept, for many reasons ; but it is agreeable to find 
out the sound. The above couplet was an extempore of a Persian boy at an 
inn, who was struck with the dandy assumptions and enormous appetite of a 
native gentleman of the party. This person had been commissioned to show 
Sir W T illiam the country, and upon the strength of his having the name of khan 
(as if one of us were a Mr. Lord), gave himself the airs of the title. The jest 
of the little mimic (who gives us an advantageous idea of the Persian vivacity), 
would run something in this way in English, a lion being a common term of 
exaltation : — 

A lion-lord, indeed ! 

You may know him by his feed. 



128 GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 

tals, as that of Achilles among the Greeks. He possessed, 
also, in common with other Solimans, the cuirass called 
the Gebeh, and the Tig-atesch, or smouldering sword, 
which rendered them invisible in their wars with the 
demons.* In his time the race had become so proud and 
so incorrigible to the various lessons given to them and 
their ancestors from above, that Heaven sent down the an- 
gel Hareth to reduce them to obedience. Hareth did his 
work, and took the government of the world into his hands, 
but became so proud in his turn, that the deity in order to 
punish him created a new species of beings to possess the 
earth, and bade the angels fall down and worship it. 
Hareth refused, as being of a nobler nature, and was 
thrust, together with the chiefs of those who adhered to 
him, into hell, the whole race of the Genii being dismissed 
at the same time into the mountains of Kaf. and man left 
in possession of his inheritance. The Genii, however, did 
not leave him alone. They made war upon him occasion- 
ally till the time of the greatest of all the Solimans, Soli- 
man ben Daoud (Solomon the son of David) who having 
finally conquered and driven them back, was allowed to 
retain power over them, to give peace of mind to such as 
had yielded in good time, and to compel the rest to suc- 
cumb to him whenever he thought fit, as angels overcame 
the devils. These last are the rebellious Genii of the 
"Arabian Nights." They are the Deevs, in the diabolical 
and now the only sense of the word, — Deev signifying a 
gigantic evil spirit ; and are all monsters, more or less, 
and generally black ; though the most famous of them is 
the Deev-Sifeed, or great white devil, whose conquest was 
the crowning glory of Rustam, the Eastern Hercules. 

* D'Herbelot, in the article " Soliman Ben Daoud." 



GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. * 1 29 

They appear to be of different classes, and to have differ- 
ent names, except the latter be provincial. Some are 
called Ishreels, others Afreets, and another is our old 
acquaintance the Ghoul (pronounced ghool). They are 
permitted to wander from Kaf, and roam about the world, 
"as a security," says Richardson, "for the future obedi- 
ence of man." They tempt and do mischief in the style of 
the Western devil, the lowest of them infesting old build- 
ings, haunting church-yards, and feeding on dead bodies. 
The reader will recollect the lady who supped with one of 
them, and who used to pick rice with a bodkin. These 
are the Ghouls above mentioned. They sometimes inhabit 
waste places, moaning in the wind, and waylaying the 
traveller. A Deev is generally painted with horns, tail, 
and saucer eyes, like our devil ; but an author now and 
then lavishes on a description of him all the fondness of 
his antipathy. The following is a powerful portrait of one 
of them, called an Afreet, in the Bahar Danush, — or 
" Garden of Knowledge " (translated from the Persian by 
Mr. Gladwin) : — 

" On his entrance, he beheld a black demon, heaped on 
the ground like a mountain, with two large horns on his 
head, and a long proboscis, fast asleep. In his head the 
divine Creator had joined the likenesses of the elephant 
and the wild bull. His teeth grew out like the tusks of 
the wild boar, and all over his monstrous carcase hung 
shaggy hairs, like those of the bear. The eye of the 
mortal-born was dimmed at his appearance, and the mind, 
at his horrible form and frightful figure, was confounded. 

" He was an Afreet created from mouth to foot by the 
wrath of God. 

"His hair like a bear's, his teeth like a boar's. No one 
ever beheld such a monster. 

9 



I30 GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 

" Crooked-backed and crab-faced ; he might be scented 
at the distance of a thousand furlongs. 

" His nostrils were like the ovens of brick-burners, and 
his mouth resembled the vat of a dyer. 

" When his breath came forth, from its vehemence the 
dust rose up as in a whirlwind, so as to leave a chasm in 
the earth ; and when he drew it in, chaff, sand, and peb- 
bles, from the distance of some yards, were attracted to 
his nostrils." 

Some of these wanderers about the world appear never- 
theless to be of a milder nature than others, and undertake 
to be amiable on the subject of love and beauty : though 
this indeed is a mansuetude of which most devils are ren- 
dered capable. In the story of Prince Camaralzaman and 
the Princess of China, a " cursed genie " makes common 
cause with a good fairy in behalf of the two lovers. The 
fairy makes no scruple of chatting and comparing notes 
with him on their beauty, at the same time addressing him 
by his title of " cursed," and wondering how he can have 
the face to differ with her. The devil, on the other hand, 
is very polite, calling her his "dear lady" and "agreeable 
Maimoune," and tremblingly exacting from her a promise 
to do him no harm, in return for his telling her no lies. 
The question demands an umpire ; and, at a stamp of 
Maimoune's foot, out comes from the earth "a hideous, 
humpbacked, squinting, and lame genie, with six horns 
on his head, and claws on his hands and feet." Casch- 
casch (this new monster) behaves like a well-bred arbiter ; 
and the fairy thanks him for his trouble. In the " Arabian 
Tales ; or, sequel to the Arabian Nights," * is an evil 



* The " Arabian Tales " are unquestionably of genuine Eastern ground- 
work, and amidst a great deal of pantomimic extravagance, far inferior to the 



GEXII AXD FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 131 

genius resembling the Asmodeus of the Devil on Two 
Sticks. Asmodeus is evidently Eastern, the Asmadai of 
the " Paradise Lost." 

There is a world of literature in the East, of which we 
possess but a little corner ; though, indeed, that corner is 
exquisite, and probably the finest of all.* 



" Nights," have some capital stories. II Bondocani, for instance, and Mau- 
graby. But till we have the express authority of a scholar to the contrary, it is 
difficult to say that a French hand has not interfered in it, beyond what is stated 
by the translator of the reformed edition. There are fine things in the story 
of Maugraby. 

* Doubts have been gratuitously and not very modestly expressed of the 
value of the celebrated Eastern poets ; but surely a few names could not have 
risen eminently above myriads of others, and become the delight and reverence 
of nations, without possessing something in common with the great attractions 
of humanity in all countries. Sir John Malcolm pronounces Ferdoosi, the epic 
poet of Persia, to be a great and pathetic genius ; and he gives some evidence 
of what he says, even in a prose sketch of one of his stories, which, says the 
original, is a story "full of the waters of the eye." There is a couplet, trans- 
lated by Sir William Jones, from the same author, which show s he had reflected 
upon a point of humanity that appears obvious enough, and yet which was 
never openly noticed by an Englishman till the time of Shakespeare. Sir Wil- 
liam's couplet is in the modern fashion, and probably not in the original sim- 
plicity, but it is well done, and fit to remember. It is upon crushing an insect 

Ah ! spare yon emmet, rich in hoarded grain : 
He lives with pleasure, and he dies with pain. 

Do the gratuitous critics recollect, that the stories of Ruth and Joseph, and 
the sublime book of Job, are from the East ? or that the religion of simplicity 
itself comes from that quarter ? the religion that set children on its knee, and 
bade the orthodox Pharisee retire ? It appears to us highly probable, that even 
our Eastern scholars are liable to be mistaken respecting the pompous language 
of the Orientals. We talk of their highflown metaphors, and eternal substitu- 
tion of images for words ; but how far would not our own language be liable to 
similar misconception, if translated in the same literal spirit ? What should we 
think of Persians, who instead of overlooking tJie every-day nature of our 
colloquial imagery should arrest it at every turn, and wonder how we can talk 
of standing in other people's shoes, taking false steps, throwing light on a sub- 
ject, stopping the mouths of our enemies, &c. ? There are bad and florid 



I32 GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 

So much for the rebellious or evil Jinn. 

The Jinns obedient seldom make their appearance in a 
male shape ; the Orientals, with singular gallantry of 
imagination, almost always making them females, as we 
shall see presently. The best of the males are of equivo- 
cal character, and retain much of the fiery and capricious 
natures of the genii of old. They may be good and kind 
enough, if they have their way ; but do not willingly come 
in contact with men, except to carry off their wives or 
daughters ; still resenting, it would seem, the ascendancy 
of human kind, and choosing to serve their own princes 
and genii, rather than be compelled to appear before mas- 
ters of an inferior species, — for magicians have power 
over them, as our astrologers had over the spirits of Plato 
and the Cabala. They come frightfully, as well as against 
the grain, — in claps of thunder, and with severe faces. 
Furthermore, they have a taste for deformity, if we are to 
judge from the description of Pari Banou's brother. He 
was not above a foot and a half high, had a beard thirty 
feet long, and carried upon his shoulders a bar of iron of 
five hundred weight, which he used as a quarter-staff. 
But we will indulge ourselves (and we hope the reader) 
with an extract about him. Prince Ahmed, who has had 
the good luck to marry the gentle Pari, which has excited 
a great deal of jealousy and a wish to destroy him, is re- 
quested by his father (into whose dull head the thought 
has been put) to bring him a little monster of a man of 
the above description. 

"'It is my brother Schaibar,' said the fairy; 'he is 



writers in all countries, perhaps more in Persia, because the people there are 
more fervent ; but we should judge of a literature by its best specimens, not its 
worst. 



GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 133 

of so violent a nature, though we had both the same 
father, that nothing prevents his giving bloody marks of 
his resentment for a slight offence; yet on the other hand, 
so good as to oblige any one in what they desire. He is 
made exactly as the sultan, your father, described him, 
and has no other arms than a bar of iron of five hundred 
pounds weight, without which he never stirs, and which 
makes him respected. I will send for him, and you shall 
judge of the truth of what I tell you ; but be. sure you 
prepare yourself not to be frightened at his extraordinary 
figure, when you see him.' — < What ! my queen,' replied 
Prince Ahmed, 'do you say Schaibar is your brother? 
Let him be ever so ugly or deformed, I shall be so far 
from being frightened at the sight of him, that I shall love 
and honor him, and consider him as my nearest relation.' 

" The fairy ordered a gold chafing-dish, with fire in it, to 
be set under the porch of her palace, with a box of the 
same metal, which was a present to her, out of which 
taking some incense, and throwing it into the fire, there 
arose a thick smoke. 

" Some moments after, the fairy said to Prince Ahmed : 
' Prince, there comes my brother, do you see him ? do you 
see him ? ' The Prince immediately perceived Schaibar, 
who was but a foot and a half high, coming gravely, with 
his bar on his shoulder ; his beard thirty feet long, which 
supported itself before him, and a pair of thick moustaches 
in proportion, tucked up to his ears and almost covering 
his face. His eyes were very small, like a pig's, and deep 
sunk in his head, which was of enormous size, and on 
which he wore a pointed cap ; besides all this, he had a 
hump behind and before. 

" If Prince Ahmed had not known that Schaibar was 
Pari Banou's brother, he would not have been able to look 



134 GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 

at him without fear ; but knowing who he was, he waited 
for him with the fairy, and received him without the least 
concern. 

" Schaibar, as he came forwards, looked at the prince 
with an eye that would have chilled his soul in his body, 
and asked Pari Banou, when he first accosted her, ' who 
that man was ? ' To which she replied, ' He is my husband, 
brother ; his name is Ahmed ; he is son to the Sultan of the 
Indies. The reason why I did not invite you to my 
wedding was, I was unwilling to divert you from the expe- 
dition you were engaged in, and from which I heard, with 
pleasure, you returned victorious ; on his account I have 
taken the liberty now to call for you.' 

" At these words, Schaibar, looking on Prince Ahmed 
with a favorable eye, which however diminished neither 
his fierceness nor savage look, said, ' Is there any thing, 
sister, wherein I can serve him ? ' " 

We must have one more extract on this part of our sub- 
ject from the same delightful work. The King of the 
Genii, in the beautiful story of Zeyn Alasnam (which ends 
with a piece of dramatic surprise equally unexpected and 
satisfactory), is a good genius, and yet but a grim sort of 
personage. Our extract includes a boatman very awkward 
to sit with, an enchanted island, and a very princely Jinn. 

Zeyn, Prince of Balsora, is in search of a ninth statue, 
which is necessary to complete a number bequeathed to 
him by his father. Agreeably to a direction found by him 
among the statues, he seeks an old servant of his father's, 
at Cairo, of the name of Morabec ; and the latter under- 
takes to forward his wishes, but advertises him there is 
great peril in the adventure. The prince determines to 
proceed, and Morabec directs his servants to make ready 
for a journey. 



GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 1 35 

" Then the prince and he performed the ablution of 
washing, and the prayer enjoined, which is called farz ; and 
that done they set out. By the way they took notice of 
abundance of strange and wonderful things, and travelled 
many days ; at the end whereof, being come to a delight- 
ful spot, they alighted from their horses. Then Morabec 
said to all the servants that attended upon them, < Do you 
all stay in this place, and take care of our equipage till we 
return.' Then he said to Zeyn, ' Now, sir, let us go on 
by ourselves. We' are near the dreadful place where the 
ninth statue is kept ; you will stand in need of all your 
courage.' 

" They soon came to a lake : Morabec sat down on the 
brink of it, saying to the Prince : ' We must cross this 
sea.' * How can we cross it,' said Zeyn, ' when we have 
no boat ? ' ' You will see one in a moment,' replied Mora- 
bec ; ' the enchanted boat of the King of the Genii will 
come for us. But do not forget what I am going to say 
to you ; you must observe a profound silence ; do not 
speak to the boatman, though his figure seem ever so 
strange to you ; whatsoever extraordinary circumstances 
you may observe, say nothing ; for I tell you beforehand, 
that if you utter the least word when we are embarked 
the boat will sink down.' ' I shall take care to hold my 
peace,' said the prince ; ' you need only tell me what to 
do, and I will strictly observe it.' 

" While they were talking, he espied on a sudden a boat 
in the lake, and it was made of red sandal- wood. It had 
a mast of fine amber, and a blue satin flag : there was 
only one boatman in it, whose head was like an elephant's, 
and his body like a tiger's. When the boat was come up 
to the prince and Morabec, the monstrous boatman took 
them up one after the other with his trunk, and put them 



I36 GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 

into his boat, and carried them over the lake in a moment 
He then again took them up with his trunk, set them on 
shore, and immediately vanished with his boat. 

" ' Now we may talk,' said Morabec : ' the island we are 
on belongs to the King of the Genii ; there are no more 
such in the world. Look round you, prince ; can there 
be a more delightful place ? It is certainly a lovely rep- 
resentation of the charming place God has appointed 
for the faithful observers of our law. Behold the fields, 
adorned with all sorts of flowers and 6doriferous plants ; 
admire these beautiful trees, whose delicious fruit makes 
the branches bend down to the ground ; enjoy the pleasure 
of these harmonious songs, formed in the air by a thou- 
sand birds of as many various sorts, unknown in other 
countries ! ' Zeyn could not sufficiently admire those with 
which he was surrounded, and still found something new 
as he advanced farther into the island. 

" At length they came to a palace made of fine emeralds, 
encompassed with a ditch, on the banks whereof, at cer- 
tain distances, were planted such tall trees, that they 
shaded the whole palace. 

" Before the gate, which was of massy gold, was a bridge, 
made of one single shell of a fish, though it was at least 
six fathoms long, and three in breadth. At the head of 
the bridge stood a company of Genii, of a prodigious 
height, who guarded the entrance into the castle with 
great clubs of China steel. 

" ' Let us go no farther,' said Morabec ; c these Genii 
will knock us down ; and, in order to prevent their com- 
ing to us, we must perform a magical ceremony.' He then 
drew out of a purse he had under his garment four long 
slips of yellow taffety ; one he put about his middle, and laid 
the other on his back, giving the other two to the prince, 



GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 1 37 

who did the like. Then Morabec laid on the ground two 
large table-cloths, on the edges whereof he scattered some 
precious stones, musk, and amber. Then he sat down on 
one of these cloths, and Zeyn on the other ; and Morabec 
said to the prince, 'I shall now, sir, conjure the King of 
the Genii, who lives in the palace that is before us :• may 
he come in a peaceable mood to us ! I confess I am not 
without apprehension about the reception he may give us. 
If our coming into the island is displeasing to him, he will 
appear in the shape of a dreadful monster ; but if he ap- 
prove of your design, he will show himself in the shape of 
a handsome man. As soon as he appears before us, you 
must rise and salute him, without going off your cloth ; 
for you would certainly perish, should you stir off it. 
You must say to him, " Sovereign Lord of the Genii, my 
father, who was your servant, has been taken away by the 
angel of death ; I wish your majesty may protect me as 
you always did my father." If the King of the Genii,' 
added Morabec, 'ask you what favor you desire of him, 
you must answer, " Sir, I most humbly beg of you to give 
me the ninth statue." ' 

" Morabec having thus instructed Zeyn, began his conju- 
rations. Immediately their eyes were dazzled with a long 
flash of lightning, which was followed by a clap of thun- 
der. The whole island was covered with a thick darkness ; 
a furious storm of wind blew, a dreadful cry was heard, 
the island felt a shock, and there was such an earthquake 
as that which Asrayel is to cause on the day of judgment. 

" Zeyn was startled, and began to look upon that noise 
as a very ill omen ; when Morabec, who knew better than 
he what to think of it, began to smile, and said, ' Take 
courage, my prince, all goes well' In short, that very 
moment the King of the Genii appeared in the shape of a 



I38 GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 

handsome man, yet there was something of a sternness in 
his air." 

The king promises to comply with the prince's request, 
but upon one condition — that he shall bring him a damsel 
of fifteen : a virgin beautiful and perfectly chaste ; and 
that her conductor shall behave himself on the road with 
perfect propriety towards her, both in deed and thought. 
" Zeyn," says the story, " took the rash oath that was 
required of him ; " but naturally asks, how he is to be sure 
of the lady? The Genius gives him a looking-glass on 
which she is to breathe, and which will be sullied or un- 
sullied accordingly. The consequences among the ladies 
are such as Western romancers have told in a similar 
way ; but at length success crowns the prince's endeavors, 
and he conducts the Genius's damsel to the enchanted 
island, not without falling in love, and being tempted to 
break his word and carry her away to Balsora. The king 
is pleased with his self-denial, and tells him that on his 
return home he will find the statue. He goes, and on the 
pedestal where it was to have stood, finds the lady ! The 
behavior of the lady is in very good taste, and completes 
the charm of the discovery. 

" ' Prince,' said the young maid, ' you are surprised to 
to see me here : you expected to have found something 
more precious than me, and I question not but that you 
now repent having taken so much trouble : you expected 
a better reward.' 

" ' Madam,' answered Zeyn, ' Heaven is my witness that 
I more than once was like to have broken my word with 
the King of the Genii, to keep you to myself. Whatsoever 
be the value of a diamond statue, is it worthy the satis- 
faction of enjoying you ? I love you above all the dia- 
monds and wealth in the world.' " 



GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 139 

All this to us is extremely delightful. We can say with 
the greatest truth, that at the age of fifty we repeat these 
passages with a pleasure little short of what we experienced 
at fifteen. We even doubt whether it is less. We come 
round to the same delight by another road. The genius 
is as grand to us, if not so frightful as of old ; the boat- 
man is peculiar ; and the lady is charming. Such ladies 
may really be found on pedestals, for aught we know, in 
another life (one life out of a million). In short, we refuse 
to be a bit older than we were, having, in fact, lived such 
a little while, and the youth of eternity being before us. 

So now, in youth and good faith, to come to our last and 
best genius, the peri ! We call her so from custom, but 
pari is the proper word ; and in the story above-mentioned, 
it is so spelled. We shall here observe, that the French 
have often misled us by their mode of spelling Eastern 
words. The translation of the " Arabian Nights " (which 
came to us through the French) has palmed upon our 
childhood the genie, or French word, for the genius of the 
Latins, instead of the proper word jinn. The French 
pronunciation of peri is pari; and in Richardson's Dic- 
tionary the latter is the spelling. It would have looked 
affected, some years ago, to write pari for peri ; though, 
in the story just alluded to, an exception is made in favor 
of it : but in these times, when the growth of general 
learning has rendered such knowledge common, and when 
Boccaccio has got rid among us of his old French mis- 
nomer of Boccace (which a friend of ours very properly 
called bookcase), we might as well write pari and jinn, 
instead of peri and ge?iie, loth, as we confess we are, to 
give up the latter barbarism — the belief of our childhood. 
But, somehow, we love any truth when we can get it, fond 
as we are of fiction. 



I40 GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 

Pari, then, in future, we will venture to write it, and 
jinn shall be said instead of genie or even genius ; with 
which it is said to have nothing to do. This may be true ; 
and yet it is curious to see the coincidence between the 
words, and for our part we are not sure, if the etymology 
could be well traced, that something in common might 
not be found between the words as well as the things. 
There might have been no collusion between the countries, 
and yet a similarity of sound might have risen out of the 
same ideas. This circumstance in the philosophy of the 
human history is, we think, not sufficiently attended to on 
many occasions. Fictions, for example, of all sorts have 
been traced to this and that country, as if what gave rise to 
them with one people might not have produced them out 
of the same chances and faculties with another ; obvious 
mixtures and modifications may be allowed, and yet every 
national mind throw up its own fancies, as well as the 
soil its own flowers. The Persians may have a particular 
sort of fancy as they have of lilac or roses ; but fairies, or 
spirits in general, are of necessity as common to all na- 
tions as the grass or the earth, or the shadows among the 
trees. 

Thus out of similar grounds of feeling may issue the 
roots of the same words. It is curious that jinn, jinnian, 
and geni-us, should so resemble one another ; for us is 
only the nominative termination of the Latin word, and 
has nothing to do with the root of it. The Eastern word 
pari, and our fairy, are still more nearly allied, especially 
by the Arabic pronunciation, which changes p into f. It 
has been justly argued, that fairy is but a modern word, 
and meant formerly the region in which the Fay lived, and 
not the inhabitant. This is true ; but the root may still 
be the same, and the Italian word fata, from which it has 



GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 141 

been reasonably derived, says nothing to the contrary, 
but the reverse ; for ta or turn is but a variety of inflec- 
tion. Fata is the Latin fatum, or fate, whence come the 
words fatua, fama, and fanum j words implying some- 
thing spoken or said, — 

Aery tongues that syllable men's names. 

Fart is the Latin to speak. All these words come from 
the Greek phaton, phatis, phao, to say, which signifies 
also to express, to bring to light, and to appear ; and 
phaos signifies light. Here is the union of speech and 
appearance, and thus from the single root pha or fay may 
have originated the words peri or fari, the English fairy, 
the old English fay, which is the fee of our neighbors, the 
Latin fatum or fate, even the parcce (another Latin word 
for the Fates), the Greek phatis, the old Persian ferooer 
(a soul, a blessed spirit, which is the etymology of the 
author of the " Fairy Mythology "), and the word fable 
itself, together with fancy, fair, famous, and what not. We 
do not wish to lay more stress on this matter than it is 
worth. There is no end to probabilities, and any thing 
may be deduced from any thing else. Home Tooke de- 
rived King Pepin from the Greek pronoun osper, and King 
Jeremiah from pickled cucumber,* — a sort of sport which 
we recommend 'as an addition to the stock at Christmas. 
But the extremes of probability have their use as well as 
abuse. The spirit of words, truly studied, involves a deep 
philosophy and important consequences ; and any thing is 



* As thus, "Osper, eper, oper, — diaper, napkin, pipkin, pippin-king, King 
Pepin." And going the reverse way, " King Jeremiah, Jeremiah King, jerkin, 
gerkin, pickled cucumber." Fohi and Noah, says Goldsmith, are evidently 
the same ; for change./*? into no, and hi into ah, and there you have it. 



I42 GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 

good which tends to make out a common case for man- 
kind. 

Pari is the female genius, beautiful and beneficent. 
D'Herbelot says there are male Paries, and he gives the 
names of two of them, Dal Peri and Milan Schah Peri, 
who were brothers of Merjan Peri, supposed to be the 
same as the Western Fairy, Morgana. The truth seems 
to be, that originally the Paries were of no sex : the poets 
first distinguished them into male and female ; and their 
exceeding beauty at last confined them to the female kind. 
We doubt, after all that we see in the writings of Sir 
William Ousely and others, whether any poet, Western 
or Eastern, would now talk of a male Pari. At any rate, 
it would appear as absurd to us of the West, as if any- 
body were to discover that the three Graces were not all 
female. The Pari is the female Fairy, the lady of the 
solitudes, the fair enchantress who enamors all who be- 
hold her, and is mightily inclined to be enamored herself, 
but also to be constant as well as kind. She is the being 
" that youthful poets dream of when they love." She in- 
cludes the magic of the enchantress, the supernaturalness 
of the fairy, the beauty of the angel, and the lovability of 
the woman ; in short, is the perfection of female sweet- 
ness.* 

Pari has been derived from a word meaning winged, 
and from another signifying beauty. But enough has 
been said on this point. We are not aware of any story 
in which Paries are represented with wings : but they 



* Where we say angel-faced, the Persians say Pari-faced, pari-peyker^ 
pari-cheker, pari-rokhsar, pari-roy, are ail terms to that effect. The Pary- 
satis of the Greeks is justly supposed to be the pari-zade^ or parfi&orn, of the 
Persians. 



GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 1 43 

have the power of flight. In an Eastern poem, mentioned 
by D'Herbelot, the evil Jinns in their war with the good 
take some Paries captive, and hang them up in cages, in 
the highest trees they can find. Here they are from time 
to time visited by their companions, who bring them pre- 
cious odors, which serve a double purpose ; for the Paries 
not only feed upon odors, but are preserved by them from 
the approach of the Deevs, to whom a sweet scent is intol- 
erable. Perfume gives an evil spirit a melancholy, more 
than he is in the habit of enduring : he suffers because 
there is a taste of heaven in it. It is beautiful to fancy 
the Paries among the tops of the trees, bearing their im- 
prisonment with a sweet patience, and watching for their 
companions. Now and then comes a flight of these hu- 
man doves, gleaming out of the foliage ; or some good 
genius of the other sex dares a peril in behalf of his Pari 
love, and turns her patience into joy. 

Paries feed upon odors ; but if we are to judge from 
our sweet acquaintance, Pari Banou, they are not incapa- 
ble of sitting down to dinner with an earthly lover. The 
gods lived upon odors, but they had wine in heaven, nectar 
and ambrosia, and furthermore could eat beef and pud- 
ding, when they looked in upon their friends on earth, — 
see the story of Baucis and Philemon, of Lycaon, Tanta- 
lus, &c. It is true Prince Ahmed was helped by his fair 
hostess to delicious meats, which he had never before 
heard of ; odors, perhaps, taking the shape of venison or 
pilau ; but he found the same excellence in the wines ; 
and the fairy partook both of those and the dessert, which 
consisted of the choicest sweetmeats and fruits. The 
reader will allow us to read over with him the part of the 
story thereabouts. Such quarters of an hour are not to be 
had always, especially in good company ; and we presume 



144 GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 

all the readers of these papers are well met, and of good 
faith. If any one of a different sort trespasses on our 
premises, and does not see the beauties we deal with, all 
we can say is, that he is in the usual condition of those 
profane persons who are punished when they venture into 
Fairy-land, by that very inability of sight, which he, poor 
fellow, would fain consider a mark of his discernment. — 
So now to our dinner with a Fairy. 

The reader will recollect, that Prince Ahmed shot an 
arrow a great way among some rocks, and, upon finding 
it was astonished to see how far it had gone. The arrow 
was also lying flat, which looked as if it had rebounded 
from one of the rocks. This increased his surprise, and 
made him think there was some mystery in the circum- 
stance. On looking about, he discovered an iron door. 
He pushed it open and went down a passage in the earth. 
On a sudden, " a different light succeeded to that which he 
came out of; " he entered a square, and perceived a magni- 
ficent palace, out of whieh a lady of exceeding beauty 
made her appearance at the door, attended by a troop of 
others. 

" As soon as Prince Ahmed perceived the lady, he hast- 
ened to pay his respects ; and the lady on her part, seeing 
him coming, prevented him. Addressing her discourse to 
him first, and raising her voice, she said to him, i Come 
near, Prince Ahmed ; you are welcome.' 

" It was no small surprise to the prince to hear himself 
named in a palace he never heard of, though so nigh his 
father's capital ; and he could not comprehend how he 
should be known to a lady who was a stranger to him." 

By the way, who knows what our geologists may come 
to, provided they dig far enough, and are worthy ? Strange 
things are surmised of the interior of the earth; and 



GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. I45 

Burnet, now-a-days, would have rubbed his hands to think 
what phenomenon may turn up.* 

" After the proper interchanging of amenities on either 
side, the prince is led into a hall, over which is a dome of 
gold and onyx. He is seated on a sofa ; the lady seats her- 
self by him, and addresses him m the following words : 
c You are surprised, you say, that I should know you and 
not be known by you ; but you will be no longer surprised 
when I inform you who I am. You cannot be ignorant that 
your religion teaches you to believe that the world is inhab- 
ited by Genii as well as men ; I am the daughter of one of 
the most powerful and distinguished of these Genii, and my 
name is Pari Banou ; therefore you ought not to wonder 
that I know you, the sultan your father, and the Princess 
Nouronnihar. I am no stranger to your loves or your 
travels, of which I could tell you all the circumstances, 
since it was I myself who exposed to sale the artificial 
apple which you bought at Samarcande, the carpet which 
Prince Houssain met with at Bisnagar, and the tube which 
Prince Ali brought from Schiraz. This is sufficient to let 
you know that I am not unacquainted with any thing that 
relates to you. The only thing I have to add is, that you 
seemed to me worthy of a more happy fate than that of 
possessing the Princess Nouronnihar ; and, that you might 



* The author of the " Sacred Theory of the Earth," — a book as good as a 
romance, and containing passages of great beauty. We speak of the Latin 
original. Burnet somewhere has expressed a desire to know more about 
Satan — what he is doing at present, and how he lives. There is a subterrane- 
ous Fairy-land, to which King Arthur is supposed to have been withdrawn, 
and whence he is expected to come again and re-establish his throne. Milton 
has a fine allusion to this circumstance in his Latin poem, "Mansus," v. 81. 
A poetical traveller in Wales might look at the mouth of a cavern, and expect 
to see the great king with his chivalry coming up, blowing their trumpets, into 
the daylight. 

IO 



I46 GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 

attain to it, I was present when you drew your arrow, and 
foresaw it would not go beyond Prince Houssain's. I 
took it in the air, and gave it the necessary motion to 
strike against the rocks near which you found it. It is 
in your power to avail yourself of the favorable opportu- 
nity which it presents to make you happy.' As the fairy, 
Pari Banou, pronounced these last words with a different 
tone, and looked at the same time tenderly on Prince 
Ahmed, with downcast eyes and a modest blush on her 
cheeks, it was not difficult for the prince to comprehend 
what happiness she meant. He presently considered that 
the Princess Nouronnihar could never be his, and that 
the fairy, Pari Banou, excelled her infinitely in beauty, 
attractions, agreeableness, transcendent wit, and as far as 
he could conjecture by the magnificence of the palace 
where she resided, in immense riches. He blessed the 
moment that he thought of seeking after his arrow a sec- 
ond time, and yielding to his inclination, which drew him 
towards the new object which had fired his heart, ' Mad- 
am,' replied he, ' should I, all my life, have had the hap- 
piness of being your slave, and the admirer of the many 
charms which ravish my soul, I should think myself the 
happiest of men. Pardon me the boldness which inspires 
me to ask you this favor, and do not refuse to admit into 
your court a prince who is entirely devoted to you.' 

" ' Prince,' answered the fairy, ' as I have been a long 
time my own mistress, and have no dependence on my 
parents' consent, it is not as a slave I would admit you 
into my court, but as master of my person, and all that 
belongs to me, by pledging your faith to me and taking me 
to be your wife. I hope you will not take it amiss that I an- 
ticipate you in making this proposal. I am, as I said, mis- 
tress of my will ; and must add, that the same customs 



GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 1 47 

are not observed among fairies as among other ladies, 
in whom it would not have been decent to have made 
such advances : but it is what we do ; we suppose we 
confer obligation by it.' 

" Prince Ahmed made no answer to this discourse, but 
was so penetrated with gratitude, that he thought he 
could not express it better than by coming to kiss the 
hem of her garment, which she would not give him time 
to do, but presented her hand, which he kissed a thousand 
times, and kept fast locked in his. ' Well, Prince Ahmed,' 
said she, ' will you not pledge your faith to me, as I do 
mine to you?' — ' Yes, madam,' replied the prince, in an 
ecstasy of joy, 6 what can I do better, and with greater 
pleasure ? Yes, my sultaness, my queen, I will give it 
you with my heart, without the least reserve.' ' Then,' 
answered the fairy, ' you are my husband,^ and I am your 
wife. Our marriages are contracted with no other cere- 
monies, and yet are more firm and indissoluble than those 
among men, with all their formalities. But, as I suppose,' 
pursued she, ' that you have eaten nothing to-day, a slight 
repast shall be served up for you while preparations are 
making for our nuptial-feast this evening, and then I will 
show you the apartments of my palace, and you shall judge 
if this hall is the smallest part of it' 

" Some of the fairy's women who came into the hall with 
them, and guessed her intention, went immediately out, 
and returned presently with some excellent meats and 
wines. 

" When the prince had eaten and drank as much as he 
cared for, the fairy, Pari Banou, carried him through all 
the apartments, where he saw diamonds, rubies, emeralds, 
and all sorts of fine jewels, intermixed with pearls, agate, 
jasper, porphyry, and all kinds of the most precious mar- 



148 GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 

bles ; not to mention the richness of the furniture, which 
was inestimable ; the whole disposed with such profusion, 
that the prince, instead of ever having seen any thing like 
it, acknowledged that there could not be any thing in the 
world that could come up to it. 

" ' Prince,' said the fairy, * if you admire my palace so 
much, which is indeed very beautiful, what would you say 
to the palaces of the chief of our Genii, which are made 
much more beautiful, spacious, and magnificent ? I could 
also charm you with my garden ; but we will leave that 
till another time. Night draws near, and it will be time 
to go to supper.' 

" The next hall which the fairy led the prince into, and 
where the cloth was laid for the feast, was the only apart- 
ment the prince had not seen, and it was not in the least 
inferior to the others. At his entrance into it he admired 
the infinite number of wax candles, perfumed with amber, 
the multitude of which, instead of being confused, were 
placed with so just a symmetry, as formed an agreeable 
and pleasant sight. A large beaufet was set out with all 
sorts of gold plate, so finely wrought, that the workman- 
ship was much more valuable than the weight of the gold. 
Several choruses of beautiful women, richly dressed, and 
whose voices were ravishing, began a concert, accompa- 
nied with all kinds of the most harmonious instruments he 
had ever heard. When they were set down to table, the 
fairy, Pari Banou, took care to help Prince Ahmed to the 
most delicious meats, which she named as she invited 
him to eat of them, and which the prince had never heard 
of, but found so exquisite and nice, that he commended 
them in the highest terms, saying, that the entertainment 
which she gave him far surpassed those among men. He 
found also the same excellence in the wines, which neither 



GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. I49 

he nor the fairy tasted till the dessert was served up, which 
consisted of the choicest sweetmeats and fruits. 

"After the dessert, the Fairy, Pari Banou, and Prince 
Ahmed, rose from the table, which was immediately car- 
ried away, and sat on a sofa, at their ease, with cushions 
of fine silk, curiously embroidered with all sorts of large 
flowers, laid at their backs. Presently after, a great num- 
ber of genii and fairies danced before them to the door of 
the chamber where the nuptial bed was made, and when 
they came there, they divided themselves into two rows, to 
let them pass, and after that retired, leaving them to go to 
bed. 

" The nuptial feast was continued the next day ; or rather, 
the days following the celebration were a continual feast, 
which the fairy, Pari Banou, who could do it with the 
utmost ease, knew how to diversify, by new dishes, new 
meats, new concerts, new dances, new shows, and new 
diversions ; which were all so extraordinary, that Prince 
Ahmed, if he had lived a thousand years among men 
could not have imagined. 

" The fairy's intention was not only to give the prince 
essential proofs of the sincerity of her love, and the vio- 
lence of her passion, by so many ways ; but to let him 
see, that as he had no pretensions at his father's court, he 
could meet with nothing comparable to the happiness he 
enjoyed with her, independent of her beauty and her 
charms, and to attach him entirely to herself, that he 
might never leave her. In this scheme she succeeded so 
well, that Prince Ahmed's passion was not in the least 
diminished by possession ; but increased so much, that, 
if he had been so inclined, it was not in his power to for- 
bear loving her." 

This is a pretty satisfaction to the imagination, and good 



I50 GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 

only can come of it. They are under a great mistake who 
think that romances and pictures of perfection do harm. 
They may produce mounting impatience and partial neg- 
lect of duties here and there, but in the sum total they 
give a distaste to the sordid, elevate our anger above 
trifles, incline us to assist intellectual advancement of 
all sorts, and keep a region of solitude and sweetness for 
us, in which the mind may retreat and recreate itself, so as 
to return with hope and gracefulness to its labors. Imag- 
ination is the breathing room of the heart. The whole 
world of possibility is thrown open to it, and the air mixes 
with that of heaven. 

Ulysses did not the less yearn to go back to the wife of 
his bosom, because a goddess had lain there. Affection- 
ate habit is a luxury long drawn out ; and constancy, 
made sweet by desert, is a sort of essence of immortality 
distilled. 

To conclude the remarks on our story : Prince Ah- 
med, to be sure, had every reason to be faithful ; but we 
feel it was because a sweet, sincere, and intelligent woman 
loved him, rather than a wonder-working fairy. She is a 
Cleopatra in what is pleasing, but she is also as unlike her 
as possible in what is the reverse ; being very different as 
she says, from her brother Schaibar, who was resentful 
and violent. Such is the fairy of the East, the sweetest 
of all fairies, and fit kinswoman, by humanity, to the only 
creature we like better, which is the Flying Woman of our 
friend Peter Wilkins. With the former, we could live for 
ever, if disengaged and immortal ; but with the latter, 
somehow, like Ulysses, we would rather die. 

There remains one more supernatural being, the Ara- 
bian fairy, who lives in a well ; for so she has been dis- 
tinguished from her more elegant sister of the palace. 



GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 151 

The Arabs, leading a hard and unsettled life, seem not to 
have had time, even in imagination, for the more luxurious 
pictures of Persia. They had all the imagination of home 
feeling, were devoted patriots and intense lovers, and have 
poured forth some of the most heart-felt poetry in the 
world. A volume of poems might be collected out of the 
romance of Antar, unsurpassed as effusions of passion. 
But the total absence of airy and preternatural fiction in 
their works is remarkable. When the two nations became 
united, and the successors of Mahomet shifted their throne 
from their old barren sands to the luxurious halls of Bag- 
dad, the mythologies of their poets gradually became con- 
founded ; and it is difficult to pronounce, after all, how far 
the supposed Arabian fairy differs from the Pari, her sister ; 
how many wonders she might have drawn out of her well, 
or how far the Pari could not inhabit a hole in the well 
on occasion, as the fairies of Italy do in the old stones of 
Fiesole. She was, no doubt, distinct originally, a coarser 
breed, like the gnome of the desert compared with the 
ladies of the court of Darius ; but the distinction seems 
hardly to have survived. If Maimoune lives in a well, we 
have seen that Denhasch pronounced her charming ; and 
though we might regard this as the flattery of a devil, the 
Fairy herself gives us to understand that she was a good 
spirit, one of those who submitted to Solomon ; therefore 
charming by implication, and at all events mixed up with 
the spirits of Persia. The Jinns, male and female, are all 
capital architects, who can make a palace in a twinkling 
for others. We can hardly doubt they can do as much 
for themselves ; and that Maimoune, if she had wished to 
please a lover, could have raised as splendid a house of 
reception for him as Banou. 

The spiritual beings of the East then may, perhaps, 



152 GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 

safely be classed as follows, according to the most re- 
ceived ideas : — 

The Deev, or evil genius. 

The Jinn, or good genius, if not otherwise qualified. 

The Pari, or good female genius, always beneficent and 
beautiful. 

Individuals of all these classes are permitted to roam 
about the world, and reside in particular places ; but their 
chief residence, or Fairy-land, is understood to be in Jin- 
nistan, or the place of the Genii, which is situated on the 
Greek mountain of Kaf, and divided into what may be 
called Good-land and Bad-land, or the domains of the 
good, and the domains of the rebellious Genii. In the 
former is the province of the good Genii, the land of Sha- 
dukam^ or pleasure and desire : — and the Cities Juharbad, 
or the City of Jewels ; — and Amberhabad, the City of Am- 
bergris. In the latter stands Ahermanhabad, the City of 
Aherman, or the Evil Principle, over which reigns the bad 
King Arzhenk, a personage with a half-human body and 
the head of a bull. He is a connoisseur, and has a gallery 
of pictures containing portraits of all the different sorts of 
creatures before Adam. 

All Genii, bad and good, being subjected in some sort 
to the human race, whom they all in the first instance 
agreed not to worship, are compellable by the invocations 
of magic, and forced to appear in the service of particular 
rings and talismans. In this they resemble the Genii of 
the Alexandrian Platonists and the Cabala. Sometimes a 
man possesses a ring without knowing its value, and hap- 
pening to give it a rub, is shocked by the apparition of a 
giant, who in a tone of thunder tells him he is his humble 
servant, and wants to know his pleasure. Invocations must 
be practised after their particular form and letter, or the 



GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 1 53 

Genius becomes riotous instead of obedient, and is perhaps 
the death of you ; and at least gives you a cuff of the ear, 
enough to fell a dromedary. They transport people whith- 
ersoever they please ; make nothing of building a house? 
full of pictures and furniture, in the course of a night ; and 
will put a sultan in their pockets for you, if you desire it. 
But if not your servants, they are dangerous acquaint- 
ances, and it is difficult to be pn one's guard against them. 
You must take care, for instance, how you throw the shells 
about when you are eating nuts, otherwise an unfortunate 
husk to put out the eye of one of their invisible children, 
and for this you will suffer death unless you can repeat 
poems or fine stories. Numbers of Genii have remained 
imprisoned in brazen vessels ever since the time of Solo- 
mon, and*it is not always safe to deliver them. It is a 
moot point whether they will make a king of you for it, or 
kick you into the sea. The Genius whom the fisherman 
sets free in the "Arabian Nights," gives an account of his 
feelings on this matter, highly characteristic of the nature 
of these fairy personages : — 

" ' During the first hundred years' imprisonment,' says 
he, ' I swore, that if any one should deliver me before the 
hundred years expired, I would make him rich, even after 
his death, but the century ran out, and nobody did me 
that good office. During the second, I made an oath that 
I would open all the treasures of the earth to any one that 
should set me at liberty, but with no better success. In 
the third, I promised to make my deliverer a potent 
monarch, to grant him every day three requests, of what- 
ever nature they might be ; but this century ran out as 
the two former, and I continued in prison ; at last, being 
angry, or rather mad, to find myself a prisoner so long, 
I swore that, if afterwards any one should deliver me, I 



154 GENII AND FAIRIES OF THE EAST. 

would kill him without mercy, and grant him no other 
favor but to choose what kind of death he would have ; 
and, therefore, since you have delivered me to-day, I give 
you that choice.' " 

The mode in which the Genii emerge from these brazen 
vessels is very striking. The spirit into which they have 
been condensed expands as it issues forth, and makes an 
enormous smoke, which again compresses into a body, 
black and gigantic ; and the Genius is before you. He is 
in general a smoke of a weaker turn than our friend 
just alluded to. If we are to believe the story of the 
Brazen City in the " New Arabian Nights," whole beds 
of vessels, containing genuine condensed spirits of Jinn, 
were to be found in a certain bay on the coast of Africa. 
Deevs were as plenty as oysters. A sultan had a few 
brought him, and opening one after the other, the giant 
vapor issued forth, crying out, " Pardon, pardon, great 
Solomon ; I will never rebel more." 

Kaf is Caucasus, the u great stony girdle." The Per- 
sians supposed it, and do so still, to run round the earth, 
enclosing it like a ring. The earth itself stands on a great 
sapphire, the reflection of which causes the blue of the 
sky ; and when the sapphire moves there is an earthquake, 
or some other convulsion of nature. On this mountain 
the Jinns reign and revel after their respective fashions ; 
and there is eternal war between the good and the bad. 
Formerly the good Genii, when hard pressed, used to 
apply to an earthly hero to assist them. The exploits of 
Rustam, before mentioned, and of the ancient Tahmuras, 
surnamed Deev-Bend or the Deev-Binder y form the most 
popular subjects of Persian heroic poetry. 

Kaf will gradually be undone, and the place of sapphire 
be not found ; but the blue of the sky will remain ; and 



THE SATYR OF MYTHOLOGY. 1 55 

till the Persian can expound the mystery of the cheek he 
loves, and know the first cause of the roses which make a 
bower for it, he will still, if he is wise, retain his Pari and 
his enchanted palace, and encourage his mistress to re- 
semble the kind faces that may be looking at her. 




THE SATYR OF MYTHOLOGY AND 
THE POETS. 

E lay before our readers the portrait of a very 
eminent half or four-fifths man, an old friend 
of the poets, particularly of the sequestered 
and descriptive order, and constantly alluded 
to in all modern as well as ancient quarters 
poetical. He is alive, not only in Virgil, and Theocritus, 
and Spenser, but in Wordsworth, in Keats, and Shelley, 
and in the pages of " Blackwood " and the " London 
Journal." 

We keep the public in mind, from time to time, that one 
of the objects of the " London Journal " is to bring unedu- 
cated readers of taste and capacity acquainted with the 
pleasures of those who are educated ; and we write articles 
of this description accordingly, in a spirit intended to be 
not unacceptable to either. Enter, therefore, the Satyr, — 
as in one of the Prologues to an old play. By and by, we 
shall give a Triton, a Nymph, &c, &c, and so on through 
all the gentle populace of fiction — ftlebe degli, dei, as 
Tasso calls them, — the " common people of the gods." 



I56 THE SATYR OF MYTHOLOGY. 

Such, we hope, in future times, — or worthy, rather, of 
such appellation, — will be all the people of the earth, — 
their poetry in common, their education in common, know- 
ledge and its divine pleasures being as cheap as daisies 
in the mead. 

The Satyr (not always, but generally) is a goat below 
the waist, and a man above, with a head in which the two 
beings are united. He has horns, pointed ears, and a 
beard ; and there is just enough humanity in his face to 
make the look of the inferior being more observable. The 
expression is drawn up to the height of the salient and 
wilful. He is a merry brute of a demigod ; and when not 
sleeping in the grass, is for ever in motion, dancing, after 
his quaint fashion, and butting when he fights. He goes 
in herds, though he is often found straying. His haunt is 
in the woods, where he makes love to the Dryads and 
other nymphs, not always with their good-will. 

When he gets old he takes to drinking, grows fat, and 
is called a Silenus, after the most eminent gorbelly of his 
race : and then he becomes oracular in his drink, and 
disburses the material philosophy which his way of life 
has taught him. He is not immortal, but has a long life 
as well as a merry ; some say a thousand years : others, 
many thousand. A thousand years, according to Aristotle, 
is the duration both of the Satyr and the Nymph. 

The Faun, though often confounded with the Satyr, and 
supposed by some to be nothing but a Latin version of him, 
is generally taken by the moderns for a Satyr mitigated 
and more human. Goat's feet are not necessary to him. 
He can be content with a tail, and two little budding 
horns, like a kid. 

" How the Satyrs originated," quoth the "serious " but 
not very " sage " Natalis Comes, " or of what parents they 



THE SATYR OF MYTHOLOGY. 1 57 

were begotten, or where or when they began to exist, or 
for what reason they were held to be gods by antiquity ; 
neither have I happed upon any creditable ancient who 
can inform me, nor can I make it out myself." He says 
he takes no heed of the opinion of those who suppose 
them to have been the children of Saturn or Faunus. 
Pliny, he tells us, speaks of Satyrs, as certain animals in 
the Indian Mountains, of great swiftness, going on all- 
fours, but with a human aspect, and running upright. 
Furthermore, Pausanias mentions one Euphemus of Caria, 
who coming upon a cluster of " desert " islands in the 
extreme parts of the sea, and being forced by a tempest to 
alight on one of them called Satyras, found it inhabited by 
people of a red color, with tails not much inferior to those 
of horses. These gentlemen invaded the ships of their 
new acquaintance, and without saying a word, began help- 
ing themselves to what they liked. Finally, Pomponius 
Mela speaks of certain islands beyond Mount Atlas, in 
which lights were seen at night, and a great sound was 
heard of drums and cymbals and pipes, though nobody 
was to be seen by day ; and these islands were said to be 
inhabited by Satyrs. To which beareth testimony the 
famous Hanno the Carthaginian.* 

Boccaccio, in his treatise "De Montibus," appears to 
have transferred these islands to Mount Atlas itself; of 
which he says (dwelling upon the subject with his usual 
romantic fondness) that, " such a depth of silence is 
reported to prevail there by day, that none approach it 
without a certain horror, and a feeling of some divine 
presence ; but at night-time, like heaven, it is lit up 
with many lights, and resounds with the songs and 

* See all these authorities in Natalis Comes' " Mythologia," p. 304. 



158 THE SATYR OF MYTHOLOGY. 

cymbals, the pipes and whistling reeds of ^Egipans and 
Satyrs." * 

The same writer, speaking of the opinion that Satyrs 
were goat-footed ho7nunciones, or little men, tells the 
story of St. Anthony : " who searching through the deserts 
of the Thebais for the most holy eremite Paul, did behold 
one of them, and question him : the which made answer, 
that he was mortal ; and that he was one of the people, 
bordering thereabouts, whom the Gentiles led away by a 
vain error, did worship as Fauns and Satyrs." " Other 
authors," he says, " esteemed them to be men of the 
woods, and called them Incubi, or Ficarii (Fig-eaters)." 
We here see who had the merit of it when figs were 
stolen. 

Chaucer takes the Satyr for an incubus, probably from 
this passage of his favorite author. Speaking of the friar, 
whose office it was to go about blessing people's grounds 
and houses (which was the reason, he says, why there 
were no longer any fairies), he adds, in his pleasant man- 
ner : — 

" Women may now go safely up and doun : — 
In every bush, and under every tree, 
There is non other Incubus but he." 

Wife of Bath's Tale. 

But the most "particular fellow" on this subject is Phi- 
lostratus ; who, among the wild stories which he relates 
with such gravity of Apollonius the Tyanaean, has this, 
the wildest of them all, and, in his opinion the most 
weighty. As the account is amusing, we will extract 
nearly the whole of it : — 

"After visiting," says he, "the cataracts (of the Nile), 

* At the end of his " Genealogia Deorum." 



THE SATYR OF MYTHOLOGY. 1 59 

Apollonius and his companions stopped in a small village 
in Ethiopia, where, whilst they were at supper, they amused 
themselves with a variety of conversation, both grave and 
gay. On a sudden was heard a confused uproar, as if 
from the women of the village exhorting one another to 
seize and pursue. They called to the men for assistance, 
who immediately sallied forth, snatching up sticks and 
stones, with whatever other weapons they chanced to find. 
. . . All this hubbub arose from a Satyr having made his 
appearance, who for ten months past had infested the 
village. . . . The moment Apollonius perceived his friends 
were alarmed at this, he said, ' Don't be terrified. . . . 
There is but one remedy to be used in cases of such kind 
of insolence, and is what Midas had recourse to. He was 
himself of the race of Satyrs, as appeared plainly by his 
ears. A Satyr once invited himself to his house, on the 
ground of consanguinity, and whilst he was his guest, 
libelled his ears in a copy of verses, which he set to music, 
and played on his harp. Midas, who was instructed, I 
think, by his mother, learnt from her that if a Satyr was 
made drunk with wine and fell asleep, he recovered his 
senses and became quite a new creature. A fountain 
happening to be near his palace, he mixed it with wine, to 
which he sent the Satyr, who drank it till he was quite 
overcome with it. Now to show you that this is not all 
mere fable, let us go to the governor of the village, and if 
the inhabitants have any wine, let us make the Satyr drink, 
and I will be answerable for what happened in the case of 
the Satyr of Midas.' All were willing to try the experi- 
ment ; and immediately four Egyptian amphoras of wine 
were poured into the pond, in which the cattle of the 
village were accustomed to drink. Apollonius invited the 
Satyr to drink, and added, along with the invitation, some 



l6o THE SATYR OF MYTHOLOGY. 

private menaces, in case of refusal. The Satyr did not 
appear, nevertheless the wine sank, as if it was drank. 
When the pond was emptied, Apollonius said, ' Let us offer 
libations to the Satyr, who is now fast asleep.' After say- 
ing this, he carried the men of the village to the cave of 
the Nymphs, which was not more than the distance of a 
plethron from the hamlet, where, after showing them the 
Satyr asleep, he ordered them to give him no ill-usage, 
either by beating or abusing him : ' For,' said he, ' I will 
answer for his good behavior for the time to come.' This 
is the action of Apollonius, which, by Jupiter, I consider 
as what gave greatest lustre to his travels, and which was, 
in truth, their greatest feat. Any one who has perused 
the letter which he wrote to a dissipated young man, 
wherein he tells him he had tamed a Satyr in Ethiopia, 
must call to mind this story. Consequently, no doubt can 
now remain of the existence of Satyrs. . . . When I was 
myself in Lemnos, I remember one of my contemporaries, 
whose mother, they said, was visited by a Satyr, formed 
according to the traditional accounts we have of that race 
of beings. He wore a deerskin on his shoulders, which 
exactly fitted him, the forefeet of which, encircling his 
neck, were fastened to his breast. But of this I shall say 
no more, as I am sensible credit is due to experience, as 
well as to me." * 

It is clear, from all these authorities, that various cir- 
cumstances might have given rise to the idea of Satyrs. 
The Great Ape species alone, which, like the monkeys in 
Africa, might easily be supposed to be a race of men too 
idle to work, and holding their tongues to avoid it, would 



* " Life of Apollonius of Tyana," translated from the Greek of Philostratus, 
by the Rev. Edward Berwick, p. 348. 



THE SATYR OF MYTHOLOGY. l6l 

be sufficient to suggest the fancy to an imaginative people. 
The Satyr Islands of Pausanias are evidently islands fre- 
quented by apes, or rather baboons ; unless, indeed, we 
are to believe with Monboddo, that men once had tails ; 
which is hardly a greater distinction from some men with- 
out them, than a philosopher is from a savage. Orang 
Outang signifies a wild man ; and Linnaeus has called the 
Great Ape the Ape Satyr (Simia Satyrus). Again, there 
have been real wild men ; and a single one of these, such 
as Peter the Wild Boy, would people a country like Greece 
with Satyrs. 

But it is not necessary to recur to palpable beings for a 
poetical stock. A sound, a shadow, a look of something 
in the dark, was enough to make them ; and if this had 
not been found, they would still have been fancied. Satyrs, 
in an allegorical sense, are the animal spirits of the crea- 
tion, its exuberance, its natural health and vigor, its head- 
long tendency to reproduction. In a superstitious and 
popular point of view, they were the spirits of the woods, 
a branch of the universal family of genii and fairies. 
Finally, in the great world of poetry, they partake, on 
both these accounts, of whatever has been said or done 
for them, that remains interesting to the imagination ; 
and are still to be found there, immortal as their poets. 
As long as there is a mystery in the world, and men are 
unable to affirm what beings may not exist, so long poetry 
will have what existence it pleases, and the mind will have 
a corner in which to entertain them. Therefore, " the 
sage and serious Spenser " tells us wisely of 

" The wood-god's breed which must for ever last." 

In no part of the world of poetry were they ever more 
alive or lasting, than in the woods of his " Faerie Queene." 

ii 



1 62 THE SATYR OF MYTHOLOGY. 

You have, indeed, a stronger sense of them in his pages, 
than in the works of antiquity. The ancient poets appear 
to have been too close at hand with them. The familiarity, 
though of a religious sort, had in it something of contempt. 
Spenser is always remote, — in the uttermost parts of po- 
etry ; and thither shall he take us to meet them. Here they 
are, on a bright morning, in the thick of their glades. Una 
is in distress, and has cried out, so that her voice is heard 
throughout the woods. 

" A trooDe of Faunes and Satyres, far away 

Within the wood, were dancing in a rownd, 
Whiles old Sylvanus slept in shady arber sownd : 

Who when they heard that pitteous, strained voice, 
In haste forsooke their rurall merriment, 
And ran towards the far rebownded noyce, 
To weet what wight so loudly did lament. 
Unto the place they came incontinent : 
Whom when the raging Sarazin espyde, 
A rude, mishappen, monstrous rablement, 
Whose like he never saw, he durst not byde ; 
But got his ready steed, and fast away gan ryde. 

Such fearefull fitt assaid her trembling hart, 
Ne word to speake, ne joynt to move, she had. 
The salvage nation feele her secret smart, 
And read her sorrow in her count'nance sad ; 
Their frowning forheades, with rough homes yclad 
And rustick horror, all asyde doe lay ; 
And, gently grenning, shew a semblance glad 
To comfort her ; and, feare to put away, 
Their backward-bent knees teach her humbly to obay. 

The doubtfull damzell dare not yet committ 
Her single person to their barbarous truth ; 
But still twixt feare and hope amazd does sitt, 
Late learnd what harme to hasty truth ensu'th ; 
They in compassion of her tender youth 
And wonder of her beautie soverayne, 
Are wonne with pitty and unwonted ruth ; 



THE SATYR OF MYTHOLOGY. 1 63 

And, all prostrate upon the lowly playne, 
Doe kisse her feete, and fawne on her with count'nance fayne. 

Their harts she ghesseth by their humble guise, 
And yieldes her to extremitie of time : 
So from the ground she fearelesse doth arise, 
And walketh forth without suspect of crime : 
They, all as glad as birdes of joyous pryme, 
Thence lead her forth, about her dauncing round, 
Shouting, and singing all a shepheard's ryme ; 
And, with greene branches strowing all the ground, 
Do worship her as queene, with olive girlond cround. 

And all the way their merry pipes they sound, 
That all the woods with doubled eccho ring ; 
And with their horned feet doe weare the ground, 
Leaping like wanton kids in pleasant spring. 
So towards old Sylvanus her they bring ; 
Who, with the noyse awaked, commeth out 
To weet the cause, his weake steps governing 
And aged limbs on cypresse stadle stout ; 
And with an yvie twyne his waste is girt about. 

The wood-borne people fall before her flat, 
And worship her as goddesse of the wood ; 
And old Sylvanus self bethinkes not, what 
To think of wight so fayre ; but gazing stood 
In doubt to deeme her born of earthly brood. 

The wooddy nymphes, faire Hamadryades, 
Her to behold doe thether runne apace ; 
And all the troupe of light-foot Naiades 
Flocke all about to see her lovely face." 

Book I. canto 6. 

Spenser has a knight among his chivalry, who was the 
son of a Satyr by the wife of a country gentleman, one 
Therion (or Brute) by name, — a severe insinuation on 
the part of the gentle poet : — 

" A loose unruly swayne, 
Who had more joy to raunge the forrest wyde, 
And chase the salvage beast with busie payne, 
Then serve his ladie's love." 



164 THE SATYR OF MYTHOLOGY. 

Perhaps the poet intended a hint to the squires of his 
time. He tells us of another wife, who had a considerable 
acquaintance among the wood-gods. It is not so easy to 
relate her story ; but she would be a charming person by 
the time she was thirty, and make a delicate heart con- 
tent ! His account of her is certainly intended as a les- 
son to old gentlemen. 

" The gentle lady, loose at random lefte, 
The greene-wood long did walke, and wander wide 
At wilde adventure, like a forlorne wefte ; 
Till on a daye the Satyres her espide 
Straying alone withouten groome or guide : 
Her up they tooke, and with them home her ledd, 
With them as housewife ever to abide, 
To milk their goats, and make them cheese and bredd." 

She forgets her old husband Malbecco, who has just ar- 
rived at the spot where she lives, — 

" And eke Sir Paridell, all were he deare, 
Who from her went to seek another lott, 
And now by fortune was arrived here. 

Soone as the old man saw Sir Paridell, 

(who was the person that had taken his wife from him). 

He fainted, and was almost dead with feare, 
Ne word he had to speake, his griefe to tell, 
But to him louted low, and greeted goodly well ; 

And, after, asked him for Hellenore. 
' I take no keepe of her,' sayd Paridell, 
' She wonneth in the forest, there before. ' 

So forth he rode as his adventure fell." 

A great noise is afterwards heard in the woods, of bag- 
pipes and " shrieking hubbubs ; " the old man hides in a 
bush ; and after awhile 



THE SATYR OF MYTHOLOGY. 1 65 

1 The jolly Satyres full of fresh delight 
Came dauncing forth, and with them nimbly ledd 
Faire Hellenore, with girlonds all bespredd, 
Whom their May-lady they had newly made : 

She, proude of that new honour which they redd, 

And of their lovely fellowship full glade, 

Daunst lively, and Jierface did with a lawrell shade" 



What a sunny picture is in this line 



" The silly man, that in the thickett lay 
Saw all this goodly sport, and grieved sore ; 
Yet durst he not against it do or say, 
But did his hart with bitter thoughts engore, 
To see th' unkindness of his Hellenore. 
All day they daunced with great lustyhedd, 
And with their horned feet the greene grass wore ; 
The wiles their gotes upon the brouzes fedd, 
Till drouping Phcebus gan to hyde his golden hedd. 

Tho up they gan their merry pypes to trusse, 
And all their goodly heardes did gather rownd. ' ' 

The old gentleman creeps to his wife's bed's-head at night, 
and endeavors to persuade her to go away with him ; but 
she is deaf to all he can say ; so in the passion of his 
misery-, and supernatural strength of his very weakness, 
he runs away, — '"'runs with himself away" — till, under 
the most appalling circumstances, he undergoes a trans- 
formation into Jealousy itself! a poetical flight, the dar- 
ingness of which can only be equalled (and vindicated, as 
it is) by the mastery of its execution. See the passage ; 
which, though a half-allegory, is calculated to affect the 
feelings of the poetical reader, almost as much as Burley 
and his cavern in " Old Mortality " do readers in general. 
It is at the end of Canto X. book 3. 

Spenser has a story of " Foolish God Faunus," who 
comes on Diana when she is bathing ; for which he is put 



1 66 THE SATYR OF MYTHOLOGY. 

into a deerskin, and she and her nymphs hunt him through 
wood and dale. Fauns and Satyrs, it is to be observed, 
are represented as wise or foolish, according as the poet 
allegorizes the elements of a country life, and the reflec- 
tions, or clownish impulses, of sequestered people. The 
Faun, in particular, who was the more oracular of the two, 
might be supposed either to speak from his own knowl- 
edge, or to be merely the channel of a higher one, and so 
to partake of that reverend character of fatuity, which is 
ascribed in some countries to idiots. The Satyr was more 
conscious and petulant : he waited more especially upon 
Bacchus ; was loud and saucy ; may easily be supposed 
to have been noisiest and most abusive at the time of 
grapes ; and it is to him, we think, and him alone (what- 
ever learned distinctions have been made between satyri 
and saturce, or the fruit which he got together, and him 
who got them), that the origin of the word satire is to be 
traced ; that is to say, satire was such free and abusive 
speech, as the vintagers pelted people with, just as they 
might with the contents of their baskets. 

To make Satyr, therefore, clever or clownish, or both, just 
as it suits the writer's purpose, is in good keeping. To make 
him revengeful for not having his will, is equally good, as 
Tasso has done in the " Aminta." To make him old, and 
scorned by a young mistress, is warrantable, as Guarini 
has done in the " Pastor Fido ; " and even a touch of 
sentiment may not be refused him, if visited by a painful 
sense of the difference of his shape; which is an imita- 
tion of the beautiful Polyphemic invention of Theocritus, 
and was introduced into modern poetry by the precursor 
of those poets, the inventor of the sylvan drama " Bec- 
cari." But we cannot say so much for another great poet 
of ours, Fletcher, who, spoilt by his town breeding, and 



THE SATYR OF MYTHOLOGY. 1 67 

thinking he could not make out a case for chastity, and 
the admiration of it, but by carrying it to a pitch of the 
improbable, introduces into his " Faithful Shepherdess " a 
Satyr thoroughly divested of his nature, the most senti- 
mental and Platonical of lovers, and absolute guardian of 
what he exists only to oppose. The clipping of hedges 
into peacocks was nothing to this. It was like changing 
warmth into cold, and taking the fertility out of the earth. 
Elegance was another affair. The rudest things natural 
contain a principle of that. You may show even a Satyr in 
his graces, as you may a goat in a graceful attitude, or the 
turns and blossoms of a thorn. But to make the shaggy 
and impetuous wood-god, with his veins full of the sap of 
the vine, a polished and retiring lover, all for the meta- 
physics of the passion, and bowing and backing himself 
out of doors like a " sweet signior," was to strike barren- 
ness into the spring, and make the " swift and fiery sun," 
which the poet so finely speaks of, halt and become a thing 
deliberate. Pan, at the sight, should have cut off his uni- 
versal beard. Certainly, the Satyr ought to have clipped 
his coat, and withdrawn into the urbanities of a suit of 
clothes. He should have " walked gowned." 

However, there is a ruddy and rough side of the apple 
still left ; and with this we proceed to indulge ourselves, 
cutting away the rest. Fletcher is a true poet, and could 
not speak of woods and wood-gods without finding means' 
to give us a proper taste of them. His Satyr comes in 
well. 

ENTER A SATYR WITH A BASKET OF FRUIT. 

Satyr. Through yon same bending plain, 

That flings his arms down to the main, 
And through these thick woods have I run, 
Whose bottom never kiss'd the sun 



1 68 THE SATYR OF MYTHOLOGY. 

Since the lusty spring began ; 
All to please my master Pan 
Have I trotted without rest 
To get him fruit ; for at a feast 
He entertains, this coming night, 
His paramour, the Syrinx bright. 

Here be grapes, whose lusty blood 
Is the learned poet's good, 
Sweeter yet did never crown 
The head of Bacchus ; nuts more brown 
Than the squirrel's teeth, that crack them ; 
Deign, oh, fairest fair, to take them. 
For these, black- eyed Dry ope 
Hath oftentimes commanded me 
With my clasped knee to climb : 
See how well the lusty time 
Hath deck'd their rising cheeks in red, 
Such as on your lips is spread. 
Here be berries for a queen ; 
Some be red, some be green." 

(How much better than if he had said " some be red and 
some be green." He is like a great boy, poking over the 
basket, and pointing out the finest things in it with rustic 
fervor.) 

" These are of that luscious meat, 
The great god Pan himself doth eat : 
All these, and what the woods can yield, 
The hanging mountain or the field, 
I freely offer ; and ere long 
Will bring you more, more sweet and strong : 
Till when humbly leave I take, 
Lest the great Pan do awake, 
That sleeping lies in a deep glade, 
Under a broad beech's shade. 
I must go, I must run, 
Swifter than the fiery sun." 

In this passage, Mr. Seward, in his edition of " Beaumont 
and Fletcher," has a note containing an extract from The- 



THE SATYR OF MYTHOLOGY. 1 69 

ocritus, so happily rendered that, as it suits our purpose, 
we will repeat it. It is seldom that a writer not pro- 
fessedly a poet, and an eminent one too, has struck forth 
so masterly a bit of translation. The verb in the last line 
even surpasses the original. We will put the Greek first, 
both in justice to it, and because (to own a whim of ours) 
the glimmering and thorny look of the Greek characters 
gives, in our^eyes, something of a boskiness to one's 
pages. A page of a Greek pastoral is the next thing with 
us to a wood-side, or a landscape of Gasper Poussin : — 

Of dsfiLC, w iroifiav. to [ieoaii[3pivov , ov -&eyxg a/ifuv 
Xvptadev top Uava dedouiaiieg' 77 yap an' aypaq 
Tavtfta KEKfiaKug afinaverac, ev~i ye niicpog, 
Kai ol aec dpi/ieia x°^ a kqti pivc KadrjTai. 

" Shepherd, forbear: no song at noon's dread hour; 
Tir'd with the chase, Pan sleeps in yonder bower ; 
Churlish he is ; and, stirr'd in his repose, 
The snappish choler quivers on his nose." 

We must quote the Satyr's concluding speech, though it 
is not so much in character. The poet might have de- 
fended his straying in the air, but it must have been upon 
very abstract and ethereal grounds, foreign to the substan- 
tial part which he plays in this drama ; and the fine allu- 
sion to Orpheus' lute is equally learned and out of its 
place. However, the whole passage is so beautiful, that 
we cannot help repeating it. Our Platonical friend is 
taking leave of the lady : — 

" Satyr. Thou divinest, fairest, brightest, 

Thou most pow'rful maid, and whitest, 
Thou most virtuous and most blessed, 
Eyes of stars, and golden tressed 
Like Apollo ! tell me, sweetest, 
What new service now is meetest 



I70 THE NYMPHS OF ANTIQUITY. 

For the Satyr? Shall I stray 

In the middle air, and stay 

The sailing rack, or nimbly take 

Hold by the moon, and gently make 

Suit to the pale queen of night 

For a beam to give thee light ? 

Shall I dive into the sea, 

And bring thee coral, making way 

Through the rising waves, that fall 

In snowy fleeces ? Dearest, shall 

I catch thee wanton fawns, or flies, 

Whose woven wings the summer dyes 

Of many colours ? Get thee fruit ? 

Or steal from heav'n old Orpheus' lute ! " 

What a relic ! The lute of Orpheus ! and laid up in 
some corner of heaven ! Doubtless in the thick of one 
of its grassiest nooks of asphodel ; and the winds play 
upon it, of evenings, to the ear of Proserpine when she 
visits her mother, — giving her trembling memories to 
carry back to Eurydice. 




THE NYMPHS OF ANTIQUITY AND OF 
THE POETS. 

i| HE Nymphs of antiquity are the gentle powers 
of the earth, and therefore figured under the 
shape of beautiful females. A large or vio- 
lent river had a god to it : — the nymph is 
ever gentle and sweet. The word signifies 
a marriageable female. It is traced to a word signifying 
moisture ; and all the Nymphs, as a body, are said to have 
derived their origin from Neptune, or water — the first 
principle of all things. 

Every fountain, every wood, many a single tree, had a 
nymph to it. An ancient could not stir out of doors, if he 



THE NYMPHS OF ANTIQUITY. 1^1 

was religious, without being conscious that he was sur- 
rounded with things supernatural ; and thus his religion, 
though full of beautiful forms, was a different thing to 
him from what it is to us. The nymph was lovely and be- 
neficent ; she took care of her brook or her grove for the 
agriculturist, and he humbly assisted her in his turn and 
presented her with flowers ; and yet a sight of her was 
supposed to occasion a particular species of madness, 
thence called Nympholepsy. A living writer,* who has a 
young heart, has founded a pastoral drama upon it. "We 
are informed, by a native of the Ionian Isles,f that to this 
day a peasant there cannot be persuaded to venture out of 
his cottage at noonday during the month of July, on ac- 
count of the fairies whom he calls Aneraides, i.e., Nereids. 
The truth is, that in this instance, as in that of the modern 
fairies, he who thought he beheld any thing supernatural 
was in a fair way of being delirious beforehand. 

It was otherwise with the great or " initiated." Poets 
talked of seeing the nymphs, and the gods too, without 
any harm, not excepting Bacchus, the most awful vision 
of them all ; % and multitudes of heroes were descended 
and received favors from enamoured Dryads and Naiads. 
The old poets have a favorite phrase to denote these con- 
descending amours. § The use of the fiction was obvious ; 
nor was it confined to the maternal side of ancient heraldry. 
There is a story of a girl, who, having been honored with 



* See " Amarynthus, or the Nympholept." By Mr. Horace Smith. 

t Ugo Foscolo, in his criticism in the " Quarterly Review," upon the 
" Narrative and Romantic Poems of the Italians," vol. 21, p. 514. 

% Cospetto di Bacco (Face of Bacchus) is still an oath among the Italians. 

§ In the Homeric account of Venus's amours with Anchises, the goddess 
enjoins the hero, iri case he is asked questions about their child, to say that a 
nymph was his mother ; but on no account was he to dare to say it was Venus. 



172 THE NYMPHS OF ANTIQUITY. 

the attentions of the river Scamander, observed him one 
day standing in a crowd at a public festival ; upon which 
the divinity was taken up and carried before the magis- 
trate. 

We shall give a list of the principal nymphs and their 
names ; partly, because the genuine reader, who does not 
happen to be learned, will be glad of it, and partly on ac- 
count of the beauty of the nomenclature. These were 
the Nereids, or nymphs of the sea, daughters of Nereus : 
Oreads, or nymphs of the mountains ; Naiads, or nymphs 
of the streams ; Dryads, or nymphs of the woods ; and 
Hamadryads, or nymphs of trees by themselves ; nymphs 
who were born and died each with her particular tree. 

Those were the principal ; but we also hear of the Lim- 
nads or Limniads, nymphs of the lakes ; Potamides, or 
nymphs of the rivers ; Ephydriads, or nymphs of the foun- 
tains ; Napeae, nymphs of the woody glens and meadows ; 
and Meliae, nymphs of the honey-making. 

But these specific appellations, we suppose, were given 
at will. There are furthermore the Bacchantes, or nymphs 
of Bacchus ; the Hesperides, or daughters of Hesperus, 

" Who sing about the Golden Tree, " 

the nymphs who waited upon the deities in general ; the 
celestial Sirens, who sat upon the spheres ; and some 
reckon among them, the Graces and the Muses. 

Aristophanes, in one of his plays, has introduced a 
chorus of clouds ; and, though the singers appear to be 
the clouds themselves and not deities conducting them, it 
seems remarkable that an incarnation of those fair and 
benignant travellers through heaven escaped the fertile 
imagination of the Greeks. 

All these nymphs passed a happy and graceful life of 



THE NYMPHS OF ANTIQUITY. 1 73 

mingled duty and pleasure, and evinced their benignity 
to mankind after their respective fashions : — the Nereids 
in assisting men at sea, and allaying the billows ; the 
Oreads in assisting hunters ; the Naiads or Dryads in 
taking care of the streams and woods ; and so on of the 
rest. They danced and bathed, and made love and played 
among the trees, and sat tying up their hair by the waters. 
As they were kind, they expected kindness, and were 
grateful for it. If their worshippers represented them as 
severe in their resentments, it was in punishment of what 
was thought impious ; and there is always some incon- 
sistency in those personifications of the natural reaction 
of error. 

Such was the life led by the nymphs of old, and such is 
the one they lead still, even in quarters where they would 
not be expected ; so native are they to the regions of 
poetry, that they will divide them with other mythologies 
rather than remove. It is as well to keep the latter dis- 
tinct, though our old poets, in the interior of their philos- 
ophy, would have had much to say for uniting them. At 
all events, there they are all together in the pages of 
Spenser, as we shall presently see. Even Milton contrived 
not to let them go ; and Camoens, like a right sailor, finds 
them in every port. 

We proceed to the different classes separately, and to 
touch upon what the poets have said of them. And, in 
the first place, as personal matters are as important to 
them as to other ladies, and the sea-nymphs got Neptune 
to send a whale against Queen Cassiopeia for pretending 
to be their equal in beauty, it is to be observed, as a cau- 
tion to men at sea, that nobody must speak ill of green 
hair — such being the tresses of the Nereids. For our part, 
who are great readers of the poets, we make no scruple to 



174 THE NYMPHS OF ANTIQUITY. 

say that we can fancy green mossy locks well enough, 
provided there is a sweet face under them. The painters 
have seldom ventured upon these anomalies ; but the poets, 
whose especial business it is to have an universal sym- 
pathy, can fancy the sea-nymphs with their verdant locks, 
and even in the midst of their faint-smelling and storm- 
echoing bowers, and love them no less. Good offices and 
a robust power of enjoyment make the Nereid beautiful. 
She grapples with the waves and flings aside her hair from 
her soused cheeks ; and the poet is willing to be a Triton 
for her sake. The most beautiful figure ever made by the 
nymphs as a body, is by these very sisters, in the Prome- 
theus of yEschylus, where they come to console the stern 
demi-god in his sufferings. But as the scene is rather 
characteristic of them as cordial and pious females, than 
creatures of their particular class, it is here (with great 
unwillingness) omitted. A late admirable writer thought 
his contemporaries defective in imagination for not making 
the nymphs partake thoroughly of the nature of the ele- 
ment they lived in. He would have had a Dryad, for 
instance, as rugged and fantastic in her aspect as an old 
oak-tree, and divested of all human beauty. The ancients 
did not go so far as this. Beauty, in a human shape, was 
a sine qud non with those cultivators of physical grace, in 
their most supernatural fancies ; and the world have ap- 
proved their taste, and retained the charming population 
with which they filled the woods and waters ; but the poet, 
whenever he chooses, can still know how to make a " dif- 
ference discreet." The Nereids lived in grottos on the 
sea-shore, as well as in bowers under water. They were 
fond of feeding the Halcyon ; and sported and revelled, 
says the old poet, like so many joyous fish about the 
chariot of the sea-god. We are to suppose them diving 



THE NYMPHS OF ANTIQUITY. 1 75 

underneath it from one another, and careering about it 
as it ran ; splashing each other and their lovers with the 
sunny waters. Ben Jonson has painted them and their 
father in a jovial line : — 

" Old Nereus and his fifty girls." 

Homer, Hesiod, and Spenser have given lists of their 
names. The list of the English poet seems the best, 
because he has added descriptive epithets ; — but these 
were unnecessary in the Greek, the names themselves 
being descriptions. This reconciles us to the dry look of 
the lists in the Greek poet, and explains the apparent 
arbitrariness of those in the English one ; though even 
if the epithets of the latter had not been translations, or 
taken from other epithets bestowed upon them by his au- 
thorities, they would have had a good effect. They give 
a distinction to the individuals, — a character, as they pass 
by, to their faces and bearing. 

" Swift Proto, mild Eucrate, Thetis faire, 
Soft Spio, sweet Eudore, Sao sad, 
Light Doto, wanton Glance, and Galene glad : 
White-handed Eunica, proud Dynamene, 
Joyous Thalia, goodly Amphitrite, 
Lovely Pasithee, kinde Eulimene, 
Light-foote Cymothoe, and sweet Melite ; 
Fairest Pherusa, Phao lilly white," &c. 

Among the rest are " milke-white Galathasa, large Lisian- 
assa, stout Autonoe, — 

" And, seeming still to smile, Glauconome ; 
Fresh Alimeda, deckt with girlond greene ; 
Hyponoe, with salt-bedewed wrests ; 
Laomedia, like the christall sheene ; 
Liagore, much praised for wise behests ; 
And Psamathe for her brode snowy brests." 

The intellectual and moral epithets do not seem so 



I76 THE NYMPHS OF ANTIQUITY. 

natural as the material ones. The old fathers of the sea 
are the philosophers of those " watery shades." * The 
nymphs are the dancing billows. 

In the hymn to Venus, above quoted, which is attributed 
to Homer, the mountain Hamadryads are represented as 
contending with the gods for the prize of dancing : — 

" Nymphs that haunt the height 
Of hills, and breasts have of most deep receipt." 

Chapman's Translation. 

The favorite Greek beauty (deep-bosom'd) of which our 
reverend old poet here contrives to express so profound a 
sense by unloosening the compound epithet, was not in 
the way of their dancing, any more than the bosoms of 
the gypsies. 

" The light Sileni mix in love with these, 
And, of all spies the prince, Argicides." 

Their lives have the same date with those 

" Of odorous, fir- trees and high-foreheaded oaks ; " 

but their decease is gently managed ; unless, indeed, we 
are to fancy them partaking gradually of the decay ; which 
is not likely, for the ancients never tell us of decrepid 
nymphs. 

" The fair trees still before the fair nymphs die ; 
The bole about them grows corrupt and dry : " 

and not till the boughs are fallen, do the lingering tenants 

" Leave the lovely light." 

One of the speakers in Plutarch's essay on the " Ces- 

* The God of the sea, 
Sophist and sage, from no Athenian grove, 
But cogitation in his watery shades." 

Hyperion, Book ii. 



THE NYMPHS OF ANTIQUITY. 1 77 

sation of Oracles, 1 ' has undertaken to compute the life of 
a nymph ; which, by a process that would have been more 
satisfactory to Sir Kenelm Digby than to an oak-insur- 
ance office, he reckons at 9720 years. It is to be consid- 
ered, however, as we have just noticed, that they looked 
young to the last. Spenser is the only poet that has ven- 
tured to speak of an " old nymph." He says that Proteus 
had one to keep his bower clean. 

" There was his wonne ; ne living wight was seene, 
Save one old nymph, hight Panope, to keepe it cleane." 

This is one of the liberties which he takes sometimes, 
especially when his rhyme is burnt out, and he seems 
between sleep and waking. His Panope is very different 
from Milton's : — 

" The air was calm, and on the level brine 
Sleek Panope with all hef sisters play'd." 

But these vagaries of Spenser do not hinder him from 
being a poet as elegant as he is great. There is to be 
found in them even a germ of the old epic impartiality. 
Indeed, none but a great poet, with a childlike simplicity, 
could venture upon them. We smile, but retain our re- 
spect ; and are prepared to resume all our admiration for 
the next thing he utters. 

In the Homeric hymn to Pan, for instance, the moun- 
tain-nymphs are described beautifully, as joining in with 
their songs when they hear the pipe of the sylvan god. 
Yet we see them to most advantage in the works of the 
great painters, and of Spenser himself. Poussin or Raph- 
ael never painted a set of nymphs more distinctly than 
our poet has done in his description of a bath of Diana, — 
a match for Titian's. The natural action of Diana, gath- 



178 THE NYMPHS OF ANTIQUITY. 

ering her drapery against her bosom, seems copied from 
some painting or piece of sculpture, — 

Soon, her garments loose 
Upgath'ring, in her bosom she comprized. 
Well as she might, and to the goddesse rose. 
Whiles all her nymphes did like a garland her enclose. 

And the enclosure of her by her nymphs is from Ovid : 
but not the beautiful simile of the garland, nor the relish 
with which every word comes from the poet's pencil. We 
cannot pass by a couplet in the Latin poet without no- 
ticing it : — 

Fons sonat a dextra, tenui perlucidus imda, 
Margine gramineo patulos incinctus hiatus. 

Metam. Lib. iii., v. 161. 

which has been well turned by Sandys : — 

A bubbling spring, with streams as clear as glass 
Ran chiding by, inlaid with matted grass. 

In Ovid are the names of some of these Oreads. They 
are remarkable for their fairy-like appearance in English, 
and for being all derived from moisture ; which would 
lead us to suppose that the idea of nymphs dancing on the 
mountains was suggested by the leaping of springs and 
torrents. The names are Crocale, Nephele, Phiale, Hyale, 
Psecas, and Rhanis ; that is to say, Pebble, Cloud, Phial, 
Glassy, Dew-drop, and Rain. Pebble is no exception. 
The philosophy that derived every thing from water, was 
not likely to think sand and gravel the farthest off from 
their original. There is reason to suppose that the 
ancients took all clear-looking stones for a petrifaction of 
water. When we are told, indeed, that " this element is 
found in the driest of solid bodies, whatever be their de- 
scription," and that, " a piece of hartshorn kept for forty 
years, and thereby become as hard and dry as metal (so 



THE NYMPHS OF ANTIQUITY. 1 79 

that if struck against a flint it would give sparks of fire), 
upon being distilled, was found to yield an eighth part of 
its weight in water," we begin to think that, in this, as in 
so many other instances, the ancient philosophers antici- 
pated the discoveries of the moderns, and that experiment 
only establishes the profundity of their guesses. It is 
probable that Akenside has something to this purpose in 
his hymn to the Naiads ; but, as we have not the poem 
by us, and have as cold a recollection of it as of a morn- 
ing in November, or one of old Panope's washing days, we 
return to our sunnier haunt. According to the ancients, 
the Oreads invented honey ; the nymph Melissa, who dis- 
covered it, giving her name to the bee. And they are said 
to have been the first suggestors of the impropriety of 
eating flesh, making use of this new and sweet argument 
of honey, to turn mankind from those evil courses of the 
table. 

The prettiest story told of the Naiads is their pulling 
Hylas into the water ; and Theocritus has related it in the 
most beautiful manner. The Argonauts, he tells us, had 
landed on the shores of the Propontis to sup. They busied 
themselves with their preparations ; and Hylas was de- 
spatched to fetch water for Alcides and Telamon, who were 
table-companions. The blooming boy, accordingly, took 
his way with his jug. See the passage in the thirteenth 
Idyl, v. 39, beginning 

Taxa de X9 avav evoqcav. 

The English reader must be content with a version : — 

And straight he was aware 
Of water in a hollow place, low down, 
Where the thick sward shone with blue celandine, 
And bright green maiden-hair, still dry in dew, 
And parsley rich. And at that hour it chanced 



l8o THE NYMPHS OF ANTIQUITY. 

The nymphs unseen were dancing in the fount, — 
The sleepless nymphs, reverenced of housing men ; — 
Winning Eunica ; Malis, apple-cheek'd ; 
And, like a night-bedewed rose, Nychea. 

Down stepp'd the boy, in haste to give his urn 

Its fill, and push'd it in the fount ; when lo ! 

Fair hands were on him — fair, and very fast ; 

For all the gentle souls that haunted there 

Were wrapt in love's sweet gathering tow'rds the boy ; 

And so he dropp'd within the darksome well, — 

Dropp'd like a star, that, on a summer eve, 

Slides in ethereal beauty to the sea. 

These nymphs, however, are rather the Ephydriads than 
the Naiads ; that is to say, nymphs of the fountain or well- 
spring, and not of the river. Shakespeare has painted 
the faces of the Naiads in a very pleasing manner : — 

"You nymphs call'd Naiads of the wandering brooks, 
With your sedge crowns, and ever harmless looks : " 

but these were English Naiads, always gliding calmly 
through the meadows. 

The Greek and Italian Naiads were equally benignant 
at heart, but, having torrents and dry summers to think 
of, their look was now and then a little more troubled. 
Virgil's epithet, " the white Naiad," eminently belongs to 
this order of nymphs, the silver body of whose stream is 
seen glistening in the landscape ; and he has made a 
pretty contrast of color in the flowers he has given her 
to pluck. 

"Tibi Candida Nais 
Pallentes violas et summa papavera carpens." 

The white Naiad 
Pale violets plucks for thee, and tops of poppies. 

The Nymph Arethusa was originally an Oread, whom 
Diana changed into a stream to help her to fly from the 



THE NYMPHS OF ANTIQUITY. l8l 

river-god Alpheus. Alpheus, nothing hindered, turned the 
course of his river to pursue her. The nymph prayed 
again, and was conveyed under ground, but the god was 
still after her. She was hurried even under the sea, but 
he still pursued ; when she rose again in the island of 
Sicily for breath, there he was beside her. We are left to 
suppose that his pertinacity prevailed ; for whatever pres- 
ent was bestowed upon his waters in Arcady is said to 
have made its appearance in the Sicilian fountain. Among 
all the names to be found in poetry, perhaps there is not a 
more beautiful one than this of Arethusa ; and it turns 
well into English. Hear Milton, who speaking of Alpheus 
says that he 

" Stole under seas to meet his Arethuse." 

The modern Sicilian name is Retusa, which, pronounced 
in the soft manner of the Italians, and with something of 
z in the s (as we read the other), is not destitute of the 
beauty of the original.* 

We were admiring, at this part of our article, that the 
ancients, among the less philosophical companions of their 
mythology, had not chosen sometimes to mingle the two 
species of Naiads and Dryads, considering that trees have 
so much to do with moisture, and with the origin of 
streams. Our attention was drawn at the same moment 
to a passage in Ovid ; where he speaks of the Nymph 
Syrinx, i Naiad, as being " among the Hamadryads of 
Arcady." Perhaps he only meant to say, that she lived 
among them, as a Naiad, for the reason just mentioned, 



* In Italy, among its strange union of things, ancient and modern, we saw 
one day upon a mantel-piece a card of a Marquis de Rettise. This was the 
designation, Frenchified, of the district in Sicily including the ancient fountain. 
Here was the Marquis of Arethusa 1 



l82 THE NYMPHS OF ANTIQUITY. 

might be supposed to do ; but the turn of the words and 
custom of the language both seem in favor of the other 
supposition. Sandys, however, clearly takes the passage 
in the former sense. Ovid says, " On the cold mountains 
of Arcady, and among the Arcadian Hamadryads, there 
was a Naiad," and according to his translator, she only 
lived amongst them. " Then thus the god " (Mercury who 
is singing and telling stories to Argus to get him to 
sleep) — 

" Then thus the god his charmed ears inclines : 
Amongst the Hamadryad Nonacrines, 
On cold Arcadian hills, for beauty famed, 
A Nais dwelt." * 

The Dryads and Hamadryads are often confounded with 
one another ; nor is the difference between them, when it is 
made, always justly discerned. Menage tells of somebody, 
who, on being asked by a lady what the difference was 
between a Dryad and a Hamadryad, said, the same as be- 
tween an archbishop and a bishop. If every solitary tree 
had its Hamadryad, the woodman could not have ap- 
proached it without impiety. The truth is, that as old 
trees of this kind became sanctified, either by the mere 
desire of keeping them alive, or by some votive circum- 
stances attached to them as objects of religion, they were 
gifted with the care of a nymph. She was, in consequence, 
to die when they did ; and the sacrilegious peasant, while 
he was heaving his axe at the old trunk, would have to 
strike at the fair limbs which it enclosed. 

A story has come down to us in Apollonius of the 
vengeance that overtook criminals of this sort, and of 



"Tarn deus, Arcadia gelidis in montinis," inquit, 
" Inter Hamadryades celeberrima Nonacrinas 
Nais una fuit." 



THE NYMPHS OF ANTIQUITY. 1 83 

dreadful denouncements against their posterity ; which, 
however, were not inexpiable by a little worship and 
sacrifice. But the gratitude of the nymph, when her tree 
was preserved from destruction, and the preserver turned 
out otherwise not insensible, was boundless. Charon of 
Lampsacus, an old commentator upon the writer just 
mentioned, tells us that, when Areas the son of Calisto was 
hunting, he met a nymph in the woods, who requested his 
aid for an old oak-tree on the banks of a river, which the 
river was undermining. He rescued it from its threat- 
ened fate, and out of gratitude the nymph bore him two 
children. In another story, related by the same author, 
the hero was not so lucky. This person, whose name was 
Rhcecus, was applied to on a similar account ; and having 
evinced a like humanity, showed a due taste in the first 
instance, when requested to ask his reward. The nymph 
promised to meet him ; adding, that she would send a bee 
to let him know the time. The bee came accordingly, 
but Rhcecus, who was occupied with a game of dice, was 
impatient at being interrupted, and hurt the wings of the 
little messenger in brushing him away. The nymph, 
offended at this proof of the superficial nature of his 
feelings, not only would have nothing to say to him, but 
deprived him of the use of his limbs.* 

It remains only to speak of the Bacchantes, the Hes- 
perides, and certain solitary nymphs who lived apart, and 



* We are obliged, as the historian of these our fictitious truths, to relate 
them in all their circumstances ; otherwise the lady might have stopped short 
cf giving Rhcecus a palsy. It is a remarkable instance of the natural dulness 
of Natalis Comes (for which Scaliger gives him a knock), that in relating this 
story of Rhcecus and the Nymph, he leaves off with her sending him the bee. 
[The story of the Hamadryad is told very minutely and beautifully in the 
" Indicator," and is the subject of one of Landor's " Hellenics." — Ed.] 



184 THE NYMPHS OF ANTIQUITY. 

held a state like goddesses. The rest are not sufficiently 
identified with the class, or are too little distinguished 
from the former varieties, to need particular mention. 

The Bacchantes, or Nymphs of Bacchus, are of a very 
different character from their sisters. They are equally 
remarkable for the turbulence of their movements, and the 
rigidness of their chastity ; though as to the latter, " Juve- 
nal,'' says an Italian Mythology, " is of another opinion ; " * 
and Lycophron gives the title of Bacchantes to dissolute 
women. How the followers of the god of wine came to be 
thought so austere we know not. The delicacy of the moral, 
if it existed, has escaped us. If it were meant to insinuate 
that a drunken female repelled every thing amatory by the 
force of disgust, no case could be clearer : but ancient 
mythology abounds with the loves of wood-gods for these 
ladies, who on the other hand struggled plentifully to 
resist them. According to the authority just mentioned, 
Nonnus, a Greek author of the fifth century, who wrote a 
poem on Bacchus as big as a tun, represents them as so 
jealous of their virgin honor, that they went to bed with a 
live serpent round their waists, to guard against surprise. 
The perplexity in this matter originated, perhaps, in the 
chastity that was expected from the ordained priestesses 
of Bacchus, who are often confounded with his nymphs. 
But so little had the nature of the latter to do with chas- 
tity, that those who undertook to represent them, gave rise 
to the greatest scandal that ever took place in the heathen 
world, and such as the Romans were obliged to suppress 
by a regular state interference. 

The Hesperides, so called because they were the grand- 
daughters (Milton says the daughters) of Hesperus, and 

* Dizionario d'ogni Mrtologia. art. "Baccanti." 



THE NYMPHS OF ANTIQUITY. 1 85 

otherwise Atlantides, or daughters of Atlas, were three 
nymphs, who were commissioned, in company with a 
dragon, to guard the tree from which Juno produced the 
golden apples that she gave to Jupiter on her marriage 
day. The nymphs sang, and the dragon never slept ; and 
so, in the melancholy beauty of that charm, the tree ever 
stood secure, and the apples " hung amiable." It was one. 
of the labors of Hercules to undo this custody, and carry 
away the apples. The nymphs could only weep, while he 
killed the dragon. Various interpretations have been 
given to this story. Some say the apples meant sheep, 
from a word which signifies both ; and that the sheep 
were called golden, because they were beautiful ; the com- 
mon metaphorical sense of that epithet among the ancients. 
Others discover in it an allegory on one of the signs 
of the Zodiac, on the sin of avarice, the discovery of a 
gold mine, &c. ; but we shall be forgetting the spirit of 
our subject for the letter. Milton, in his " Comus," has 
touched upon the gardens of Hesperus, but not in his 
happiest manner. There is something in it too finical 
and perfumed. We have quoted the best lines when 
making out our list of the nymphs. Lucan makes you 
feel the massiveness of the golden boughs, and has touched 
beautifully on the rest. 

Fuit aurea silva, 
Divitiis graves et fulvo germine rami ; 
Virgineusque chorus, nitidi custodia luci, 
Et nunquam somno damnatus lumina serpens. * 

A golden grove, it was, in a rich glade, 
Heavy with fruit that struck a burnish'd shade ; 
A virgin choir the sacred treasure kept, 
And a sad serpent's eyes, that never slept. 

* Quoted by Warton in his notes to Milton. 



1 86 THE NYMPHS OF ANTIQUITY. 

Mention of the Hesperides is made in the Argonautics 
of Apollonius, where the voyagers come upon the golden 
garden after Hercules had rifled it. The nymphs are 
observed lamenting over the slain dragon, but vanish at 
sight of the intruders. The latter, however, Orpheus 
being their spokesman, venture to implore them for water ; 
and the nymphs, with the usual good-nature of their race, 
indulge the petition. They become visible, each in a tree, 
and tell them that the dreadful stranger, who had been 
there, had stamped in a rage of thirst on the ground, and 
struck up a fountain. 

For accounts of the manners and conversation of 
nymphs the curious reader may consult the sixth book of 
Spenser, Drayton's " Muses' Elysium," the " Arcadia " of 
Sannazaro, Cintio Giraldi's sylvan drama, entitled " Egle," 
and the " Endymion " of Keats ; to which may be added the 
bass-relief of ancient sculpture, and the works of the great 
painters. (Egle brightness) is a celebrated name in nymph- 
ology ; so is Galatea (milky) and QEnone (winy). Cydippe 
(Proud horse) seems rather the name of a lady-centaur ; 
but the Greeks were singularly fond of names compounded 
from horses. Best-horse, and Golden-horse, and Haste- 
horse were among their philosophers (Aristippus, Chry- 
sippus, and Speusippus) ; and Horse-mistress and Horse- 
tamer, among their ladies (Hipparchia and Hippodamia) 
Of solitary nymphs, or rather such as lived apart, some- 
times in state like goddesses, with nymphs of their own, 
the most celebrated are Circe, Calypso, and Egeria. 
The most beautiful mention of Egeria (the Watchful f) is 
in Milton's Latin poems, at least to the best of our recol- 
lection. See his lines addressed to Salsilli, a Roman 
poet, on his sickness. We regret we have not time to 
indulge ourselves in attempting a version of the pas- 



THE NYMPHS OF ANTIQUITY. 1 87 

sage.* Circe {the Encircler) is clearly the original of the 
modern enchantress. 

" Pale, wan, 
And tyrannizing was the lady's look," 

says Keats, describing her. (How beautiful !) Calypso 
(the Secret, or Lying-hid) though no magician, was a 
nobler enchantress after her fashion, as we see in Homer. 
Boccaccio, speaking of Circe, Calisto, and Clymene, says, 
that nymphs of their distinguished class were no other 
than young ladies, delicately brought up, and living in 
retirement, — " thalamorum colentes umbras," — cultiva- 
tors of their boudoirs. " Impressions," he says, " of every 
sort, were easily made on creatures of this tender sort, as 
on things allied to the element of water ; whereas, rustic 
women laboring out of doors, and exposed to the sun, 



* From Cowper's translation of the poem, we extract the passage referred 
to: — 

" Health, Hebe's sister, sent us from the skies, 
And thou, Apollo, whom all sickness flies, 
Pythius, or Paean, or what name divine 
Soe'er thou choose, haste, heal a priest of thine ! 
Ye groves of Faunus, and ye hills that melt 
With vinous dews, where meek Evander dwelt ! 
If aught salubrious in your confines grow, 
Strive which shall soonest heal your poet's woe, 
That, render'd to the Muse he loves, again 
He may enchant the meadows with his strain. 
Numa, reclined in everlasting ease 
Amid the shade of dark embowering trees, 
Viewing with eyes of unabated fire 
His loved ^Egeria, shall that strain admire : 
So soothed, the tumid Tiber shall revere 
The tombs of kings, nor desolate the year, 
Shall curb his waters with a friendly rein, 
And guide them harmless, till they meet the main." — Ed. 



l88 SIRENS AND MERMAIDS. 

became "hispid " and case-hardened, and therefore deserv- 
edly lost the name of nymphs.* 




THE SIRENS AND MERMAIDS OF THE 
POETS. 

JEAVING yEaca on their homeward voy- 
age," says Mr. Keightley, in his excellent 
" Mythology," " Odysseus (Ulysses) and his 
companions came first to the islands of the 
Sirens. These were two maidens, who sat 
in a mead close to the sea, and with their melodious voices 
so charmed those who were sailing by that they forgot 
home, and every thing relating to it, and abode there till 
their bones lay whitening on the strand. By the direc- 
tions of Circe, Odysseus stopped the ears of his companions 
with wax, and had himself tied to the mast ; and thus he 
was the only person who heard the song of the Sirens, 
and escaped. 

" Hesiod f describes the mead of the Sirens as bloom^ 
ing with flowers, and says that their voice stilled the winds. 
Their names were said to be Aglaiophe*me (Clear-voice), 
and Thelxiepeia (Magic-speech). It was feigned that they 
threw themselves into the sea with vexation at the escape 
of Odysseus ; but the author of the " Orphic Argonautics " 
places them on a rock near the shore of ^Etna, and makes 
the song of Orpheus end their enchantment, and cause 
them to fling themselves into the sea. 



* Sunt praeterea, &c. — " Genealogia Deorum," lib. vii. cap. 14. 
t Frag, xxvii. 



SIRENS AXD MERMAIDS. 1 89 

" It was afterwards fabled * that they were the daughters 
of the river-god Achelous, by one of the Muses. Some said 
that they sprang from the blood which ran from him when 
his horn was torn off by Hercules. Sophocles calls them 
the daughters of Phorcys. 

" Contrary to the usual process, the mischievous part 
of the character of the Sirens was, in process of time, left 
' out, and they were regarded as purely musical beings, 
with entrancing voices. Hence Plato, in his ' Republic,' 
places one of them on each side of the eight celestial 
spheres, where their voices form what is called the music of 
the spheres ; and when the Lacedaemonians invaded Attica, 
Dionysius, it is said, appeared in a dream to their general, 
ordering him to pay all funeral honors to the new Siren, 
which was at once understood to be Sophocles, then just 
dead.f 

" Eventually, however, the artists laid hold on the Sirens,, 
and furnished them with the feathers, feet, wings, and tails 
of birds." t 

According to this statement of our best English mythol- 
ogist, the Sirens were but two. It is not a little surpris- 
ing, however, that so careful a writer has omitted to notice 
the various accounts of their number, and the prevailing 
opinion of its having been three. " Fulgentius and Servius 
affirm," says Boccaccio, " that the Sirens were three, — 
one of them singing with the voice alone, another to the 
lyre, and a third playing on the flute. Leontius, however," 
he continues, " says there were four, and that the fourth 
sang to the timbrel." And a little further on, our Italian 



* Apollod. i. 3. t Pausan. i. 21. 

t " Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy. By Thomas Keightley, 
p. 246. 



I90 SIRENS AND MERMAIDS. 

brings them up to five ; * and this is the number (as we 
shall see), which is assigned them by Spenser. 

Mr. Keightley, who has a just reverence for the oldest 
Greek authorities, and as proper a suspicion of Latin 
sources of fable, will stick to his Hesiod, and not care 
what is said by the later poets. His caution becomes a 
teacher ; but as mythologies may, with others, be reason- 
ably looked upon as of a more large and inclusive character, 
even to the admission of modern inventions, provided they 
be the work of great poets, the popular number of three 
may ordinarily be allowed to the Sirens ; and when we 
come to Spenser, I, for one, must take the freedom of 
believing in five. Any true poet, not only after his death, 
like Sophocles, but before, is himself a Siren, who makes 
me believe what he pleases while he is about it. 

The Sirens, then, are more particularly taken for three 
sisters, monstrous in figure, but charming in face and 
voice, who used to stand upon a place near the coast of 
Naples, and with alluring songs enticed wayfarers to their 
destruction. Some say the victims perished for want of 
food, pining and dying away, unable to do any thing but 
listen; others, that the three sisters devoured them; 
others, that they tumbled them out of their ships. The 
whole place was strewn with bones, and shone afar off 
with the whiteness, like cliffs ; and yet neither this, nor 
their monstrous figure, visible on nearer approach, hin- 
dered the infatuated men from doting on their faces and 
sweet sounds ; till, getting closer and closer, they glided 
headlong into the snare. 

Ulysses had a permission, of which he availed himself, 

* " Delia Genealogia degli Dei/' p. 123. (A translation of his Latin work. 
I quote from both these books in the present article, not having the latter by 
me when I wrote the above passage.) 



SIRENS AND MERMAIDS. 191 

to hear their song ; but it cost him a desperate struggle. 
He ordered himself to be chained, and then to be un- 
chained ; but the sailors would only stand by the better 
orders, and put more chains upon him. So, the vessel 
shooting away, the sounds gradually died off, and he was 
saved. Upon this, the Sirens threw themselves into the 
sea, and perished. The only man (according to some) 
who had passed them before, was Orpheus, who, raising a 
hymn to the gods, in counterpart to their profaner warble, 
sailed. along with his Argonauts, harping and triumphant. 
To one who has read the life of Alfieri, it is impossible 
not to be reminded of him by this story of Ulysses ; how 
he had himself bound down in his chair, to avoid going to 
see his mistress ; and how he struggled and raved to no 
purpose ; imitating Orpheus at intervals, by going on with 
his verses. The reader will have seen, however, that the 
destruction of the Sirens has been attributed to Orpheus ; 
so that, according to the w r riter of those Argonautics, the 
story of Ulysses is a fiction, even in the regions of fic- 
tion ! 

The song of the Sirens in Homer is not worthy of the 
great poet, being, indeed, rather the promise of one, than 
the song itself. It is true, the subject is adapted to the 
hearer ; and we must not forget that this adaptation of 
themselves to the person who was to be tempted, was one 
among the artifices of the Sirens, and none of their least 
seductive. But they say little or nothing to the hero, in 
point of fact. The temptation must have lain in the 
promise and the sound. William Browne, a disciple of 
Spenser, and not unworthy of him, has given a song of the 
Sirens in his " Inner Temple Masque," which a modern 
Ulysses would at least reckon more tempting to his 
sailors : — 



I9 2 SIRENS AND MERMAIDS. 

" Steer, hither steer your winged pines, 
All beaten mariners ; 
Here lie love's undiscover'd mines, 

A prey to passengers ; 
Perfumes far sweeter than the best 
Which make the phoenix' urn and nest. 

Fear not your ships, 
Nor any to oppose you, save our lips ; 
But come on shore, 
Where no joy dies till love hath gotten more. 

[These two last lines are repeated, as chorus, from a 
grove.] 

"For swelling waves our panting breasts, 
Where never storms arise, 
Exchange, and be awhile our guests ; 

For stars gaze on our eyes. 
The compass love shall hourly sing ; 
And as he goes about the ring, 

We will not miss 
To tell each point he nameth with a kiss. 
Chorus. Then come on shore, 

Where no joy dies till love hath gotten more." 

The shape of the Sirens has been variously represented. 
Some say (and this, we believe, is held to be the most or- 
thodox description) * that they were entire birds, with the 
exception of a beautiful human face. Others, that they 
were half birds and half women, the female being the 
upper part.f Others, that they were half women and half 
fish ; that is to say, mermaids ; % and this figure has again 
been varied by wings, and the feet of a lien. § If they 



* "Lempriere." Art. "Sirenes." t "Natalis Comes," lib. vii. cap. 13. 

X "Vossius and Pontanus." (See Todd's "Spenser," vol. iy. p. 196, and 
Sandys's "Ovid,*' p. 101. 

§ "Boccaccio, Geneal. Deor.," p. 56 Browne has taken his Sirens "as 
they are described by Hyginus and Servius, with their upper parts like women 
to the navel, and the rest like a hen." 



SIRENS AND MERMAIDS. I93 

were only human-faced birds, they must have confined 
their attractions to singing ; for hands are required to play 
the musical instruments which are sometimes given them. 
But there were three of them, which is more than enough 
for harmony ; and if, in addition to their harmony, they 
had beautiful faces, it is no matter how monstrously they 
terminated : the more monstrous the charmer, the more 
ghastly and complete the fiction. 

These appalling seducers, according to some, were 
originally sea-nymphs of the proper shape, till Ceres pun- 
ished them for not assisting her daughter when carried 
away by Pluto ; though Ovid says that they took that 
adventure so much to heart, as to beg the gods to bestow 
wings on them, that they might search for her by sea as 
well as by land. It is added by others, that Juno (jealous, 
we suppose, after the usual fashion of that very uncom- 
fortable and sublime busybody) encouraged them to chal- 
lenge the Muses to a trial of song ; upon which, being 
conquered, their kinswoman plucked them, and made 
crowns of their feathers. This is said to have taken place 
in Crete. If so, they must have migrated ; for they are 
generally supposed to have inhabited certain islands on 
the coast of Naples, thence called Sirenusae, where an 
oracle informed them that, unless they could entice and 
destroy every one who passed within hearing, they should 
perish themselves. When their fatal hour came, they are 
reported by some to have been changed into rocks, a fit 
ending for the hardness of sensuality.* 

* But this, it seems, was not the last of the Sirens. " Their crimes," says 
W. J. Broderip, " were not sufficiently expiated. Years rolled on their cease- 
less course. Greece was swallowed up by Rome, who in her turn fell at 
the feet of the Goth ; and in the fulness of time there arose a wizard from the 
great northern hive, he of the polar star, who waved his wand, aroused the 

13 



194 SIRENS AND MERMAIDS. 

Various names have been given to the Sirens, expres- 
sive of their attractions. The most received are Leucosia, 
Parthenope, and: Ligeia ; or 

"The Fair, the Tuneful, and the Maiden-faced.'* 

(It is impossible, on such an occasion, to resist giving the 
aspect of a verse, to words naturally tempting us to fall 
into one.)* Ligeia, however, may perhaps be rather 
translated the shrill and high-sounding j expressive of 
the triumphant nature of the female voice, — which rises 
above all others, in a very peculiar and consummate man- 
ner, as any one may have noticed in a theatre. Parthenope 
had a famous tomb at Naples, and gave her appellation to 
the old city. The mention of these two names in Milton 
is not introduced with the poet's usual learning ; otherwise, 
he would have designated the bearers by the meanings of 
them. He has given Ligeia the comb of a mermaid ; the 
spirit in " Comus " is adjuring the nymph Sabrina : — 

" By Thetis' tinsel-slipper' d feet, 
And the songs of Sirens sweet ; 
By dead Parthenope's dear tomb, 
And fair Ligeia's golden comb, 
Wherewith she sits on diamond rocks 
Sleeking her soft alluring locks." 

We do not quarrel with him, however, for turning Ligeia 



Sirens from the annihilation into which they had escaped, and degenerated 
them into one of the lowest reptile forms of America," — the Perennibran- 
chiate Batrachian. If you wish to know what a Perennibranchiate Batrachian 
is, reader, we refer you to Mr. Broderip's pleasant " Leaves from the Note- 
Book of a Naturalist." — Ed. 

* " Country gentlemen," however, must not think that these names have 
been translated in the order of the Greek ; for it is " Parthenope " which is 
"maiden-faced," and not Ligeia. But it would have had a horrible gaping 
sound, and most unsiren-like., to let the terminating vowel of either of the two 
other names come before an and — Leucosia, Ligeia^ and Parthenope. 



SIRENS AND MERMAIDS. 1 95 

into a mermaid. A great poet, being one of the creating 
gods of his art, has a right to mould his creatures as he 
pleases, provided he does it with verisimilitude ; but we 
shall speak more of this in a minute, when we come to see 
what Spenser has done. " Sleeking her soft alluring 
locks " is a very beautiful line ; you see, and, indeed hear, 
the passage of the comb through those moist tresses. 

Allegorically, the Sirens are sensual pleasures, who, 
though deriving their charms from one of the Muses, are 
conquered by a combination of all. Topographically (for 
they have been accounted for, also in that manner), they 
are said to have alluded to " a certaine bay, contracted 
within winding straights and broken cliffes ; which, by the 
singing of the windes, and beating of the billowes, report " 
(says Archimachus, as quoted by Sandys), "a delightful 
harmony, alluring those who saile by to approach ; when 
forthwith they are throwne against the rocks by the 
waves, and swallowed in the violent eddyes." * Humanly ', 
they are thought to have been a set of enticing women, 
living on the coast of Naples (where divers of the like 
sort, as Sandys would have said, may to this day be found), 
and alluring strangers to stop among them, by the pleas- 
ures and accomplishments with which they were sur- 
rounded. But we are told of them, also, zoologically j for 
some have taken them for certain Indian birds, who set 
mariners to sleep with their singing and then devour them.; 
while " some, as Gaza and Trapezuntius " (quoth our old 
friend), " affirme that they have seene such creatures in 
the sea ; either the divells assuming such shape, to coun- 
tenance the fable, or framed in the fantasie by remote 
resemblances, as we give imaginary formes unto clouds, 

* See the Notes to the Fifth Book of his " Ovid," fol. edit p. 101. 



I96 SIRENS AND MERMAIDS. 

and call those monsters of the deepe by the names of 
land-creatures, which imperfectly carry their similitude." 

It is easy to see how Sirens, living near the sea, came 
to be considered mermaids. A modern Latin poet, quoted 
by Sandys (Pontanus), adopted this notion, and has a 
fable of his own upon it. He says that the Sirens were 
certain Neapolitan young ladies, who, not content with 
being handsome and accomplished, took to wearing paint 
and false hair, and went with their necks bare to the 
waist, — for which Minerva one day, as they were coming 
out of her temple, suddenly turned their pretty ankles 
into fish-tails, and sent them rolling into the sea. The 
poet writes this history in an epistle to his wife, as a warn- 
ing to all pretty church-goers how they paint and expose 
themselves. 

The writer of the piscatory Italian drama, entitled 
"Alceo" (Act IV. sc. I.), gives the same figure to the 
Sirens, but differs from most in his account of their 
cruelty. He says, that after stopping mariners in their 
course, they went to the vessel, instead of drawing it 
ashore, and threw the wretches into the sea. 

The moderns, in general, have certainly regarded the 
Siren as a mermaid. Milton chose to be of that opinion, 
as we may gather from the passage above quoted. Chau- 
cer, in his translation of the " Romance of the Rose," has 
inserted some lines, expressly to inform us that what was 
called a mermaid in England, the French called a Siren. 

" These birdes that I you devise, 
They sung their song as fair and well 
As angels don espirituell ; 
And trusteth me, when I them herd 
Full lustily and well I ferd ; 
For never yet such melody 
Was heard of .men that mighte die. 
Such sweet song was them among, 



SIRENS AXD MERMAIDS. 1 97 

That me thought it no birdes song, 

But it was wonder like to be 

Song of meremaidens of the sea, 

That for their singing is so clear ; 

Though we meremaidens clepe them here 

In English, as is our usaunce, 

Men clepe them sereins in Fraunce." 

But if a poet required express authority in this matter, 
it is furnished him by the great modern mythologist, Spen- 
ser, who, though he had all the learning of the ancient 
world, vindicated his right to look at the world of poetry 
with his own eyes, and to recreate its forms, like a De- 
miurgos, whenever it suited his purposes to do so. He 
knew that no man better understood the soul of fiction, 
and therefore, that it was not only allowable, but some- 
times proper, for him to embody it as he found convenient. 
There is something, we confess, to our apprehensions more 
ghastly and subtle in the ancient notion of a bird with a 
woman's head ; but Spenser, in the passage where he intro- 
duces his Sirens, precedes and follows it with an account 
of things dreadful, and is for placing nothing but a calm 
voluptuousness in the middle. After all, we are not sure 
that there would not have been a subtler link with his 
birds "unfortunate," had he made his charmers partake 
of their nature ; but, however, mermaids he has painted 
them, and mermaids they are for all poets to come, unless 
a greater shall arise to say otherwise : — 

"And now they nigh approached to the sted 

Whereat those mermayds dwelt. It was a still 

And calmy bay, on th' one side sheltered 

With the brode shadow of an hoarie hill ; 

On th' other side an high rocke toured still, 

That 'twixt them both a pleasaunt port they made, 

And did like an halfe theatre fulfill. 

There those five sisters had continuall trade, 
And used to bath themselves in that deceiptfull shade. 



I98 SIRENS AND MERMAIDS, 

" They were faire ladies, till they fondly striv'd 
With th' Heliconian maides for maystery ; 
Of whom they overcornen were depriv'd 
Of their proud beautie, and th' one moyity 
Transform'd to fish for their bold surquedry ; 
But th' upper halfe their hue retayned still, 
And their sweet skill in wonted melody ; 
Which ever after they abus'd to ill, 
To allure weeke travellers, whom gotten they did kill. 

" So now to Guyon, as he passed by, 

Their pleasaunt tunes they sweetly thus applyde ; 

' O thou faire sonne of gentle Faery, 

That art in mightie armes most magnifyde 

Above all knights that ever batteill tryde, 

O turne thy rudder hetherward awhile : 

Here may thy storm-beat vessell safely ryde ; 

This is the port of rest from troublous toyle, 
The world's sweet inn, from payne and wearisome turmoyle* 

" With that the rolling sea, resounding soft, 

In his big base them fitly answered ; 

And on the rocke, the waves, breaking aloft, 

A solemn meane into them measured ; 

The whiles sweet Zephyrus lowd whisteled 

His treble, a straunge kinde of harmony ; 

Which Guyon's senses softly tickeled, 

That he the boteman bade row easily, 
And let him heare some part of their rare melody." 

Book II. c 12. 

" It is plain," says Jortin, in a note on this passage,, 
" that Spenser designed here to describe the mermaids as 
sirens. He has done it contrary to mythology ; for the 
sirens were not part women and part fishes, as Spenser 
and other moderns have imagined, but part women and 
part birds." Upon which Upton remarks, " By the sirens 
are imagined sensual pleasures ; hence Spenser makes 
their number five. But should you ask, why did not 
Spenser follow rather the ancient poets and mythologists, 
than the moderns, in making them mermaids ? my answer 



SIRENS AND MERMAIDS. 



I 99 



is, Spenser has a mythology of his own ; nor would belie 
his brethren the romance writers, where merely authority 
is to be put against authority." 

We have thus three out of our four great poets, who 
are for taking sirens as mermaids ; and the fourth is not 
wanting. Shakespeare's " Mermaid on a dolphin's back," 
is part of an allegory on England and Queen Elizabeth, 
and is the most poetical bit of politics on record ; but it 
shows that he entertained the same mixed notion of the 
mermaid and siren. 

" Once I sat upon a promontory, 
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back 
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, 
That the rude sea grew civil at her song, 
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, 
To hear the sea-maid's music." 

Midsummer Night's Dream. 

A siren then, in the modern sense of the word, may be 
regarded as a mermaid who sings. Metaphorically, a 
siren is any female who charms by singing ; and this 
is the most ancient acceptation of the term, as Plato has 
shown, by calling the presiders over the spheres of heaven 
sirens. 

"Then listen I," 

says the Genius in Milton's " Arcades," 

" To the celestial Syrens' harmony, 
That sit upon the nine infolded spheres." 

The word, by the way, should be spelled with an z, the 
Greek word not being syren but seiren; which, according 
to Bochart, comes from the Phoenician seir, a singer. In 
this etymology, we are carried back to the probable origin 
of these and a great many other marvels, which may have 
commenced with the primeval navigators, who had the 



200 SIRENS AND MERMAIDS. 

world fresh before them, and fanciful eyes to see with. If 
the fair inhabitants of the south of Italy resembled in those 
days what they are now (and climate and other local cir- 
cumstances render it probable), a crew of Phoenician 
adventurers had only to touch at the coast of Naples to 
bring away the story at once. In the south, where there 
is more luxury than fishing, the songs of their mistresses 
might suggest that of birds, and the sirens be gifted with 
plumage. Had they gone to the northern seas, where 
there was more fishing than luxury, the siren would have 
been the mermaid ; and it is possible, that from the roman- 
ces of the north, the modern idea descended into the 
poetry of Italy and of Spenser. 

" The havfrue (half-woman) or mermaid," says Mr. 
Keightley, whom we meet in all the pleasant places of 
fiction, "is represented in the popular tradition (of Scan- 
dinavia) sometimes as a good, at other times as an evil 
and treacherous, being. She is beautiful in her appear- 
ance. Fishermen sometimes see her in the bright sum- 
mer's sun, when a thin mist hangs over the sea, sitting 
on the surface of the water, and combing her long golden 
hair with a golden comb, or driving up her snow-white 
cattle to feed on the strands and small islands. At other 
times she comes as a bea7itiful maid, chilled a?id shiver- 
ing with the cold of the night, to the fires the fishers have 
kindled, hoping by this means to entice them to her love. 
Her appearance prognosticates both storm and ill-success 
in their fishing. People that are drowned, and whose 
bodies are not found, are believed to have been taken into 
the dwellings of the mermaids. These beings are also 
supposed to have the power of foretelling future events. 
A mermaid, we are told, prophesied the birth of Christian 
IV. of Denmark ; and 



SIRENS AND MERMAIDS. 201 

* En Havfhie op af Vandet steg, 

Og spaade Herr Sinklar ilde.' 

Sinclair's " Visa." 
1 A mermaid from the water rose, 

And spaed Sir Sinclar ill.' * 

These visions have naturally taken a still more palpable 
shape with some dwellers near the sea, and craft has 
endeavored to profit by them in the exhibition of their 
actual bodies. The author of an agreeable abstract of 
zoology, published some years back, tells us of a King of 
Portugal, and a Grand Master of the Order of St. James, 
who "had a suit at law to determine which class of ani- 
mals these monsters belong to, either man or fish. This," 
he adds, " is a sort of inductive proof that such animals 
had been then seen and closely examined ; unless we 
suppose that, as in the case of the child said to have been 
born with a golden tooth, the discussion took place before 
the fact was ascertained." f 

We ought to know, on these occasions, whether the 
mermaid is caught fresh, or only shown after death like a 
mummy. An exhibition of the latter kind took place some 
years since in London, and was soon detected ; but so 
many deceptions of the sort have been practised, that 
naturalists seem to think it no longer worth their while 
to talk about them. A piece of one animal is joined to 
another, and the two are dried together. Linnaeus ex- 
posed an imposition of this kind during his travels on the 
Continent, and is said to have been obliged to leave the 
town for it. 

The writer just quoted proceeds to inform us, that " in 



* " Fairy Mythology," vol. i. p. 241. 

t " A description of more than Three Hundred Animals, &c, with an Ap- 
pendix on Allegorical and Fabulous Animals," 1826 ; p. 363. 



202 SIRENS AND MERMAIDS. 

the year 1560, on the western coasts of the Island of Cey- 
lon, some fishermen are said to have brought up, at one 
draught of a net, seven mermen and maids, of which 
several Jesuits, and among them F. H. Henriquez, and 
Dinas Bosquey, physician to the Viceroy of Goa, are 
reported to have been witnesses ; and it is added," he says, 
" that the physician who examined them, and made dis- 
sections of them with a great deal of care, asserted that 
all the parts, both internal and external, were found per- 
fectly conformable to those of men." 

" Several Jesuits," we fear, will be regarded as no better 
authority than the "five justices " of Autolycus : — 

Aut. Here's another ballad, of a fish, that appeared upon the coast on 
Wednesday, the fourscore of April, forty thousand fathom above water, and 
sung this ballad against the hard hearts of maids. It was thought she was a 
woman, and was turned into a cold fish, for she would not exchange flesh with 
one that loved her. The ballad is very pitiful, and as true. 

Dorcas. Is it true too, think you ? 

A ut. Five justices' hands at it ! and witnesses more than my pack will 
hold." — Winter's Tale, Act iv. sc. 3. 

A later edition (if I mistake not, for I had but a glance of 
it) of the same work, goes almost so far as to intimate its 
belief in a mermaid's having been seen by a lady, off the 
coast of Scotland, in company with three other specta- 
tors. The names are mentioned, and letters and deta^s 
given. That the persons in question thought they beheld 
such a creature, is to be conceded, supposing the doc- 
uments to be genuine ; nor would it become any reason- 
able sceptic, especially in a time like the present, to say 
what is or is not probable on the part of creation.* But 
it is to be feared that in this, as in the demands of a less 



* Sir Walter Scott, in " The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," mentions 
this phenomenon, and says that the evidence serves to show " either that imag- 



SIRENS AND MERMAIDS. 203 

intellectual appetite, your fish must be "caught" before it 
is swallowed. Extraordinary particulars were given, in this 
instance, of the human aspect of the vision, of its tossing 
its hair back from its brow, and its being much annoyed by 
a bird which was hovering over it, and which it warned off 
repeatedly with its hands. The most ingenious conject- 
ure I ever heard advanced respecting the ordinary mistakes 
about mermaids was, that somebody may have actually 
seen a mermaid, comb and all, dancing in the water, but 
that it w r as a figure of wood, struck off from some ship- 
wrecked vessel. 

I am travelling out of the world, however, when I get 
into these realms of prose and matter-of-fact. I will con- 
clude this paper with the two most striking descriptions 
of the mermaid I ever met with ; — one, indeed, purporting 
to be that of a true one, but evidently of the wildest ori- 
ental manufacture ; the other, in the pages of a young 
living poet, worthy of the name in its most poetical sense. 

D'Herbelot, in his article on the " Yagiouge and Magiou- 
ge " (Gog and Magog), tells us of a certain Salam, who was 
sent by Vathek, ninth Caliph of the race of the Abassides, 
to explore the famous Caspian Gates, and who being in- 



ination played strange tricks with the witnesses, or that the existence of mer- 
maids is no longer a matter of question." 

Simon Wilkin, in one of the notes to his edition of Sir Thomas Browne, 
makes a learned and ingenious argument on the probable existence of the 
mermaid ; and De Quincey says that Southey once remarked to him, that if 
the mermaid had been differently named (as, suppose, a mer-ape) nobody 
would have questioned its existence any more than that of sea-cows, sea-lions, 
&c. " The mermaid has been discredited by her human name and her legen- 
dary human habits. If she would not coquette so much with melancholy sailors, 
and brush her hair so assiduously upon solitary rocks, she would be carried on 
our books for as honest a reality, as decent a female, as many that are as- 
sessed to the poor-rates." — Ed. 



204 SIRENS AND MERMAIDS. 

vited by the lord of the country to go and fish with him, 
saw an enormous fish taken, in the inside of which was 
another still alive, and of a very remarkable description. 
It had the figure of a naked girl as far as the waist, and 
wore, down to its knees, a sort of drawers (caleyon) made 
of a skin like a man's. It kept its hands over its face, 
tore its hair, heaved great sighs, and remained alive but 
a short time.* 

This circumstance of the creature's keeping its hands 
over its face, is really a fine instance of the ghastly and 
the pathetic. She seems to have had something too human 
in her countenance to wish to be looked at by a similar 
face. How she contrived to tear her hair, without letting 
her face be seen, we are not told. As knees are men- 
tioned, we are to suppose that the fish commenced just 
below them, possibly with a double tail. There is no 
predicating how such extraordinary young ladies will ter- 
minate. 

Mr. Tennyson's mermaid is in better keeping ; as strange 
and fantastic as need be, but all with the proper fantastic 
truth; just as such a creature might "live, move, and 
have its being," if such creatures existed. His verse is 
as strong, buoyant, and wilful as the mermaid herself and 
the billows around her ; and nothing can be happier, or in 
better or more mysterious sea-taste, than the conglomera- 
tion of the wet and the dry, the " forked, and horned, and 
soft " phenomena at the conclusion. Mark, too, the luxu- 
rious and wilful repetition of the words, " for the love of 
me," and of the rhyme on that word. 

* " Bibliotheque Orientale." 1783. Tom. iii. p. 271. 



SIRENS AND MERMAIDS. 205 

THE MERMAID. 

Who would be 
A mermaid fair, 
Singing alone, 
Combing her hair 
Under the sea, 
In a golden curl, 
With a comb of pearl, 
On a throne ? 
/ would be a mermaid fair ; 
I would sing to myself the whole of the day ; 
With a comb of pearl I would comb my hair ; 
And still as I combed I would sing and say, 

" Who is it loves me ? who loves not me?" 
I would comb my hair till my ringlets would fall, 

Low adown, low adown, 
From under my starry sea-bud crown, 

Low adown and around : 
And I should look like a fountain of gold 
Springing alone 
With a shrill inner sound. 

Over the throne 
In the midst of the hall ; 
Till that great sea-snake under the sea, 
From his coiled sleeps, in the central deeps, 
Would slowly trail himself sevenfold 
Round the hall where I sate, and look in at the gate 
With his large calm eyes for the love of me ; 
And all the mermen under the sea 
Would feel their immortality 
Die in their hearts for the love of me. 
But at night I would wander away, away ; 

I would fling on each side my low-flowing locks, 
And lightly vault from the throne, and play 

With the mermen in and out of the rocks ; 
We would run to and fro, and hide and seek, 

On the broad seawolds, in the crimson shells, 
Whose silvery spikes are nighest the sea. 
But if an} 7 came near I would call, and shriek, 
And adown the steep like a wave I would leap, 

From the diamond ledges that jut from the dells ; 
For I would not be kist by all who would list, 



206 TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 

Of the bold merry mermen under the sea ; 

They would sue me, and woo me, and flatter me, 

In the purple twilights under the sea ; 

But the king of them all would carry me, 

Woo me, and win me, and marry me, 

In the branching jaspers under the sea ; 

Then all the dry pied things that be 

In the hzieless mosses under the sea 

Would curl round my silver feet silently, 

A II looking up for the love of me. 

And if T should carol aloud, from aloft 

A U things that are forked, and horned, and soft, 

Would lean out from the hollow sphere of the sea, 

All looking down for the love of me. 




TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 

AVING treated of Sirens, mermaids, and other 
female phenomena connected with the ocean, 
we here devote an article to its male gentry - — 
personages for whom, though we may speak 
of them with a certain familiarity on the strength of old 
acquaintance, we entertain all the respect due to their 
ancient renown, and to those sacred places of poetry in 
which they are still to be found. 

And first of the most ancient. The Triton is one of a 
numerous race begotten by Triton the son of Neptune, 
whose conch allayed the deluge of Deucalion. Like his 
ancestors, he is half a man and half a fish, with a great 
muscular body, and a tail ending in a crescent. There is 
a variety which has the forefeet of a horse. And some- 
times he has two thighs like a man, or great, round, 
divided limbs resembling thighs, and tending to the 
orbicular, which end in fish-tails instead of legs. He 



TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 20>J 

serves Neptune and the sea-nymphs ; is employed in calm- 
ing billows and helping ships out of danger ; and blows a 
eonch-shell before the car he waits on, the sound of which 
is heard on the remotest shores, and causes the waves 
there to ripple. You may see him in all his jollity in the 
pictures of the Italians, waiting upon Galatea and sporting 
about the chariot with her nymphs ; for with the strength 
he has the good humor of the most gambolling of the 
great fish ; and when not employed in his duties, is for 
ever making love, and tumbling about the weltering waters. 

In one of the divine drawings of Raphael, lately exhib- 
ited in St. Martin's-lane (and to be detained, we trust, 
among us for ever, lest our country be dishonored for want 
of taste), is a Triton with a nymph on his back, whom he 
is carrying through the water in a style of exquisite grace 
and affectionateness ; for the higher you go in art, the more 
lovely does love become, and the more raised above the 
animal passion, even when it most takes it along with it. 

Imagine yourself on a promontory in a lone sea, during 
an autumnal morning, when the heavens retain the glad- 
ness of summer-time, and yet there is a note in the wind 
prophetical of winter, and you shall see Neptune come by 
with Amphitrite, strenuously drawn through the billows, 
in which they are half washed, and Triton blowing his 
conch before them. 



M First came great Neptune with his three-forkt mace, 
That rules the seas and makes them rise or fall ; 
His dfwy lockes did drop with brine apace 
Under his diademe imperiall ; 
And by his side his queene with coronall, 
Faire Amphitrite, most divinely faire, 
Whose yvorie shoulders weren covered all 
A s with a robe with her owne silver haire^ 
And deckt with pearles which th* Indian seas for her prepaire. 



2o8 TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 

A nd all the way before them, as they went, 
Triton his trompet shrill before them blew, 
For goodly triumph and great jolly ment, 
That made the rockes to roare as thev were rent.'* 
Faerie Queene, Book iv. Canto xi. 

These pearls which Amphitrite wears, were probably 
got for her by the Tritons, who are great divers. In one 
of the pictures of Rubens, there are some of them thrusting 
up their great hands out of the sea (the rest of them invis- 
ible), and offering pearls to a queen. 

Some writers have undertaken to describe these sea- 
deities more minutely, and as partaking a great deal more 
of the brute-fish than the man. According to them, the 
Triton has hair like water-parsley ; gills a little under the 
ears ; the nostrils of a man ; a wide mouth with panther's 
teeth ; blue eyes ; fins under the breast like a dolphin ; 
hands and fingers, as well as nails of a shelly substance ; 
and a body covered with small scales as hard as a file. 
Be this as it may, he was in great favor with the sea-god- 
desses, and has to boast even of the condescension of 
Venus. Hear what a triumphant note he strikes up in the 
pages of Marino. 

Per lo Carpazio mar l'orrida faccia 

Del feroce Triton che la seguia, 

La ritrosa Cimotoe un di fuggia 
Sicome fera sbigottita in caccia. 
Seguiala il rozzo ; e con spurn ose braccia 

L'acque battendo e ribattendo gia, 

E con lubrico pie l'umida via 
Scorreva intento a l'amorosa traccia : 

" Qual pro," dicendo, " ov " ha piu folta e piena 
L'alga, fuggir quel Dio ch' ogni procella 
Con la torta sua tromba acqueta e frena? 



TRITONS AND MEN OP^ THE SEA. 209 

Tra queste squamme, a la scagliosa ombrella 
Di questa coda, in questa curva schiena 
Vien sovente a seder la Dea pid bella.' 

A dreadful face in the Carpathian sea 

After a sweet one like a deer in flight, 

Came ploughing up a trough of thunderous might — 
Triton's — in chase of coy Cymothoe. 
Rugged and fierce, and all afroth, came he, 

Dashing the billowy buffets left and right ; 

And on his slippery orbs, with eyes alight 
For thirst, stoop' d headlong tow'rds the lovely she ; 

Crying, " What boots it to look out for aid 

In weedy thicks, and run a race with him 

To whom the mastery of the seas is given ? 
On this rude back, under the scaly shade 

Of this huge tail, midst all this fishy trim, 

Oft comes to sit the loveliest shape in heaven." 

According to Hesiod, Triton is a highly " respectable " 
god, in the modern sense of the word, for he lives " in 
a golden house." To be sure, he does that, as residing 
with his father and mother ; but, moreover, he is a god 
redoubtable on his own account — deinos — a god of 
" awful might," as Mr. Elton excellently renders it ; not 
" eximius " merely, or egregious, as feeble Natalis Comes 
interpreteth it ; nor simply " vehemens," as the common 
Latin version saith better, but implying the combination 
of force and terror. 

" From the god of sounding waves, 
Shaker of earth, and Amphitrite, sprang 
Sea-potent Triton huge ; 

(excellently rendered, that) 

Beneath the deep 
He dwells in golden edifice, 

(but with his father and mother, quoth Hesiod), 



2IO TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 

A god 
Of awful might.* 

Mr. Elton appends a curious note to this passage, from 
the learned and ingenious, but most gratuitous, " Mythol- 
ogy " of Bryant ; who, out of a mistaken zeal for identify- 
ing every thing with Scripture, undoes half the poetry of 
old fable " at a jerk," and makes stocks and stones of 
the gods with a vengeance. We are sorry to find that so 
poetical a translator has allowed himself, out of a like 
respectable error, to contract his larger instincts into those 
of a dogmatist so prosaical. According to Mr. Bryant, 
Triton is no better than an old brick building ; and Am- 
phitrite herself " another." 

" The Hetrurians," says he, " erected on their shores 
towers and beacons for the sake of their navigation, which 
they called Tor-ain ; whence they had a still farther de- 
nomination of Tor-aini (Tyrrheni). Another name for 
buildings of this nature was Tirit, or Turit ; which signi- 
fied a tower or turret. The name of Triton is a contrac- 
tion of Tirit-on, and signifies the tower of the sun ; but a 
deity was framed from it, who was supposed to have had 
the appearance of a man upwards, but downwards to have 
been like a fish. The Hetrurians are thought to have 
been the inventors of trumpets ; and in their towers on the 
sea-coast there were people appointed to be continually on 
the watch, both by day and by night, and to give a proper 
signal if any thing happened extraordinary. This was 
done by a blast from the trumpet. In early times, how- 
ever, these brazen instruments were but little known ; and 
people were obliged to use what were near at hand, the 



* Elton's " H^siod," p. 194. 



TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 211 

conchs of the sea : by sounding these they gave signals 
from the tops of the towers when any ship appeared ; 
and this is the implement with which Triton is more 
commonly furnished. Amphi-tirit is merely an oracular 
tower, which, by the poets, has been changed into Amphi- 
trite, and made the wife of Neptune." 

Don't believe a word of it ; or, if you do, admit the pos- 
sibility of just enough to enable you to admire how the 
noble imagination of the Greeks restored their rights to 
the largeness and loudness of Nature, and forced this 
watchman's tower back again into the ocean which it pre- 
tended to compete with. What ! was the sea itself noth- 
ing ? its roaring nothing ? its magnitude, and mystery, and 
eternal motion nothing, that out of all this a Triton and a 
Neptune could not be framed, without the help of these 
restorers of Babel ? 

Bochart, speaking of the river Triton (and, by the way, 
he was an Eastern scholar, which Bryant was not), derives 
the name from the Phoenician word tarit. Mr. Bryant 
brings his Triton from tirit. In fact you may bring any 
thing from any thing by the help of etymology ; as Gold- 
smith has shown in his famous derivation of Fohi from 
Noah ; and Home Tooke, in his no less learned deduc- 
tion of " pickled cucumber " from " King Jeremiah." To 
pretend to come to any certain conclusion in etymology, 
is to defy time, place, and vicissitude. 

Allegorically, Triton is the noise, and tumbling, and 
savageness of the sea ; and therefore may well be repre- 
sented as looking more brutal than human ; but the sav- 
ageness of the sea, taking it in the gross, and not the 
particular, is a thing genial and good-natured, serving the 
healthiest purposes of the world ; and therefore the same 
Triton may be represented as abounding in humanity, 



212 TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 

and appearing in a nobler shape. Be his shape what it 
may, Venus (universal love) understands his nature ; and 
with the eye of a goddess sees fair-play between him and 
what is beauteous, difference being only a form, and the 
elements and essences of things being the same through- 
out the globe, and secretly harmonizing with one another. 

(There is a fine blowing wind, while we are writing this, 
with a deep tone in its cadences, as if Triton were assent- 
ing to what we wrote.) Boccaccio, in identifying him with 
the noise of the sea, finally says, that he signifies that 
especial sound of it which announces a more than ordinary 
swell of the waters, and the approach of his lord and 
master in his vehemence, " as trumpeters blow their song 
before the coming of an emperor." * 

But allegories are secondary affairs. Triton is a good 
fellow r on his own account, and puts a merriment and vis- 
ible humanity in the sea, linking us also with things 
invisible. On this latter account, a living poet, in a fit of 
tedium with the commonplaces of the "work-a-day world," 
and their habitual disbelief in any thing beyond themselves, 
has expressed a wish to see him. But surely, being the 
great poet he is, he has seen him, often ; and need not 
have desponded for a moment over the commonplaces of 
the world, more than over any other parcel of atoms play- 
ing their parts in the vicissitudes and progress of all things. 
" Great God ! " he exclaims (and beautiful is the effusion) : 

"I'd rather be 
A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn, 
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea 

* " Genealogia Deorum," 151 1, p. 55. " Voluere ex illo sono comprehends 
futurum maris majorem solito aestum ; ut sono illo adventante majori cum 
impetu dominum suum ostendat Triton ; uti et tibicines imperatorem de prox- 
imo advenire designant tibiarum cantu." 



TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 213 

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ; 
Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea, 
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." 

Wordsworth's Sonnets. 

But what is there more marvellous in Triton than in the 
sea itself ? and what glimpses need we desire to reassure 
us, greater than the stars above our heads, and the won- 
ders in a man's own brain and bosom ? To see these, if 
we look for them, in a healthy spirit, (for the gods, after 
all, or rather before all, love health and energy, and insist 
upon them), is to see " the shapes of gods, ascending and 
descending," and to know them for what they are — no 
delusions, nor unbeneficent. All that they require is, that 
we should help the intellectual and moral world to make 
progress ; and as our poet was not doing this at the 
moment, we suppose the gods suspended his gift, and 
would not allow him to see them. And yet, behold ! he 
did so, in the midst of his very disbelief ! so unable to get 
rid of his divinity is a true poet. 

" In playful reverence, not presumptuous scorn 
I speak, nor with my own rebuke, but Jove's, 
His teacher mid the stars." 

Our old friend Sandys, in the delightful notes to his 
" Ovid," quotes an Italian author to show that a Triton 
was once seen and felt, as you might handle a lobster. 
" Pliny," says he, " writes how an ambassador was sent 
on purpose from the Olissiponensi (the Lisbon people), 
unto Tiberius Caesar, to tell him of a Triton, seene and 
heard in a certaine cave, winding a shell, and in such a 
form as they are commonly painted. But I cannot omit 
what is written by Alexander ab Alexandro, who lived in 
the last century, how he heard one Draconet Boniface of 
Naples, a souldier of much experience, report in an honour- 



214 TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 

able assembly, that in the wars of Spaine he saw a sea- 
monster with the face and body like a man, but below the 
belly like a fish, brought thither from the farthest shores 
of Mauritania. It had an old countenance ; the hairs and 
beard rough and shaggy ; blew of colour ; and high of 
stature ; with finnes between the arms and the body. 
These were held for gods of the sea, and propitious to 
sailors ! ignorance * producing admiration, and admiration 
superstition. However, perhaps they erre not, who con- 
ceived them to be onely Divells, assuming that form, to 
nourish a false devotion." * 

Mr. Wordworth's wish, in certain "moods of the mind," 
is natural and touching ; but we believers of the Muses' 
"train" are startled, when a great poet, even for a 
moment, seems to lose sight of those final wonders, which 
it is poetry's high philosophic privilege to be forever 
aware of. The deities of past ages are alive still, as much 
as they ought to be ; the divinity that inspires their con- 
ception is always alive, and he evinces himself in a thou- 
sand shapes of hope, love, and imagination ; ay, and of the 
most commonplace materiality too, which, to beings who 
beheld us from afar, would be quite as good proof of the 
existence of things beautiful and supernatural, as Galatea, 
with all her nymphs, would be to one *of us. Let the 
reader fancy a world, which had but one-half the lovely 
things in it which ours possesses, or but imagination 
enough to conceive them, and then let him fancy what it 
would think of us, and of our right to hope for other things 
supernatural, and to be full of a noble security against all 
nullification. 



Sandys' "Ovid," fol., p. 19. 



TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 215 

But to return from these speculations, fit as they are for 
the remoteness and universality of the seas. We have 
nothing to do here with Nereus, Proteus, and other 
watery deities, whose form, though they could change it, 
was entirely human ; neither have we any concern with 
deities in general, however mixed up with animal natures, 
unless, like the Triton, they have survived to modern 
fable, and thus remain tangible. Tritons have been seen 
in plenty in latter times. Ariosto found them on the shores 
of romance : they figure in the piscatory dialogues of his 
countrymen ; and our own later poets have beheld them 
by dozens, whenever they went to the sea-coast, just as 
other men see fishermen and boats. In the pretty drama 
entitled " Alceo," written by a promising young poet of 
the name of Ongaro, who died early, and which the 
Italians call the Aminta bagnato (Amyntas in the water), 
a Triton performs the part of the Satyr in Tasso. 

Our great poet of romance makes express mention of a 
Sea-Satyr. It is in that " perilous passage " of the last 
canto of Book the Second, in the perusal of which our 
imagination becomes as earnest and childlike as the poet's 
own look of belief. We should lay the whole of it before 
our readers, had we quoted it twenty times ; in the first 
place, because it contains a list of sea-monsters, and there- 
fore falls in with our subject ; and secondly, because we 
cannot help it. Sir Guyon, with his friend the Palmer, 
has just passed a dreadful whirlpool : — 



" The heedful boteman strongly forth did stretch 
His brawnie armes, and all his bodie straine, 
That th' utmost sandy breach they shortly fetch, 
Whiles the dredd daunger does behind remaine. 
Suddeine they see, from midst of all the maine, 
The surging waters like a mountaine rise, 



2l6 TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 

And the great sea, puft up with proud disdaine, 
To swell above the measure of his guise, 
As threatning to devoure all that his powre despise. 

" The waves came rolling, and the billows rore 
Outragiously, as they enraged were, 
Or wrathfull Neptune did them drive before 
His whirling char eX for exceeding feare ; 
For not one puffe of winde there did appeare ; 
That all the three thereat were much afrayd, 
Unweeting what such horrour straunge did reare. 
Eftsoones they saw an hideous hoast arrayd 
Of huge sea-monsters, such as living sence dismayed : 

" Most ugly shapes and horrible aspects, 

Such as dame Nature's self mote feare to see, 
Or shame, that ever should so fowle defects 
From her most cunning hand escaped bee : 
A 11 dreadfull pourtraicts of deformitee ; 
Spring-headed hydres, and sea-shouldering whales, 

Great whirlpooles, which all fishes make to flee, 
Bright scolopendraes, arm'd with silver scales, 
Mighty monoceros with immeasured tayles : 

"The dreadful fish, that hath deserved the name 

Of Death, and like him lookes in dreadfull hew ; 

The griesly wasserman, that makes his game 

The flying ships with swiftness to pursew ; 

The horrible Sea-Satyre^ that doth shew 

His fearefull face in time of greatest storme ; 

Huge ziffiius, whom mariners eschew 

No lesse than rockes, as travellers informe ; 

And greedy rosmarines, with visages deforme : 

"All these, and thousand thousands many more, 

And more deformed monsters, thousand fold, 

With dreadfull noise, and hollow rombling rore, 

Came rushing, in thefomy waves enrolFd, 

Which seem'd to fly, for feare them to behold ; 

Ne wonder, if these did the knight appall ; 

For all that here on earth we dreedfull hold, 
Be but as bugs to fearen babes withall, 
Compared to the creetures in the seas entrdll." 



TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 21 7 

There is little doubt that Spenser got some of these 
monsters out of the natural history of Gesner, the Buffon 
of his time, and that in a plate of one of his old folio vol- 
umes (now before us) is to be seen the identical " fearful 
face " shown by the poet's " horrible sea-satyr " in " time 
of greatest storme," the one consequently which the poet 
himself saw. It is a pity we cannot give it here. The 
commentators should add it to their notes in the next 
edition.* With most of Spenser's sea-monsters we- have 
nothing further to do in this article ; but the " sea-satyr " 
is directly to our purpose ; and so is the "griesly wasser- 
man," i. e. waterman, or man of the sea ; a very different 
personage from your "waterman above bridge." 

Gesner's " sea-satyr," or "pan," is taken from an ac- 
count given by Battista Fulgoso, who says that, in the 
time of Pope Eugenius the Fourth, it was taken on the 
coast of Illyria, while endeavoring to drag a boy away 
with it to its native element. It had a humanish kind of 
head and body, with a skin like an eel's, two horns on its 
forehead, a finger and thumb only on each hand, a couple 
of webbed feet, a great fish's tail, and wings like a bat / 
Such, at least, is the figure to be collected from the 
description and plate together. 

Gesner has two whole chapters upon Wassermenj that 
is, Tritons and Men of the Sea; for, "the Germans call 
all such creatures wassennen, or seemenP Of these 
watermen and sea7nen, one of whom an accommodating 
figure is given, agreeable to his designation (with a caution 



* "Conradi Gesneri Historla Animalium," p. 1197. Gesner was evidently 
Milton's as well as Spenser's authority for his animals. In one of his plates 
(p. 138) is the whale mistaken for an island, which the former speaks of, 

' With fixed anchor in his scaly rind." 



2l8 TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 

on the part of the writer against having too much faith in 
him), is called the Monk. The account of it is taken from 
the work on fishes by Rondelet ; who says that the picture 
was sent him by Margaret, Queen of Navarre. The head 
is quite human, and has the clerical tonsure ! The rest is 
a compromise between fish-scales and church vestments. 
This reverend fish was taken in a drag of herrings, and 
lived only three days, during which it said nothing, "with 
the exception of uttering certain sighs, indicative of great 
sorrow and distress." * 

Another writer, quoted in the same place, says that the 
sea-monk is sometimes visible in the. British Channel. 
"He has a white skin on his cranium, with a black circle 
round it, like a monk newly shaven. He fawns upon 
people at sea, and entices them into the water, where he 
satiates himself with their flesh." This species, we sup- 
pose, became extinct at the abolition of the monasteries. 

But the monk has also a Bishop, of whom a figure is 
likewise given, very episcopal, and as if in the act of giving 
a charge to his clergy. He has a scaly mitre, a cloak, and 
an aquiline nose. If the metempsychosis were believed 
in, it would be difficult not to suppose him an actual 
bishop, who had been turned into a fish for eating too 
much turbot. It was caught in 1531, and sent to the King 
of Poland, to whom it made signs, " apparently indicative 
of a vehement desire of being returned to the ocean, into 
which, without further delay, it was accordingly thrown." 
" I omit other particulars," says Rondelet, " because I 
hold them to be feigned, for such is the vanity of man- 
kind that, not content with truths sufficiently marvellous 
in themselves, they are for adding wonders to them of 

* Gesner, p. 521. 



TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 



219 



their own invention. As to the likeness of the monster, I 
give it as I received it, neither affirming nor denying the 
truth thereof." 

In Bochart's " Hierozoicon " is a very curious and 
learned chapter on fabulous animals, in which he gives 
us a variety of those of the sea from Arabian authors. 
They remind us of Eastern tales, and of Sindbad. Not 
that Sindbad's Old Man of the Sea (that admirable fiction, 
full of verisimilitude) has any thing of the sea in him but 
his name, and his living on the sea-shore ; but the won- 
ders are of the same wild and remote cast, linking the 
extremity of the marvellous with a look of nature and an 
appeal to our sympathies. 

The first is named Abu-Mnzaina, that is, says Bochart, 
"Paterdecorce (the Father of the seemly)." Gentlemen of 
this species have the form of the sons of Eve, with glu- 
tinous skins, and are very well made. They weep and wail 
when they fall into human hands. They come out of the 
sea to walk about, and are then taken by hunters, who are 
so touched by their weeping as to dismiss them unhurt* 

The next is the Old Jew, who has a face like a man, a 
gray beard, a body like a frog's, hair like an ox, and is of 
the size of a calf. He comes out of the sea on Sabbath 
nights, and walks about till next evening, when he leaps 
frog-like into the sea. 

Then comes a proper " Wasserman " by name, the 
Ho?no Aquaticus, or Man of the Water; called likewise 
Old Man of the Sea, from his gray beard. He is just 
like a man, only he has a tail. His appearance presages 
great lowness in the price of crops. A king of Damascus 
married one of them to a female of the country, in order 

* Bochart, "Opera Omnia," fol., vol. ii., part 2, p. 858. 



220 TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 

that he might learn what language he spoke from their 
offspring ! The result was a son, and one remark on the 
part of the old gentleman, expressing an unaccountable 
amazement. 

Lastly cometh one Duhlak (the name is not interpreted), 
who haunts islands, riding upon an ostrich, and eating 
people that are shipwrecked. Some say that he will board 
ships, have a fight with the crew, and cry aloud " with a 
voice of boasting." Bochart is of opinion that this "voice 
of boasting" should rather be translated "glad and agree- 
able voice ; " for, says he, the sirens are the creatures 
intended, who had maidens' faces, were birds in the lower 
parts of their bodies, and eat human flesh. But for a 
reason to be noticed presently, this decision appears to be 
a mistake. 

" In these Arabian stories," says our good old author, 
" there may be some truth ; for it has been proved that 
there are creatures in the sea possessing, or nearly pos- 
sessing, the human form. You may read of some that 
have endeavored to get into ships by the cables, of others 
who come upon land to walk about, and who strike fire in 
the night-time with flints, and of others who behave very 
ill to women, unless you are quick to prevent them. Some 
have been taken and lived a long time in human society ; 
among others a female one in Pomerania, of the name of 
Eda, very lively and amorous. And Gassendi, in his life 
of Peiresc, describes one that had been seen not long be- 
fore, on the coast of Brittany. Ancient as well as modern 
history bears witness that such creatures have been found 
on the surface as well as in the depth of the ocean. Hence 
the origin of Tritons and Nereids. / regard, however, 
as plainly fabulous what is said of their being gifted with 
speech, and the Arabian stories of a species which keep 



TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 221 

the Sabbath j though a writer of a former age, Lodovicus 
Vives, who was not at all given to trifling, confidently asserts 
that they have spoken, and thence concludes that the sea 
contains a generation of real men. ' There are men,' says 
he, 'in the sea as there are on the land — Pliny tells us 
so ; entire men — and I have no doubt of it. One was 
taken twelve years ago in Holland, and seen by many. He 
was kept above two years, and was just beginning to speak, 
when being seized a second time with the plague, he was 
restored to his native element, into which he went leaping 
and rejoicing? But we are to conclude that this marine 
species of man originated with the land species." * 

In the * Persian Tales," a genuine oriental production, 
is a story of a manifest species of Duhlak, or ship-invading 
and boasting man of the sea, which corroborates what 
appeared to Bochart a misinterpretation of the " voice" 
above mentioned. It is drawn in apparent emulation of 
Sindbad's old man, to which it is very inferior, especially 
in the conclusion ; yet the dramatic surprise of his be- 
havior after he gets on board the vessel is startling ; and 
though his boasting is overdone and made of too " know- 
ing " and human a cast, yet when we see that this attribute 
of bullying was part of the popular faith in such beings, the 
narrative acquires additional interest, and has a diminished 
look of impossibility. His impatient stamping, the im- 
penetrability of his skin, and his sticking his claws into 
the vessel when they tried to throw him overboard, are 
also striking circumstances. His face is described a good 
deal after the fashion of the ancient Triton. We shall 
commence the narrative with a few of those introductory 
details, a la Defoe, which give such a look of nature to 

* Bochart, "Opera Omnia," fol., vol. ii., part 2, p. 860. 



222 TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 

these " monstrous lies." The person speaking is " Aboul- 
fauris, the Great Voyager," whose name one repeats with 
involuntary respect for his great beard and truly pro- 
digious experience. 

" Having sailed," says this illustrious personage, "al- 
most round the Isle of Serendib, we entered the Gulf of 
Bengal, which is the greatest gulf in Asia, at the lower 
end of which are the kingdoms of Bengal and Golconda. 
Just as we entered it there rose a violent storm of wind, 
the like of which had never been seen in those seas. We 
wanted a south wind, and this was a north-west, quite 
contrary to our course for Golconda. We lowered our 
sails, and the seamen did all they could to save the ship, 
which they were at last forced to let drive at the mercy of 
the wind and waves. The storm lasted fifteen days, and 
blew so furiously that we were in that time driven six 
hundred leagues out of our way. We left the long isles 
of Sumatra and Java to our larboard, and the ship drove 
to the strait of the Moluccas, south of the Philippines, 
into a sea unknown to our mariners. The wind changed 
at last and turned to an easterly wind ; it blew pretty 
gently, and great was the joy of the ship's company. But 
their joy did not last long ; 'twas disturbed by an adventure 
which you will hardly believe, it being so very extraor- 
dinary. We were beginning merrily to resume our course, 
and were got to the east point of the island of Java, when, 
not far off, we spied a man quite naked, struggling with 
the waves, and in danger of being swallowed up ; he held 
fast by a plank that kept him up, and made a signal to us 
to come to his assistance. We sent our boat to him out 
of compassion, and found, by experience, that if pity be a 
laudable passion it must be owned that it is also some- 
times very dangerous. The seamen took up the man and 



TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 223 

brought him aboard ; he looked to be about forty years 
old, was of a monstrous shape, had a great head, and 
short, thick, bristly hair. His mouth was excessively 
wide, his teeth long and sharp, his arms nervous, his 
hands large, with a long crooked nail on each finger. His 
eyes, which are not to be forgotten, were like those of a 
tiger ; his nose was fiat, and his nostrils wide. We did 
not at all like his physiognomy, and his mien was such 
that it soon changed our pity into terror. 

" When this man, such as I have described him, appeared 
before Dehaousch, our master, he thus addressed him : 
' My Lord, I owe my life to you, I was at the point of de- 
struction when you came to my assistance. 7 — \ Indeed,' 
replied Dehaousch, ' it would not have been long ere you 
had gone to the bottom, had you not had the good fortune 
to have met with us.' — ' I am not afraid of the sea,' re- 
plied the man, smiling ; 6 I could have lived whole years 
in the water without any inconvenience ; what tormented 
me much more is hunger, which has devoured me these 
twelve hours, for so long it is since I ate any thing, and 
that is a very long while for a man who has so good a 
stomach as I have. Therefore, pray let me have some- 
thing as soon as possible to repair my spirits almost spent 
with such a fasting as I have been forced to keep. You 
need not look for niceties ; I am not. squeamish ; I can 
eat any thing.' 

" We looked at one another very much surprised at his 
discourse, and doubted not that the peril he had been in 
had cracked his brain. Our master was of the same 
mind, and imagining he might want something to eat, he 
ordered meat enough for six hungry stomachs to be set 
before him, and clothes to be brought him for his covering. 
* As for the clothes,' says the stranger, ; I shall not meddle 



224 TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 

with them; I always go naked.' — ' But,' replied Deha- 
ousch, ' decency will not permit that you should stay with 
us in that condition.' The man took him up short — 
4 Oh !' says he, 'you will have time enough to accustom 
yourself to it.' This brutal answer confirmed us in the 
opinion that he had lost his senses. Being sharp-set, he 
was very impatient that he was not served to his mind. 
He stamped with his foot upon the deck, ground his teeth, 
and rolled his eyes so ghastly that he looked both furious 
and menacing. At last what he wanted appeared ; he fell 
upon it with a greediness that surprised us, and though 
there was certainly sufficient for any other six men, he 
despatched it in a moment. 

" When we had cleared the table which had been spread 
for him, he, with an air of authority, bade us bring him 
some more victuals. Dehaousch, being resolved to try 
how much this devouring monster could really swallow, 
ordered he should be obeyed. The table was spread 
as before, and as much victuals again set before him ; but 
this second service lasted him no longer than the first — 
it was gone in a moment We thought, however, he would 
stop there, but we were mistaken, he demanded more meat 
still ; upon which one of the slaves aboard the ship, going 
up to this brute, was about to chastise him for his inso- 
lence, which the other observing prevented, laying his 
two paws upon his shoulders, fixing his nails in his flesh 
and tearing him to pieces. In an instant fifty sabres were 
drawn to revenge this dreadful murder ; every one pressed 
forward to strike him and chastise his insolence, but they 
very soon found to their terror that the skin of their 
enemy was as impenetrable as adamant ; their sabres 
broke, and their edges turned without so much as raising 
the skin. Though he received no hurt by their blows, 



TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 225 

they did not strike him with impunity ; he took one of the 
most forward of his assailants, and with amazing strength 
tore him to pieces before our eyes. 

fi When we found our sabres were useless, and that we 
could not wound him, we threw ourselves upon him to 
endeavor to fling him into the sea, but we could not stir 
him. Besides his huge limbs and prodigious nerve, he 
stuck his crooked nails in the timber of the deck, and 
stood as immovable as a rock in the midst of the waves. 
He was so far from being afraid of us that he said with a 
sullen smile, ' You have taken the wrong course, friends, 
you will fare much better by obeying me ; I have tamed 
more indocile people than you. I declare if you continue 
to oppose my will, I will serve you all as your two com- 
panions have been served.' 

"These words made our blood freeze in our veins. We 
a third time set a large quantity of provisions before him, 
he fell aboard it, and one would have thought by his eating 
that his stomach rather increased than diminished. When 
he saw we were determined to submit he grew good- 
humored. He said he was sorry we had forced him to do 
what he did, and kindly assured us he loved us on account 
of the service we had done him in taking him out of 
the sea, where he should have been starved if he had 
stayed there a few hours longer without succor ; that he 
washed, for our sakes, he could meet with some other ves- 
sel laden with good provisions, because he would throw 
himself aboard it and leave us in quiet. He talked thus 
while he was eating, and laughed and bantered like other 
men, and we should have thought him diverting enough 
had we been in a disposition to relish his pleasantry. At 
the fourth service he gave over, and was two hours with- 
out eating any thing at all. During this excess of sobriety 

15 



226 TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 

he was very familiar in his discourse ; he asked us one 
after another what country we were of, what were our 
customs, and what had been our adventures. We were 
in hopes that the fumes of his victuals he had eaten 
would have got up in his head and made him drowsy ; 
we impatiently expected that sleep would seize him, 
and were resolved to take him napping, and fling him 
into the sea before he had time to look about him. 
This hope of ours was our only resource, for though we 
had great store of provisions aboard, yet, after his rate 
of eating, he would have devoured them all in a very 
little while. But, alas ! in vain did we flatter ourselves 
with these false hopes. The cruel wretch, guessing our 
design, told us he never slept ; that the great quantity 
of victuals he ate repaired the wearisomeness of nature, 
and supplied the want of sleep. 

" To our grief we found what he said was true ; we told 
him long and tedious stories on purpose to lull him asleep, 
but the monster never shut his eyes. He then deplored 
our misfortune, and our master despaired of ever seeing 
Golconda again ; when on a sudden a cloud gathered over 
our heads. We thought at first it was a storm which was 
gathering, and we rejoiced at it ; for there was more hope 
of our safety in a tempest than in the state we were in. 
Our ship might be driven ashore on some island; we 
might save ourselves by swimming ; and by this means be 
delivered from this monster, who doubtless intended to 
devour us when he had eaten up all our provisions. We 
wished, therefore, that a violent storm would overtake us ; 
and, what perhaps never happened before, we prayed to 
heaven to be drowned. However, we were deceived ; 
what we took for a cloud was the greatest rokh that was 
ever seen in those seas. The monstrous bird darted him- 



TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 227 

self on our enemy, who was in the middle of our ship's 
company; and mistrusting nothing, had no time to guard 
himself against such an attack : the rokh seized him by 
his claws, and flew up into the air with his prey, before 
we were aware of it. 

"We then were witnesses of a very extraordinary com- 
bat. The man recollecting himself, and finding he was 
hoisted up in the air between the talons of a winged 
monster, whose strength he made trial of, resolved to de- 
fend himself. He struck his crooked nails into the body 
of the rokh, and setting his teeth to his stomach, began to 
devour him, flesh, feathers, and all. The bird made the 
air resound with his cries, so piercing was his pain ; and 
to be revenged tore out his enemy's eyes with his claws. 
The man, blind as he was, did not give over. He ate the 
heart of the rokh, who, re-collecting all his force at the 
last gasp, struck his beak so forcibly into his enemy's 
head, that they both fell dead into the sea, not many paces 
from our ship's side." * 

In the "Arabian Nights " is an account of a nation who 
live under the sea, but they differ in nothing from men, 
except in their power of so doing, and coming to and fro 
with dry clothes, "as if nothing had happened;" all of 
which is not in the usual fine taste of that work.f 

Of men of the sea, in their connection with the more 
shadowy nation of the Fairies, we have treated elsewhere, 
in a separate article on that people, and therefore say no- 
thing of them here ; and what we might have had to say 
on Mermen has been anticipated, as far as the genus is 



* "Persian Tales; or, the Thousand and One Days. 5 ' Ed. 1800^ vol. ii., 
P- 133. 

t See the story of Prince Beder and the Princess Giauhara. 



228 TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 

concerned, in the paper on " Sirens and Mermaids ; " but 
as we extracted into that paper Mr. Tennyson's poem on 
the female of this genus, we cannot but indulge ourselves 
here with giving his companion-piece. 

THE MERMAN. 

Who would be 
A merman bold, 
Sitting alone i 
Singing alone, 
Under the sea, 
With a crown of gold, 
On a throne ? 
/ would be a merman bold. 
I would sit and sing the whole of the day : 

/ would fill the sea-halls with a voice of power ; 
But at night I would roam abroad and play 
With the mermaids in and out of the rocks, 

Dressing their hair with the white sea-flower ; 
A nd, holding them back by their flowing locks, 
I would kiss than often under the sea, 
A nd kiss them again, till they kissed me, 
Laughingly, laughingly. 
And then we would wander away, away, 
To the pale-green sea-groves, straight and high, 
Chasing each other merrily. 

There would be neither moon nor star ; 

But the wave would make music above us afar — 

Low thunder and light in the magic night — 

Neither moon nor star. 
We would call aloud in the dreamy dells, — 
Call to each other, and whoop and cry 

All night merrily, merrily. 
They would pelt me with starry spangles and shells, 
Laughing and clapping their hands between, 

All night merrily, merrily. 
But I would throw to them back in mine 
Turkis, and agate, and almondine ; 
Then leaping out upon them unseen, 



TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 22Q 

/ would kiss them often under the sea, 
A nd kiss them again, till they kissed me, 

Laughingly, laughingly. 
Oh ! what a happy life were mine, 
Under the hollow-hung ocean green I 
Soft are the moss-beds under the sea : 
We would live merrily, merrily. 

The most charming story connected with beings of the 
sea is that of Acis and Galatea ; the most wildly touching, 
that of the Neck, or Scandinavian Water-spirit, who wept 
when he was told he would not be "saved " (related in the 
fairy article above mentioned) ; the sublimest is the fa- 
mous one of the voice which announced the death of the 
" Great Pan." Plutarch relates it, in his essay on the 
" Cessation of Oracles," upon the authority of one Philip- 
pus, who said he had it from the hearer's own son, and who 
was corroborated in his report by several persons present. 
The original narrator alluded to gave the account as fol- 
lows.* He said, "that, during a voyage to Italy, the 
wind fell in the night-time, as they were nearing the Echi- 
nades ; and that, while almost all the people on board 
were on the watch, a great voice was heard from the 
Island of Paxos, calling upon one of them of the name of 
Thamnus ; which voice, for the novelty of the thing, 
excited them all to great astonishment." This Thamnus 
was an Egyptian, and master of the vessel. He was twice 
called and gave no answer. He was called a third time, 
and then he acknowledged the call ; upon which the voice, 
with much greater loudness than before, cried out, " When 
you come to the Marsh, announce that the Great Pan is 
dead," a command which struck all the listeners with 
terror. 



* We quote from Gesner, as above, p. 1198. 



23O TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 

Accordingly, when they arrived off the Marsh, Thamnus, 
looking out from his rudder towards the land, cried, with 
a loud voice, " The Great Pan is dead ; " upon which there 
was suddenly heard a mighty groaning, as of many voices — 
" yea, of voices innumerable, all wonderfully mixed up 
together." And because there were many people in that 
ship, as soon as they came to Rome the rumor was spread 
through the whole city, and the Emperor Tiberius sent for 
Thamnus, and was so struck with his relation, that he 
applied to the philosophers to know what Pan it could be ; 
and the conjecture was that it must be the Pan who was 
the son of Mercury and Penelope. 

The announcement of the death of Pan was awkward ; 
for Pan signifies all, and was the most universal of the 
gods ; but luckily, by the help of the Platonists and others, 
every god was surrounded with minor intelligences of the 
same name, after the fashion of a Scottish clan ; so that 
the philosophers found a god convenient for the occasion 
in this particular Pan, the offspring of Mercury and Pen- 
elope. It has been supposed that the story was a trick to 
frighten the vicious and superstitious emperor, which is 
not very likely. There is no authority, beyond Plutarch's 
report, who lived long after, and was very credulous, for 
the story itself ; and if a voice was actually heard, it does 
not follow that it said those exact words, or that the sub- 
sequent delivery of the message produced any thing more 
than a fancied acknowledgment. A sceptic at court might 
have resolved it into some common message, perhaps 
a watchword : perhaps some smugglers meant to tell 
their correspondent that " all was up with them ! " Jok- 
ing and scepticism apart, however, the story is a fine 
one ; so much so, that it is surprising Milton did not 
make a more particular allusion to it in his noble juvenile 



GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 23 1 

ode on the " Nativity," where he speaks of the voices 
heard at the cessation of the oracles : — 

" The lonely mountains o'er, 

And the resounding shore, 

A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament" 




ON GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 

"T would be difficult to find an early national 
history without a giant in it. Any thing great 
in its effects, and supposed not to be very 
tender-hearted, was a giant. A violent set 
of neighbors were giants. An opposer of the 
gods was a giant, and threw mountains at them instead 
of sceptical essays. Evil genii were gigantic. The same 
Persian word came to signify a giant, a devil, and a magi- 
cian. An older word, in the Persian language, meaning a 
giant, gave its name to the ancient dynasty of the Caian- 
ides. Kings, in ancient times, when physical more than 
moral dignity was in request, were sometimes chosen on 
account of their stature. Agamemnon is represented as 
taller, by the head and shoulders, than any man in his 
army ; and probably it was as much on account of his 
height as his other supremacy that he was called Anax 
Andron, King of Men. An etymologist would even see 
in the word Anax a resemblance to the Anakites of Scrip- 
ture. It is remarkable that Virgil, in his " Elysium," has 
given the old poet Musaeus a similar superiority over his 
brethren ; as if every kind of power in the early ages was 
associated with that of body. Moral enormity was natu- 
rally typified by physical. "It may be observed," says 



232 GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 

Mr. Hole, " that a giant, in Arabic or Persian fables, is 
commonly a negro or infidel Indian, as he is in our old 
romances a Saracen Paynim, a votary of Mahound and 
Termagaunt." — " Were the negroes authors," he pleasant- 
ly adds, " they would probably characterize their giants by 
whiskers and turbans ; or by hats, wigs, and a pale com- 
plexion." * 

In like manner, if the English wrote allegorical story- 
books nowadays, the oppressive lord or magistrate would 
be a giant. Fierce upholders of the old game-laws would 
be monsters of the woods, that devoured a man if he dared 
to touch one of their rabbits. " In books of chivalry," 
says Bishop Hurd, "the giants were oppressive feudal 
lords ; and every lord was to be met with, like the giant, 
in his stronghold or castle. Their dependants of the 
lower form, who imitated the violence of their superiors, 
and had not their castles, but their lurking places, were 
the savages of romance. The greater lord was called a 
giant, for his power ; the less, a savage for his brutality. 
All this is shadowed out of the Gothic tales, and some- 
times expressed in plain words. The objects of the 
knight's vengeance go indeed by the various names of 
giants, paynims, Saracens, and savages. But of what 
family they all are, is clearly seen from the poet's de- 
scription : — 

' What, mister wight, quoth he, and how far hence 
Is he, that doth to travellers such harmes ? 
He is, said he, a man of great defence, 
Expert in battell and in deedes of armes ; 
And more emboldened by the wicked charmes 
With which his daughter doth him still support : 
Having great lordships got and goodly farmes 

* " Remarks on the Arabian Nights' Entertainments," p. 80. 



GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 233 

Through strong oppression of his powre extort ; 

By which he still them holds, and keeps with strong effort. 

And dayly he his wrongs encreaseth more, 

For never wight he lets to pass that wave 

Over his bridge, albee he rich or poore, 

But he him makes his passage-penny pave ; 

Else he doth hold him backe or beate awaye. 

Thereto he hath a groom of evil guise, 

Whose scalp is bare, that bondage doth bewraye, 

Which pols and pils the pocre in piteous wise, 

But he himself upon the rich doth tyrannise.' 

"Here," says the Bishop, "we have the great oppressive 
baron very graphically set forth. And the groom of evil 
guise is as plainly the baron's vassal. The romancers, we 
see, took no great liberty with these respectable person- 
ages, when they called the one a giant, and the other a 
savage." * 

That men of gigantic stature have existed here and 
there, we have had testimony in our own days. Some of 
them, probably not the tallest, have been strong. The 
others are weak and ill-formed, like children that have 
outgrown their strength. Whether giants ever existed as 
a body is still a question. The Patagonians of Commodore 
Byron have come down to a reasonable stature ; and the 
bones that used to be exhibited as proofs undeniable 
of enormous men, turn out to be those of the mammoth 
and the elephant. But this is the prose of gigantology. 
In poetry they are still alive and stalking. 

The earliest giants were monstrous as well as huge. 
Those that warred with the gods, and heaped Ossa upon 
Pelion, had a multitude of heads and arms, with serpents 
instead of legs. Typhon, the evil principle, the dreadful 
wind (still known in the East under the same name, the 

* Todd's " Spenser,'" vol. vi. p. 7. 



234 GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 

Tifoon), had dragons, instead of human heads, and out of 
each of them threw the shriek of a different animal. En- 
celadus was thrust under Mount Etna, from which he still 
vomits fire and smoke, and when he turns his side there 
is an earthquake. Otus and Ephialtes grew nine inches a 
month, and at nine years old made their campaign against 
the gods. Now and then a giant undertook to be more 
courtly and pious. When Juno, Neptune, and Minerva 
conspired to dethrone Jupiter, Briareus went up into 
heaven, and seating himself on his right hand, looked so 
very shocking that the deities were fain to desist. 

There is a confusion of the giants with the Titans, but 
their wars were different. Those of the Titans were against 
Ccelus and Saturn ; the giants warred against Jupiter. 
They were also of a different nature, the Titans being of 
proper celestial origin, whereas the birth of the giants was 
as monstrous as their shapes. As to the great stature of 
the Titans, all the gods were gigantic. It was only in 
their visits to earth that they accommodated themselves 
to human size, and then not in their wars. One of the 
noblest uses ever made of this association of bodily size 
with divine power is in " Paradise Lost," where Milton, 
in one of those passages in which his theology is as weak 
and perplexed as his verse is powerful, makes Abdiel say 
to the leader of the infernal armies, — 

" Fool ! not to think how vain 
Against the Omnipotent to rise in arms ; 
Who out of smallest things could without end 
Have raised incessant armies to defeat 
Thy folly ; or with solitary hand 
Reaching beyond all limit, at one blow, 
Unaided, could have finished thee, and whelm'd 
Thy legions under darkness." 

"Solitary hand," says Bishop Newton, "means his 



GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 235 

single hand." Oh no ! it is much finer than that. It 
means his hand, visibly alone, — with nothing round about 
it, — solitary in the great space of existence. It stretches 
out into the ether, dashing, at one blow, a great host into 
nothing ; then draws back into heaven, and there is a 
silence as if existence itself were annihilated. 

The Cyclops is a variety of the giant monstrous. He 
has one eye, and is a man-eater. Mr, Bryant, who, in his 
"Elements of Ancient Mythology," amidst a heap of wild 
and gratuitous assumptions, has some ingenious conject- 
ures, is of opinion that a Cyclops was a watch-tower, with 
a round window in it showing a light, and that by the 
natural progress of fable the tower became a man. If the 
light however was for good purposes, the charge of man- 
eating is against the opinion. The Cyclopes, a real people, 
who left the old massy specimens of architecture, called 
after their name, are said to have been in the habit of 
carrying shields with an eye painted on them, or wore 
visors with a hole to see through. But these conjectures 
are not necessary to our treatise. The proper, huge, can- 
nibal giant, the Fee-faw-fum of antiquity, is our monster. 
Homer, who wandered about the world, and took marvels 
as they came, has painted him in all his cruelty. Theoc- 
ritus, writing pastorals at the court of Ptolemy, and more 
of a " sweet Signior," found out a refinement for him, 
which, to say the truth, is superior to jesting, and has 
touched a chord which the inventor of the character of 
Hector would have admired. He made Polyphemus in 
love ; and we are sorry for the monster, and wish Galatea 
to treat him with as much tenderness as is compatible 
with her terrors.* His discovery of his forlorn condition, 

* Those who wish to know how music can express a giant's misery con- 



236 GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 

his fear that his senses are forsaking him, and his eager- 
ness to suppose that he is not altogether alien to humanity, 
because the village girls, when he speaks to them from his 
mountain at night-time, laughed at him, render him no 
longer a monstrosity odious, but a difference pitiable.* 

There is a Polyphemus in the story of " Sindbad " so like 
Homer's, that the ingenious author of the " Remarks on 
the Arabian Nights' Entertainments " pronounces it to be 
copied from him. Homer, however, might have copied it 
from the Orientals. He might have heard it from Eastern 
traders, granting it was unknown to the Greeks before. 
The wanderings of Ulysses imply a compilation of wonders 
from all parts of the world. The Greeks, except in this 
instance, appear to have had no idea of a nation of giants. 
Even Polyphemus they mixed up with their mythology, 
making him a son of Neptune. On the other hand, the 
grandiosity of the Orientals supplied them with giants in 
abundance, and Sir John Mandeville had no need, as Mr. 
Hole imagines, to go to Virgil and Ovid for his descrip- 
tions of huge monsters, eating men as they go, " all raw 
and all quicke." 

Ariosto, in the seventeenth book of his great poem, has 
a Polyphemus with two projecting bones, instead of eyes, 
of the color of fungus. This is very ghastly. He calls 



trasted with the happiness of two innocent lovers, should hear the serenata 
of "Acis and Galatea," by Handel, the giant of the orchestra. 

('• Where giant Handel stands, 

Arm'd, like Briareus, with his hundred hands." — Pope.) 

The terrible intonations of Polyphemus in his despair, with those lovely un- 
weeting strains of the happy pair immediately issuing out upon them, " Ere I 
forsake my love," &c, offer perhaps the finest direct piece of contrast in the 
whole circle of music. 

* Theocritus, " Idyll." xi. v. 72. 



GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 237 

him an orco, that is to say, an ogre. Ogre, whether de- 
rived from the Latin orcus, or from Oigour (a tribe of 
Tartars), or Hongrois, or Hungarian,* is a man-eater; 
and orco appears to be the same, though not confined to 
the man-monster. The same poet, in his rifacimento of 
the story of Andromeda (canto 10), calls the fish an ore; 
and the word is used in a like sense in our elder poetry. 
Ariosto's Polyphemus (for he gives him a cavern, sheep, 
&c, exactly like those of the old Cyclops) has no sight 
at all with those horrible goggles of his. An exquisite 
sense of smelling supplies the want of it ; and he comes 
running upon his prey, dipping his nose towards the 
ground. 

" Mentre aspettiamo, in gran piacer sedendo, 
Che da caccia ritorni il signor nostro, 
Vedemmo l'orco a noi venir correndo 
Lungo il lito del mar, terribil mostro. 
Dio vi guardi, signor, che '1 viso orrendo 
De l'orco a gli occhi mai vi sia dimostro. 
Meglio e per fama aver notiza d'esso, 
Ch' andargli, si che lo veggiate, appresso. 

" Non si puo compartir quanto sia lungo, 
Si smisuratamente e tutto grosso. 
In luogo d' occhi, di color di fungo 
Sotto la fronte ha due coccole d'osso. 
Verso noi vien, come vi dico, lungo 
II lito : e par ch'un monticel sia mosso. 
Mostra le zanne fuor, come fa il porco : 
Ha lungo il naso, e'l sen bavoso e sporco. 

" Correndo viene, e'l muso a guisa porta 
Che'l braccio suol, quando entra in su la traccia. 
Tutti che lo veggiam, con faccia smorta 
In fugo andiamo ove il timor ne caccia. 



See " Fair)' Mythology," vol. ii. 



238 GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 

Poco il veder lui cieco ne conforta ; 
Quando fiutando sol par che piu faccia, 
Ch 'altri non fa ch 'abbia odorato e lume : 
E bisogno al fuggire eran le piume." 

While thus we sat, prepared for mirth and glee, 
Waiting the king's appearance from the chase, 
Suddenly, to our horror, by the sea, 
We saw the ogre coming towards the place. 
God keep you, Sir, in his benignity, 
From setting eyes on such a dreadful face ! 
Better, by far, of such things to be told, 
Than see a sight to make a man turn old. 

I cannot tell you his immeasured size, 
So huge he was, and of a bulk throughout. 
Upon his horrid front, instead of eyes, 
Two bony roundels, fungus-hued, stuck out. 
Thus, like the only thing 'twixt earth and skies, 
He came along ; and under his brute snout 
Tusks he put forth, bared like the boar's in wrath ; 
And his huge breast was filthy with a froth. 

Running he comes, projecting towards the ground 

His loathly muzzle, dog-like, on the scent. 

With ashy faces we arise, and bound, 

Fast as we can, before the dire intent. 

Small comfort to us was his blindness found ; 

Since with his smelling only as he bent, 

More sure he seem'd than creatures that have sight ; 

And wings alone could match him for a flight. 

The poverty-stricken propriety of Mr. Hoole regarded 
these circumstances as "puerilities." He ventured to 
turn Ariosto's wine into water, and then judged him in 
his unhappy sobriety. Mr. Hoole was not man enough to 
play the child with a great southern genius. Ariosto's 
poem is a microcosm, which sees fair-play to all the circles 
of imagination, at least to all such as are common to men 
in their ordinary state ; and he did not omit those that 



GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 239 

include childhood, and that, in some measure, are never 
forgotten by us. This literally construed, is in high epic 
taste, as much so as the homely similes of the Iliad and 
the Odyssey. We should be thankful, for our parts, to an 
epic poet who could manage to introduce the big-headed 
and bushy-haired ogres of our own story-books, with the 
little ogres, their children, all with crow r ns on their heads. 
We sympathize with the hand of the diminutive " gigant- 
icide," who felt them as they lay in their grim slumber, 
all in a row. Was this, by the way, a satire on royalty ? 
It is an involuntary one. The giant Gargantua, in " Rabe- 
lais," who ate three men in a salad was a king. 

Several of Spenser's allegorical personages are giants. 
The allegory is incidental, and helps to vary the individual 
character; but otherwise the bodily pictures are complete 
specimens of the giants of chivalry. One of them is 
Disdain — 

" Who did disdain 
To be so called, and whoso did him call." 

Of another giant, of the same name, he tells us that 

" His lookes were dreadfull, and his fiery eies, 
Like two great beacons, glared bright and wyde, 
Glauncing askew, as if his enemies 
He scorned in his overweening pryde ; 
And stalking stately, like a crane, did stryde 
At every step upon the tiptoes hie ; 
And all the way he went, on every syde 
He gaz'd about, and stared horriblie, 
As if he with his looks would all men terrifie. 

" He wore no armour, ne for none did care, 
As no whit dreading any living wight ; 
But in a jacket, quilted richly rare 
Upon checklaton,* he was straungely dight, 

* Checklatoun (Fr. ciclatoun) is supposed to be intended by Spenser foi 
cloth of gold. 



24O GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 

And on his head a roll of linnen plight, 
Like to the Moors of Malaber, he wore, 
With which his lockes, as black as pitchy night, 
Were bound about and voyded from before ; 
And in his hand a mighty yron club he bore." 

Faerie Queene, Bookvi., Canto vii. 

A third great giant is Orgoglio (or Pride), a good swal- 
lowing name. A knight is enjoying himself with his mis- 
tress, when suddenly he hears 

" A dreadful sownd, 
Which through the wood loud bellowing did rebownd, 
That ali the earth for terror seemed to shake, 
And trees did tremble. Th' Elfe, therewith astownd, 
Upstarted lightly from his looser make, 
And his unready weapons gan in hand to take. 

" But ere he could his armour on him dight, 
Or get his shield, his monstrous enimy 
With sturdie steps came stalking in his sight, 
An hideous giant, horrible and hye ; 
The grownd all groned under him for dread. ' r 

Orgoglio has a 

" Dreadful club 
All arm'd with ragged snubbes and knottie grain.''' 

With this, in a battle with Prince Arthur, he aims a ter- 
rible blow, which, missing him — 

" Did fall to ground, and with his heavy sway, 
So deeply dented in the driven clay, 
That three yardes deep a furrow up did throw. 
The sad earth, wounded with so sore essay, 
Did groan full grievous underneath the blow, 
And trembling with strange feare, did like an earthquake shew." 

Then follows one of the noblest similes ever produced. 
Upton says that Longinus would have written a whole 
chapter upon it : — 



GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 241 

" As when Almightie Jove, in wrathful mood, 
To wreake the guilt of mortal sins is bent, 
Hurls forth his thund'ring dart with deadly food, 
Enroll'd in flames and smouldering dreriment, 
Through riven clouds and molten firmament : 
The fierce three-forked engine, making way, 
Both loftie towres and highest trees hath rent, 
And all that might his angry passage stay ; 
And, shooting in the earth, castes up a mount of clay." 

Book i. Canto viii. 

Spenser writes the word variously — giant, gyaunt, and 
geaunt ; for no man had a stronger sense of words as the 
expressions of things, nor delighted more to call in every 
aid to the emphasis and conscious enjoyment of what he 
was writing. His very rhymes are often spelled in an arbi- 
trary manner, to enforce the sound ; and he tells a dread- 
ful story with all the shuddering epithets, and lingering, 
fearful fondness of a child. 

Take another of his giants — one Corflambo, whose 
eyes are very new and terrible : — 

" At length they spied where towards them with speed 
A squire came galloping, as he would flie, 
Bearing a little dwarfe before his steed, 
That all the way full loud for aide did crie, 
That seem'd his shrikes would rend the brasen side : 
Whom after did a mightie man pursew, 
Riding upon a dromedare on hie, 
Of stature huge, and horrible of hew, 
That would have mazed a man his dreadfull face to view : 

For from his fearfulle eyes twofierie Beames, 
More sharpe than points of needles, did proceede, 
Shooting forth farre awaye two flaming streames, 
Full of sad powre, that poysnous bale did breede 
To all that on him lookt without good heed, 
And secretly his enemies did slay : 
Like as the basiliske, of serpent's seede, 
From powrefull eyes close venim doth convay 
Into the looker's hart, and kUleth farre aivayp 

Book iv. Canto viii. 
16 



242 GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 

This Corflambo is another good name. The names of 
the giants in the beautiful romance of " Amadis of Gaul " — 
(superior, undoubtedly, to " Palmerin of England," though 
the latter also is delightful for its bits of color, and its 
green and flowery places) — are very bulky, and " talk big." 
There is Gandalac and Albadanger ; and Madanfabul, 
of the Vermilion Tower; and Gromadaga, the Giantess 
of the Boiling Lake ; and Ardan Canileo, the Dreadful ; 
and above all, the mighty and most mouthing Famongom- 
adan, who seems to inform his enemies that he means to 
flame and gobble ''em, Gandalac makes the least oral 
pretensions ; and " he was not so wicked as other giants, 
but of a good and gentle demeanor, except when he was 
enraged, and then would he do great cruelties." * But he 
was very terrible. He was " so large and mismade, that 

* See the excellent version of Mr. Southey, vol. i., p. 37. 

[" Amadis of Gaul " and " Palmerin of England " were among Don Quixote's 
favorite romances of chivalry. He and the curate used to dispute long and 
learnedly as to who was the better knight, Palmerin of England or Amadis of 
Gaul. 

Bernardo Tasso, father of the poet, translated " Amadis de Gaul " into 
Italian ; and Tasso himself, as quoted by Ticknor, says that the " Amadis " 
"is the most beautiful, and perhaps the most profitable, story of its kind that 
can be read, because in its sentiments and tone it leaves all others behind 
it, and in the variety of its incidents yields to none written before or since>" 
Sir Philip Sidney says he had known men " made better and braver by its 
perusal. " According to Burton, the work was a favorite among the English 
gentry of the seventeenth century. Southey's version of u Amadis of Gaul" 
was published by Longman in 1803, and was the subject of Sir Walter Scott's 
first contribution to the " Edinburgh Review." " Amadis is an extraordinary 
book," wrote Southey, in a letter to Miss Barker (the Bhow Begum of 
" The Doctor ") ; " and now the job is done, I am glad I undertook it. . . . 
I have a sort of family love for Vasco Loberia, more than for Ariosto or Mil- 
ton, approaching to what I feel for Spenser; and certainly, when I get to 
heaven, he will be one of the very first persons to whom I shall desire to be 
introduced." — Ed.] 



GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 243 

never man saw him without affright ; " and when he makes 
his appearance in Chapter IV., " the women ran, some 
among the trees and others fell down, and shut their eyes, 
that they might not see him." 

By degrees, as men found out that a gigantic stature 
did not always imply strength, or even courage, they be- 
gan to change their fear into contempt, and to laugh, like 
children, at the great bugbear that had amazed them. At 
length, they discovered that a giant could even be good- 
natured ; and then the more philosophical romancers 
thought it necessary to do them justice. Hence the pleas- 
ant, mock-heroical giant of Pulci, and the amiable one 
(Dramuziando) of " Palmerin of England." Being no 
longer formidable, however, they were for the most part 
found to be dull and awkward, probably not without some 
ground in nature. It is observed, says Fuller (or in some 
such language), that, for the most part, those who exceed 
their fellows in a reasonable measure of height "are 
but indifferently furnished in the cockloft." * The little 
knights have as much advantage over them in battle, as 
the light brigantines had against the overgrown Spanish 
Armada. Our nursery acquaintance, Jack the Giant 
Killer (if he be not a burlesque on Thor himself), is an 
incarnation of the superior strength of wit over bulkiness. 
He has a cousin a monstrous giant, having three heads, 
and who would beat five hundred men in armor. On one 
occasion, Jack comes to a large house in a lonesome place, 
and knocking at the gate, there issues forth a giant with 
two heads, who nevertheless " did not seem so riery as 
the former giant ; for," says the Saxon author, " he was a 
Welsh giant." 

* Fuller's exact words are : " Ofttimes such who are built four stories 
high, are observed to have little in their cockloft." — Ed. 



344 GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 

In the opening book of the " Morgante Maggiore " of 
Pulci, the father of modern banter and burlesque (though 
a genius at the same time, capable of great seriousness 
and pathos), there is a remarkable scene, in which Orlando 
comes upon a set of monks in a desert, who are pestered 
by three giants, their neighbors. The giants, who are of 
course infidels or Mahometans, are in the habit of throw- 
ing great stones at the abbey, so that the monks cannot go 
out for provisions. Orlando, in his errantry, comes to the 
abbey door, and knocks for some time in vain. At length 
he is let in, and the abbot apologizes, by stating the block- 
ade in which they are kept. The holy father then proceeds 
to make some very singular comments, in a stanza that 
seems to contain the first germs of the style of Voltaire. 

" Gli antichi padri nostri nel deserto, 
Se le lor opre sante erano e giuste, 
Del ben servir da Dio n'avean buon merto ; 
Ne creder sol viversin di loctiste : 
Piovea dal ciel la manna, q-uesto e certo : 
Ma qui convien, che spesso assagi e guste 
Sassi, che piovon di sopra quel monte, 
Che gettano Alabastro e Passamonte. 

" E'l terzo ch'e Morgante pio fiero, 

Isveglie e pini, e faggi, e cerri, e gli oppi, 
E gettagli infin qui : questo e pur vero : 
Non posso far che d'ira non iscoppi. 
Mentre che parlan cosi in cimitero, 
Un sasso par che Rondel quasi sgroppi ; 
Che da giganti giu. venne da alto 
Tanto, ch'e prese sotto il tetto un salto. 

" Tirati dentro, cavalier, per Dio, 
Disse l'abate, che la manna casca. 
Rispose Orlando : caro abate mio, 
Costui non vuol che '1 mio caval piu pasca : 
Veggo che lo guarebbe del restio : 
Quel sasso par che di buon braccio nasca. 



GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 245 

Rispose il santo padre ; io non t'inganno, 
Credo che V mo?ite un giorno gitteranno" 

" The Eremites of old, if just and true, 
And righteous in their works, had blessed cheer ; 
God's servants in those days no hunger knew, 
Nor lived on those same locusts all the year. 
Doubt not, they had the rain of manna too : 
But as for us, our pretty dishes here 
A re stones ; which Passamont and Alabaster 
Rain down upon our heads, by way of taster. 

" And yet those two are nothing to the third. 
He tears me up whole trees, whole horrid oaken 
Trunks by the root ; he does upon my word ; 
Our heads infallibly will all be broken." 
While thus, as if he could be overheard, 
The monk stood talking low, there came a token 
So close upon the house, it seem'd all over 
With the poor devil, who leap'd under cover. 

" For God's sake, come in doors, Sir ! " cried the priest ; 
" The manna's falling." " 'Tis indeed," said t'other: 
" They seem to grudge his feed to the poor beast ; 

They'd cure his restiveness. Well, such another 

Stunner as this proves no weak arm at least, 

No son, dear abbot, of a feeble mother." 

" The Lord,'' exclaimed the monk, " look down upon us ! 

Some day, I think, they'll cast the mountain on us." 

Orlando proposes to go and settle the giant ; which the 
monk, after in vain endeavoring to dissuade him, permits. 

" Disse l'abate col segnarlo in fronte, — 
Va, che da Dio e me sia benedetto. 
Orlando, poi che salito ebbe il monte 
Si dirizzo, come l'abate detto 
Gli avea, dove sta quel Passamonte ; 
II quale Orlando veggendo soletto 
Molto lo squadra di drieto e davante ; 
Poi domando, se star volea per fante. 

" E' promettava di farlo godere. 
Orlando disse ; pazzo Saracino, 



246 GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 

Io vengo a te, com' e di Dio volere, 
Per dar ti morte, e non per ragazzino. 
A'monaci suoi fatto ha dispiacere : 
Non puo piu comportarti, can mastino. 
Questo gigante armar si corse a furia, 
Quando senti ch' e'gli diceva ingiuria." 

He cross'd the forehead of the knight, and said, 
" Go then, of God, and of our prayers befriended." 
Orlando went, and keeping in his head 
The monk's directions, hastily ascended 
The height, and struck for Passamonte's shed, 
Who seeing him thus coming unattended, 
Perused him well, then cried, " I like his plan ! 
What, my new footboy? eh, my little man? " 

And then he promised him his board and pallet. 
" You stupid Saracen ! " Orlando cried, 
" I come to be your death, and not your valet ; 

Think of these saints here, whom you keep inside 

Their abbey : 'tisn't to be borne, nor shall it, 

You hound, you ; so prepare your stupid hide." 

The giant, hearing him pour forth such evil, 

Ran in to arm him, like a very devil. 

The hero kills Alabaster and Passamonte, and converts 
Morgante, who was prepared for him by a dream. The 
giant becomes a faithful servant, both of the knight and 
the church, and after many enormous achievements, dies 
of the bite of a crab ; — an edifying moral. His conversa- 
tion, in the course of his studies in divinity, is no less 
instructive ; but we are at a loss how to quote it, from the 
reverential feelings we have for certain names, whose mis- 
use he helps to expose. We would fain see them kept 
sacred against better days. There is another giant, Mar- 
gutte, who speaks still more plainly, and is the prototype 
of a worldly philosophy, the natural offspring of a profaner 
superstition. " Margutte," says Ugo Foscolo, " is a very 
infidel giant, ready to confess his failings, and full of droll- 



GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 247 

ery. He sets all a-laughing, readers, giants, devils, and 
heroes, and he finishes his career by laughing till he 
bursts." * 

We do not choose, however, to leave off speaking of 
our old friends with a burlesque ; and, therefore, we shall 
conclude the present chapter with a few right earnest 
giants out of the " History of Prince Arthur." A jest 
cracked by that hero upon one of them is no joke infidel. 
It is only, as the poet says, " the ornament of his gravity." 
Arthur, in a battle with the Emperor of Rome, smites off 
by the knees the legs of a giant of the name of Galapar. 
"Now," quoth he, " art thou better of a size to deal with, 
than thou wert." The Emperor of Rome had got together 
fifty giants, who were " born of fiends," to break the front 
of the warriors' battle. But a chapter in that once popular 
compilation will present the reader with the complete giant 
of the old story-books. The style of the work is incorrect. 
The compiler pieces out the fine things of the old romances 
with a poverty of language that is a poor substitute for 
their simplicity ; but the present extract is " a favorable 
specimen ; " and the repetitions, and other gossiping fer- 
vors, have the proper childlike effect. We ascend the 
giant's mountain by due degrees. The picture of him, 
"baking his broad limbs by the fire," is in sturdy epic 
taste ; and " the weltering and wallowing " of the fighters 
does not mince the matter. There is a Cornish hug in the 
battle.f 



* See a masterly criticism in the "Quarterly Review," said to be trans- 
lated from a contribution of this gentleman, and entitled " Narrative and 
Romantic Poems of the Italians." 

t Fuller, in the " Worthies," gives this definition of a Cornish hug: " The 
Cornish are masters of the art of wrestling ; so that if the Olympian games 
were now in fashion, they would come away with victory. Their hug is a 



248 GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 

"HOW a man of the country told him of a mar- 
vellous GIANT, AND HOW HE FOUGHT AND CON- 
QUERED HIM. 

" Then came to him a husbandman of the country, and 
told him how there was, in the country of\Constantine, 
beside Britain, a great giant, which had slain, murthered, 
and devoured much people of the country, and had been 
sustained seven years with the children of the commons of 
that land, insomuch that all the children be all slain and 
destroyed. And now late he hath taken the Duchess of 
Brittany, as she rode with her men, and had led her to his 
lodging, which is in a mountain : and many people followed 
her, more than five hundred ; but all they might not rescue 
her, but they left her shrieking and crying lamentably ; 
wherefore I suppose that he hath slain her in fulfilling his 
foul lust ; she was wife unto your cousin, Sir Howel, the 
which was full nigh of your blood. Now, as ye are a right- 
ful king, have pity on this lady, and revenge us all as ye 
are a valiant conqueror. 

"'Alas!' said King Arthur, 'this is a great mischief ; 
I had rather than the best realm that I have that I had 
been a furlong before him, for to have rescued that lady. 
Now, fellow,' said King Arthur, 'canst thou bring me 
there whereas this giant haunteth ? ' 

" ' Yea, Sir,' said the good man : 6 lo, yonder whereas ye 
see the two great fires, there shall ye not fail to find him, 
and more treasure, as I suppose, than is in all the realm of 
France.' 

" When King Arthur had understood this piteous case, 



cunning close with their fellow-combatant; the fruit whereof is his fair fall, 01 
foil at the least. It is figuratively applicable to the deceitful dealing of such, 
who secretly design their overthrow whom they openly embrace." — Ed. 



GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 249 

he returned into his tent, and called unto him Sir Kaye 
and Sir Bedivere, and commanded them secretly to make 
ready horse and harness for himself, and for them twain ; 
for after evensong he would ride on pilgrimage, with them 
two only, unto Saint Miguel's Mount. And then anon 
they made them ready, and armed them at all points, and 
took their horses and their shields ; and so they three 
departed thence, and rode forth as fast as they might, till 
they came unto the furlong of that mount, and there they 
alighted, and the king commanded them to tarry there, 
and said he would himself go up to that mount. 

" And so he ascended ^up the mount till he came to a 
great fire, and there found he a careful widow wringing 
her hands and making great sorrow, sitting by a grave new 
made. And then King Arthur saluted her, and demanded 
her wherefore she made such lamentation. Unto whom 
she answered and said, ' Sir Knight, speak soft, for yonder 
is a devil ; if he hear thee speak he will come and destroy 
thee. I hold thee unhappy : what dost thou here in this 
mountain ? for if ye were such fifty as ye be, ye were not 
able to make resistance against this devil : here lieth a 
duchess dead, which was the fairest lady of the world, 
wife unto Sir Howel of Britain.' 

" ' Dame,' said the King, ' I come from the great con- 
queror, King Arthur, for to treat with that tyrant for his 
liege people.' 

" ' Fie upon such treaties,' said the widow ; c he setteth 
nought by the King, nor by no man else ; but and if thou 
hath brought King Arthur's wife, Dame Guenever, he 
shall be gladder than if thou hadst given him half France. 
Beware ; approach him not too nigh ; for he hath over- 
come and vanquished fifteen kings, and hath made him a 
coat full of precious stones, embroidered with their beards, 



250 GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 

which they sent him to have his love for salvation of their 
people this last Christmas, and if thou wilt speak with 
him at yonder great fire, he is at supper.' 

" ' Well,' said King. Arthur, ' I will accomplish my mes- 
sage for all your fearful words,' and went forth by the crest 
of that hill, and saw where he sat at supper gnawing on a 
limb of a man, baking his broad limbs by the fire, and 
breechless, and three damsels turning three broaches, 
whereon was broached twelve young children, late born, 
like young birds. 

" When King Arthur beheld that piteous sight, he had 
great compassion on them, so that his heart bled for sor- 
row, and hailed him, saying in this wise : ' He that all 
the world wieldeth give thee short life and shameful 
death, and the devil have thy soul ! Why hast thou mur- 
thered these young innocent children, and this duchess ? 
Therefore arise and dress thee, thou glutton, for this day 
shalt thou die of my hands.' 

" Then anon the giant start up, and took a great club in 
his hand, and smote at the King that his coronal fell to 
the earth. And King Arthur hit him again, that he 
carved his belly, and that his entrails fell down to the 
ground. Then the giant with great anguish threw away 
his club of iron and caught the King in his arms, that he 
crushed his ribs. Then the three damsels kneeled down, 
and called unto our Lord Jesus Christ, for help and com- 
fort of the noble King Arthur. And then King Arthur 
weltered and wrung, that he was one while under, and 
another while above ; and so weltering and wallowing, 
they rolled down the hill, till they came to the sea-mark ; 
and as they so tumbled and weltered, King Arthur smote 
him with his dagger, and it fortuned they came unto the 
place whereas the two knights were that kept King Arthur's 



GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 25 1 

horse. Then when they saw the King fast in the giant's 
arms, they came and loosed him ; and then King Arthur 
commanded Sir Kaye to smite off the giant's head, and to 
set it upon a truncheon of a spear, and bear it to Sir Howel, 
and tell him ' that his enemy is slain ; and after let his 
head be bound to a barbican, that all the people may see 
and behold it ; and go ye two to the mountain, and fetch 
me my shield, and my sword, and also the great club of 
iron ; and as for the treasure, take it to you, for ye shall 
find there goods without number ; so that I have his kirtle 
and the club, I desire no more. This was the fiercest 
giant that ever I met with, save one in the mount of 
Araby, which I overcame ; but this was greater and 
fiercer.' " * 



* "Of the two proposed books, respecting which you ask me the partic- 
ulars," writes Leigh Hunt to John Forster, "one is 'The Fabulous World,' 
the chief portion of which, though not under that title, or, indeed, under any 
general one, appeared many years ago in the 'New Monthly Magazine,' as 
articles on Sat3>rs, Nymphs, Giants, Mermaids, &c. They were written with 
my customary painstaking, interspersed with quotations from poets of divers 
languages (translated when necessary), and very much approved. Everybody, 
to whom their incorporation into a volume was talked of, seemed to hail the 
notion ; and, in truth, there is no such book in the language, nor, I believe, in 
any other. I propose to complete what was wanting to it in the ' New 
Monthly,' and to add the miraculous goods and chattels belonging to my 
fabulous people, such as Enchanted Spears, Flying Sophas, Illimitable Tents 
that pack up in nutshells, &c." " The Fabulous World " was never published, 
and the articles that were to have formed the greater part of the volume are 
here first collected together. — Ed. 



252 



GOG AND MAGOG, AND 



GOG AND MAGOG, AND THE WALL OF 
DHOULKARNEIN. 




SHADOW seems to fall upon our paper at 
the very mention of the words, " Gog and Ma- 
gog," — fine, mouth-filling, mysterious names ; 
and of whom ? Nobody knows. The names, 
we doubt not, have helped to keep up the in- 
terest ; but the mystery is a mighty one of itself, and is 
found in reverend places. The grand prophet Ezekiel has 
a long mention of Gog and Magog, and describes them as 
a terrible people ; but nobody has yet discovered who they 
are. They have been thought to be Goths, Celts, Germans, 
Tartars, &c. ; but the most received opinion is, that they 
are Scythians ; and there is a curious chapter in Bochart, 
which would corroborate a notion that is said to have pre- 
vailed among the Turks, and to which late events have 
given additional color : to wit, that the Russians are a part 
of their family.* At all events, dear reader, Gog and Ma- 
gog are not the giants of Guildhall ; albeit the latter, like 
the former, are unappropriated phenomena — supposed, 
we believe, to represent an ancient Briton and a Roman, 
and to be the relics of some quondam city pageant. 

It seems agreed, however, that although nobody knows 
who Gog and Magog are, they are mixed up somehow 



* " Geographia Sacra," cap. 13. [The reader will find a pleasant passage 
concerning Bochart in the article on " Bricklayers and an Old Book," in " The 
Seer." Hallam, too, in the " Literature of Europe," has a good word for the 
fine old scholar. — Ed.] 



THE WALL OF DHOULKARXEIX. 253 

with the region about Caucasus ; and the Orientals, who 
call them Yajouje and Majouje,* think they are to come 
out of the mountains on the Caspian, and overrun the 
world. Some hold them to be giants ; others say they are 
an innumerable race of pigmies. Bruce was asked about 
them during his travels, and informed that they were hor- 
ribly little. " By God's help," said the traveller, " I shall 
not be afraid of them, though they be a hundred times 
less." 

An old tradition, at strange variance with prophecy, says 
that Gog and Magog are Jews, and that they are to appear 
at the time of an ti- Christ, and do great harm to believers. 
Hear Mandeville on the subject, whose old language adds 
to the look of seriousness and mystery : " Among thes 
hillis that be there," quoth the knight, "be the Jews of the 
ix. kyndes enclosed, that men call Gog and Magog, and 
they may not come out on no syde. Here were enclosed 
xxii. kynges, with her folke that dwellyd ther before, and 
between the hilles of Sichy (Scythse ? Scythians) and the 
kingdom of Alisaunder. He drorTe hem theder among 
thes hillis, for he trowed for to have enclosyd hem there 
thourgh strength and worckyng of mannys hond, but he 
myght not. And than he prayed God that he wold fullfill 
that he had begon, and God hard his prayer, and enclosyd 
thes hillis togedyr, so that the Jews dwell there as they 
were lokyd and speryd inne (sparred, i.e. shut up) ; and 
there be hillis all abought hem but on one syde. Why ne 



* It is a whim of the Eastern nations, when names are familiarly coupled 
in history, to make them rhyme. Thus, Cain and Abel, are Cabil and Ha- 
bil ; and there are several other instances, but we have not time to look for 
them. If Beaumont and Fletcher had written among them, they would have 
tried hard to call them Beaumont and Fleaumont. 



254 GOG AND MAGOG 5 AND 

go they not out ? seist thou. But therto I answer, thou 
yt be soo that yt be called a cee, yt ys a stanke (standing 
water) stonding among hillis. And yt ys the greatest stanke 
of all the world, and yf they went over the cee, they wot 
not where to aryve, for they wot not to speke but her owne 
langage ; and ye shall (knowe) that the Jues have no lond 
of her owne in all the worlde, but they that dwellen in the 
hillis, and yet they bere tribute to the quene of Ermony. 
And sometyme yt ys soo that some Jewes gon on the hill, 
but they mey not passe, for thes hillis be so heigh ; never- 
thelesse men seye of that cuntre ther bye, that in the tyme 
of Antecriste they shall comen out, and do moch yll herme 
to Cristen men. And therefore all the Jewes that dwellen in 
dyvers partis e of the world lern to speke Ebrewe, for they 
trowe that dwell amonge thes hillis schall com out, and (if) 
they speke Ebrewe and not ellis. And in tyme of Antecriste 
shall thyse Jewes comen out and speke Ebrewe, and leden 
other Jewes into Cristendom for to destroy Cristenmen ; for 
they wotte be her prophecies that they shall com out of 
Cristenmen, shall be in her subieccion, as they be now 
under Cristenmen. An yf ye will wit howe they shall 
com and fynd passage out as I have hard saye, I schall 
tell you. At the comynge of Antecrist, a fox schall com 
and make his den in the sam place where that kyng Alis- 
aunder ded make the gattes, and schail travaille so on the 
erth and perce yt thorowe till that he com among the Jewes ; 
and whan they see thys fox, they schall have great marwell 
of hym, for they seye never such maner of bestes, for 
other bestes they have amonge hem many, but non such ; 
and they schall chese the fox, and pursue him till he be 
fled agen to the hole ther he cam out of; and than schall 
they grave after hym tyll the time they com to the gates that 
kyng Alisaunder dyde make of gret stonys will dight with 



THE WALL OF DHOULKARNEIN. 255 

symend (cement) ; and they schall brek thes gates, and 
so schall they fynd issue." * 

The story of the fox is idle enough ; but in the Pecorone 
of Sir Giovanni Fiorentino, quoted by the same authority, 
is a version of this story, in which a very romantic ma- 
noeuvre of Alexander is mentioned. In order to keep his 
captives in subjection, "he fixed a number of trumpets on 
the top of the mountains, so cunningly framed that they 
resounded in every breeze. In the course of time certain 
birds built their nests in the mouths of the trumpets, and 
stopped them up, so that the clangour gradually lessened. 
And when the trumpets were quite silent, the Jews ven- 
tured to climb over the mountains, and sallied forth" 

It is curious to fancy the imprisoned nation listening 
year after year, and finding the sound of Alexander's 
dreadful trumpets grow less and less, till at length they are 
" silent." What has happened ? Is the king dead ? Have 
his army grown less and less, or feebler and feebler, so as 
to be unable to blow them ? Are they all dead ? Let 
us go and see. And forth they go, but cautiously — climb- 
ing the mountains with due care, and many listening 
delays. At length they arrive at the top, and see nobody 
— only those mighty scarecrows of trumpets, their throats 
stuffed up with the nests of birds ! \ 

In these traditions there is a confusion common in the 
East of Alexander of Macedon, called by the Orientals 



* Quoted by Mr. Weber in the notes to his " Metrical Romances," vol. iii. 
p. 323. It has long been supposed that the Jews had a national settlement some- 
where about this quarter. See D'Herbelot, " Bibliotheque Orientale," art. 
Jahoud; and the ]ate English travellers, particularly Elphinstone in his 
" Account of Caubul. " 

t Leigh Hunt tells this story more minutely in his fine poem entitled The 
Trumpets of Doolkarneln. — Ed. 



256 GOG AND MAGOG, AND 

Dhoulkarnein, or Zulkarnein (that is to say, the Two- 
horned, or Lord of the East and West), with another Dhoul- 
karnein, who lived before the time of Abraham, and is styled 
Dhoulkarnein the Greater. Powerful as they think the 
former, the latter was still more so ; and was, besides, a 
prophet. He was a Mussulman by anticipation ; and lived 
sixteen hundred years. It is supposed, however, that the 
Greek Alexander is both Dhoulkarneins inclusive ; and 
that in consequence of the figure he made in the East, he 
threw that mightier shadow of his greatness upon the 
mists of antiquity. 

The essay towards the history of Old Arabia, by Major 
Price, contains a summary of this Dhoulkarnein' s adven- 
tures with Gog and Magog, taken out of an Eastern his- 
torian, and containing the best account hitherto given of this 
awful people. The following is the amount of it : Among 
the children of Japhet was one of the name of Mensheje, 
or Meshech, who was the father of two sons called Yajouje 
and Majouje. From these descended a progeny so numer- 
ous, that, according to Abdullah, the son of Omar, if the 
inhabitants of the whole earth were divided into ten equal 
parts, nine out of the ten would be found to consist of the 
Yajouje- Majouje. They were so long-lived, that no one 
died till he had seen a thousand descendants of his body ; 
and as to their stature, the race might be divided into three 
classes, — the Kelim-goush, or cloth-eared, only four cu- 
bits big ; the class a hundred and twenty cubits in height ; 
and the class who were a hundred and twenty cubits both 
in height and breadth. Had there been any more, we sup- 
pose that they would have been measured by the square 
mile. They were of enormous strength ; and, though 
their ordinary food was the wild mulberry, were eaters of 
men. Agreeably to these bodily symptoms, they lived 



THE WALL OF DHOULKARNEIN. 257 

without a god, government, or good manners ; and made 
horrible visitations in the countries about them, who lived 
in constant dread of their enormities. 

Dhoulkarnein, in the course of an expedition which he 
took to survey all the countries of the earth, arrived at a 
territory bordering on these people, and was met with great 
reverence by the king of it, who, after becoming a convert 
"to the hero's faith, begged his assistance against his dread- 
ful neighbors. The two-horned gave his consent, but it 
appears that even he had no expectation of being able to 
conquer them, for he^lid not attempt it. He contented 
himself with building a mighty wall, called by the Eastern 
historian sedde-Zulkarnein, or bulwark of Zulkarnein ; the 
remains of which are supposed to exist in certain ruins 
still visible, near the city of Derbent, on the Caspian. 
This wall fills the imagination almost as much as the race 
whom it was built to keep out ; and the details of its con- 
struction are worth repeating. The monarch commenced 
by causing an immense ditch to be excavated between the 
two mountains through which the Yajouje-Majouje were 
accustomed to pass. He then filled up the ditch with 
enormous masses of granite, by way of foundation ; and 
upon these (though we are not told how he contrived it) 
he heaped huge blocks of iron, copper, and other metals, 
in alternate layers like brick ; the whole of which being 
put in a state of fusion by great fires, became, when cooled, 
one solid bulwark of metal, stretching from side to side, 
and on a level with the mountains. " On the top of all," 
says our author, — 

[Hiatus valde deflendus / — We had made a memoran- 
dum of this passage some time ago, and cannot on the 
sudden again meet with the book, not even in the British 
Museum.] 

17 



258 GOG AND MAGOG, AND 

The length of the wall was " one hundred and fifty para- 
sangs, or five hundred and twenty-five miles ; its breadth 
fifty miles ; and its height two thousand eight hundred 
cubits, or about the height of Ben Nevis." 

There is no doubt that an important barrier of some 
kind existed in the defiles of Caucasus, on the Caspian ; 
there are considerable remains of one. According to 
some, Nouschirvan, King of Persia, a prince of the dynasty 
of the Sassanides, had the honor of completing what Alex- 
ander began. Others have suspected, that by the account 
of its magnitude the wall of China ftmst have been meant. 
But these questions, into which our hankering after the 
truth is continually leading us, are not necessary to that 
other truth of fable. The wall may or may not be a truth 
historical ; Gog and Magog are a fine towering piece of 
old history fabulous. 

In D'Herbelot, * is an account of a Journey of Discov- 
ery made by order of a caliph of the house of the Abba- 
sides, to inquire into this structure. With the exception 
of a story of a mermaid, which we have transferred to its 
proper place, Warton gives a better account in his " His- 
tory of English Poetry." f We have taken the best cir- 
cumstances from both, and proceed to lay the result before 
the reader. 

About the year 808, the caliph Al Amin, having heard 
wonderful reports concerning this wall or barrier, sent his 
interpreter Salam, with an escort of fifty men, to view it. 
Salam took the route of Nouschirvan, or Northern Media, 
in which Filan-Schah reigned at that time. From Nous- 

* Art. " Jagiouge et Magiouge," torn. iii. p. 270. 

t Vol. i. "Dissertation I." (Quoted by Weber in the notes to his "Met- 
rical Romances," vol. iii. p. 325.) ' 



THE WALL OF DHOULKARNEIN. 259 

chirvan he passed into the territory of the Alani, and 
thence into the district of the lord of the marches, who 
dwelt in the city of Derbent, and whose title was Lord of 
the Golde7i Throne. For the extraordinary fish which he 
caught in company with their ruler, see the article upon 
" Sirens and Mermaids." 

The Lord of the Golden Throne furnished our travellers 
with guides to conduct them farther north, into which 
quarter, having marched twenty-six days, they arrived at 
a land which emitted a fearful odor. They beheld, as they 
went, many cities destroyed by the Yajouje-Majouje, and 
in six days arrived at that part of the mountains of Cau- 
casus, in which was the stronghold, enclosing those cap- 
tives of Dhoulkarnein. They saw the tops of the fortress 
long before they reached it. On coming up, it was found 
to consist partly of iron and partly of a huge mountain, in 
an opening in which stood the gate, of enormous magni- 
tude. This gate was supported by vast buttresses, and 
had an iron bulwark, with turrets of the same metal, reach- 
ing to the top of the mountain itself, which was too high 
to be seen. The valves, lintels, threshold, lock and key, 
were all of proportionate magnitude. The governor of 
certain places in the neighborhood comes to this castle 
once every week, with an escort of ten men all mounted 
on horseback, and striking it three times with a great 
hammer, lays his ear to the door and listens. A murmur- 
ing noise comes from within, which is the noise of the 
Yajouje-Majouje. Salam was told, that they often ap- 
peared on the battlements of the bulwark. 

Do you not fancy, reader, that you take a journey to 
that awful place, and that after waiting there a long time 
you behold some of them looking over — huge, black- 
headed giants, looking down upon you with a shadow, 
and making you hold your breath ? 




260 AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 



AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 

HE balloon, by the help of fashionable encour- 
agement and the intrepid frequency of the 
ascents of Messrs. and Mesdames Green and 
Graham, appears to be again hovering on the 
borders of a little improvement. There is a 
talk of its being made use of for the purpose of survey- 
ing land. The only practical account it was ever turned to, 
was of this sort — a survey of the field of battle at Fleu- 
rus ; where the French prevented a surprise by means 
of it. Ascents have been made, indeed, for scientific ex- 
periments, but not with any particular result. 

Should you like, dear reader, to go up in a balloon ? 
Some readers. Very much indeed. 
Others, Can't exactly say. Must reflect a little. 
If these latter wish to have a friend to stand by them in 
their hesitation, I, for one, must own myself of the same 
mind. It would take much to make me undergo so prac- 
tical a lift to the imagination, I can imagine it, " methinks," 
well enough as I am, — on terra firma. 

" Suave Vauxhall Gardens, turbantibus aethera throatis, 
E terra magnum alterius spectare balloonem." 

" 'Tis sweet, when at Vauxhall throats tear the skies, 
To see in his balloon another rise." 

I cannot withhold my admiration from those who go up ; 
otherwise, perhaps, to spite them for my sense of the ad- 
vantage they have over me, I would ; nor can I say how 
immense my own valor might become, and how inde- 
pendent of the necessity for some prodigious cause or 



AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 26 1 

principle, if, instead of these sedentary turnings of para- 
graphs, I could grow young again, and go through a course 
of horseback, felicity, and the Fives' Court. But mean- 
time, as a king of Naples once, climbing up a tree, told 
the courtiers who assisted him that he " found he had an 
antipathy to the buffalo ; " so I find my antipathy is to 
height. I could shudder now, this moment, to recollect, 
that when I was a youth I once walked to the edge of 
Shakespeare's Cliff (higher then than at present), and 
looked over ; though even then I was fain to stretch my- 
self along the ground, while the friend who was with me 
nobly kept his legs. I should have more respect for this 
infirmity, if I could persuade myself that it was unavoida- 
ble by the imaginative ; but Rousseau was famous for his 
love of these altitudes ; nor is the reverse courage to be 
attributed to a destitution of thought for others : for the 
late admirable writer and most kind human being, Charles 
Lamb, one of the most considerate of kinsmen, and highly 
imaginative also in his way, could run (as he once actually 
did) along the top of a high parapet wall in the Temple, — 
so much to the terror of Hazlitt, that the latter cried out, 
in a sort of rage and cruel transport of sympathy, " Lamb, 
if you don't come down, I shall push you over." On the 
other hand, that I may not be supposed to be indulging 
myself in the lowest of all egotisms, that of parading a 
weakness, or the want of some common quality, I beg 
leave to say, that I trust I could do any sort of duty, if 
required of me, as well as most men, even to the walking 
on the edge of a precipice ; though I should beg leave to be 
permitted to do it with a pale face. I should want that 
sort of courage, which removes peril by feeling none ; 
and which, when it does not arise from having no thought 
at all (though the last instance forms a perplexing ex- 



262 AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 

ception), seems to originate in some exquisite, healthy 
balancing of the faculties, bodily and mental ; — a thing 
admirable, and which I envy to the last degree. I some- 
times fancy I have it, when I have been taking vigorous 
exercise ; but the emotion of a single morning's work over 
my writing-table puts it to flight. I attribute the change 
in myself (with regard to the power of enduring height), 
to a long illness I had, during which, happening to read 
of a similar infirmity, the impression it made upon me, when 
I again looked down from a high place, was tremendous ; 
and I have never since been able to avoid thinking of it, 
on the like occasions. When I was in Italy, I tried to 
get rid of it by pedestrian experiments on mountainous 
places, upon Alps and Apennines ; but it would not do. 
I only mortified myself to no purpose. (I find I am get- 
ting egotistical, after all ; and must beg the reader to ex- 
cuse me. I would gladly hear as much about himself, or 
from any man.) 

Hail then, gallant Greens and Grahams ! and gallant 
Captain Currie ! and thou, Marquis of Clanricarde, worthy 
of thine ancestry ! It is not easy to know how far mind 
and matter are duly mixed up in any given aeronaut ; but 
the gallant Marquis, issuing from his house of legisla- 
tion, where he has speech as well as a voice, taketh me 
mightily ; and though captains are bound by office to be 
both gallant and gallant, it is not every one of them that 
would have the poetical enthusiasm to exclaim, when up 
in the clouds, " Oh, Mrs. Graham ! let us never return to 
earth ! " We, envious fixtures to the ground, may smile 
at the exclamation ; but the critic who thought he was 
bantering it the other day in the newspapers, felt himself 
in his candor obliged to give up the laugh, and allow that 
the occasion justified the outbreak. I confess, I think the 



AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 263 

Captain could not have said a better thing. On all occa- 
sions there is some one thing to be said which is better 
than all others ; and this appears to me to have been 
the very one for the present. It combines the smile of 
pleasantry with the seriousness of a deep feeling. The 
clouds were looking gorgeous ; the scene was new and 
heavenly; the world, with all its cares, was under their 
feet ; the thought naturally arose, " Why cannot we quit all 
care, and live in some new and heavenly place, such as 
this seems to lead to ? Let us do it : — let us " never 
return to earth." 

On turning to the narrative, I find the words to be still 
better put, — with more of will in them, justified by the 
excess of beauty : " The range of clouds," Mrs. Graham 
tells us, were at this minute " forming an indescribable 
extensive circle around, in one part resembling the im- 
mense ocean, the darker clouds having the appearance of 
snow-clad mountains, the tops of which looked like frosted 
silver, from the effects of the glorious beams of the great 
luminary of the day." Captain Currie was so delighted 
with the grandeur of the scene, that in the moment of 
ecstasy, he suddenly exclaimed, " Oh ! how awfully beauti- 
ful — how enchanting ! — Oh, Mrs. Graham ! we will never 
return to the earth again ! " He had made up his mind. 

They had at this time u obtained an altitude of above 
three miles and a half, having surmounted the highest 
strata of clouds." What a place for two human beings to 
find themselves in, looking upon sights never beheld but 
by the sun and moon, and by eyes spiritual ! Who is to 
wonder at any enthusiasm excited by them ? It seems to 
me that if I had been there I should have felt as if I had 
no business in such a region till disembodied ; life and 
death would have seemed to meet together, and their 



264 AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 

united wonders oppressed me beyond endurance. But 
there is no knowing. Imagination itself familiarizes us to 
spectacles of things which are too much for the mechan- 
ical. It is the body which is in fault when the mind is 
overborne in its own business. Again, I like Mrs. Gra- 
ham's committal of herself about Pope. The scene, she 
says, was one which, she is " convinced, would have given 
an energetic impetus to the ideas of the immortal Pope 
himself, to have given an adequate description." She 
betrays, to be sure, the extent of her reading ; and though 
Pope is an immortal, one is accustomed to confine the epithet 
to immortals greater than he ; but what could she do bet- 
ter than resort to the utmost limits of her book-knowledge, 
to show the height of her sensations ? Poetry itself may 
be glad of any compliment paid it, at an elevation of three 
miles and a half above terra firma ! 

It is not improbable that they who feel apprehensive at 
the idea of ascending in a balloon, would feel less so when 
fairly up in the air, especially at a great height. There is 
something in the air itself at those altitudes, which sup- 
ports and delights. I remember I used to have less of 
the feeling I have been speaking of, when standing on 
the greatest mountainous precipices, than on the top of a 
house. I have looked from a platform of the maritime 
Apennines, down upon the Gulf of Genoa, where the 
towns on the opposite coast appeared like toys in a shop- 
window, at a less distance from the edge of the mountain 
than I could have borne at a far less elevation. Extremes 
meet. It seemed so idle to contest a point, or to have a 
will not in unison with so many thousand feet, that the 
counter idea itself mitigated the fascination of its terror. 
Besides, there is a tendency in the pure air to put the 
bodily feelings into a state of tranquillity. It seemed as if 



AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 265 

the great, good-natured elements themselves would have 
supported me. 

" Ye gentle gales, upon my body blow, 
And softly lay me on the waves below." 

Perhaps they might really do so if one had a good cloak 
on, or some such expanding piece of drapery ! There 
was a marvellous paragraph the other day in the news- 
papers, stating that a young lady at Odessa had ascended 
in a balloon made of paper, which burst at a great height, 
and dismissed her to the earth, where she landed, never- 
theless, in safety ! The winds must have been conven- 
iently opposed to her, and her garments have formed an 
extempore parachute, after the fashion of the hoop-petticoat 
described in the " Spectator.' 7 But does it not seem a 
shame for men to have a thought of danger, while ladies 
can go up in paper balloons, or in any balloons at all ? One 
is forced, in self-defence, to conclude that these fair aerial 
voyagers cannot, at all events, superabound in imagina- 
tion. They would hardly irritate a perverse husband with 
an excess of the gentle. Not that they may not be very 
good-humored either, nor are they bound to be masculine 
in an ill sense. The truth is, they stand a chance of being 
either very pleasant or very unpleasant people — pleasant, 
if their courage arises from good health, or confidence in 
science, and a willingness to go where their husbands go, 
and the reverse, in all conscience, if it be sheer want of 
fancy and abundance of will. I confess, if I were seeking 
a wife, that, on the face of the matter, I should not be de- 
sirous to fetch — 

" E'en from the golden chariot of balloon, 
A fearless dame, who touch' d a golden fee ; " 

and yet circumstances might render even that circum- 



266 AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 

stance a touching proof of her womanhood ; and I might 
fare worse, on the score of the truly feminine, with a 
screamer at a frog. 

Poets go up in the air without balloons, and arrive at 
sensations which others must ascend in actual cars to 
experience. The Psalmist takes " the wings of the morn- 
ing," (how beautiful ! ) and remains " in the uttermost 
parts of the sea." Goethe heard the sun rolling in thun- 
der round the throne of God, and young Milton anticipated 
the grandeurs of his epic poem, and saw the thunders 
themselves lying in cloudy piles and mountains of sullen 
snow. Milton, in his nineteenth year, seems to have 
meditated a poem on some aerial subject, like the " Ex- 
tasy," subsequently published by his contemporary Cow- 
ley, whom he is known to have highly admired in spite of 
his conceits. There is even a dash of Cowley's mixture 
of great and little things (the taste of the day) in the fol- 
lowing lines, which, however, are a true announcement of 
the future Milton : — 

<l I have some naked thoughts that rove about, 
And loudly knock to have their passage out ; 
And, weary of their place, do only stay 
Till thou hast deck'd them in thy best array ; 
That so they may, without suspect of fears, 
Fly swiftly to this fair assembly's ears. 
Yet I had rather, if I were to choose, 
Thy service in some graver subject use ; 
Such as may make thee search thy coffers round, 
Before thou clothe my fancy in fit sound ; 
Such where the deep transported mind may soar 
A hove the wheeling poles , and at heaven's door 
Look in" 

(How well pitched is the pause here !) 

"and see each blissful deity, 
How he before the thunderous throne does lie* 



AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 267 

Listening to wJuzt unshorn Apollo sings 

To the to?cch of golde?i wires, while Hebe brings 

Immortal nectar to her kingly sire ; 

Then passing through the spheres of watchful fire, 

And misty regions of wide air next under, 

And hills of snow, and lofts of piled tJuc7ider, 

May tell at length how green-eyed Neptune raves, 

In heaven's defiance mustering all his waves." 

Cowley's " Extasy " is a very curious poem, provoking 
for its excessive mixture of mean and grand ideas. Had 
Cowley and Milton, instead of being kept apart by differ- 
ence of political opinion, had the luck to become friends, 
they might have done one another great service. Milton 
might have saved Cowley's taste from the homely draw- 
backs to which good nature rendered it liable, and the 
highly rational amiableness of Cowley's heart might have 
softened the sternness of Milton, and saved it from de- 
generating into puritanical sourness. The opening of this 
poem might serve for an aeronaut when quitting the 
ground ; but how ludicrous is the misplaced waiving of 
ceremony in the second line, especially after the mighty 
universality of the first ! — 

" I leave mortality and things below ; 
/ have no time in complime7tts to waste ; 
Farewell to ye all in haste, 
For I am call'd to go. 
A whirlwind bears up my dull feet, 
Th' officious clouds beneath them meet ; 
And lo ! I mount, and lo ! 
How small the biggest parts of earth's proud title show ! 

" Where shall I find the noble British land ? 
Lo ! I at last a northern speckespy, 
Which in the sea does lie, 
And seems a grain o' the sand ! 
For this will any sin or bleed ? 
Of civil wars is this the meed ? 
And is it this, alas ! which we — " 



268 AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 

(Here comes a fine line), 

" Oh, irony of words ! — do call Great Britannie?" 

He then seems to be imitating the lines of his contempo- 
rary, but in a very inferior strain. The third and fourth 
lines are in laughably bad taste : — 

" I pass by th' arched magazines which hold 
Th' eternal stores of frost, and rain, and snow ; 
Dry and secure I go, 
Nor shake with fear or cold. 
Without affright or wonder, 
I meet clouds charg'd with thunder ; 
And lightnings on my way, - 
Like harmless lambent fires, about my temples play." 

I pass two stanzas to come to a most noble line - — 

" Where am I now ? Angels and God is here." 

I know nothing finer than the use of this word is instead 
of are, making the idea of the presence of God swallow up 
that of the angels, and yet leaving a sense of them too. It 
is a feeling of this sort, which appears to me as if it would 
be overwhelming, up in that unaccustomed region of 
silence and vastness. This transport, in spite of some 
quaintness of expression, is not unworthily followed up in 
the succeeding lines, though in the concluding one the 
poet falls plump down into familiar inanity — 

" Where am I now? Angels and God is here ; 
An unexhausted ocean of delight 
Swallows my senses quite, 
And drowns all what, or how, or where. 
Not Paul, who first did thither pass, 
And this great world's Columbus was, 
The tyrannous pleasure can express." 

That's fine ; but look at the next ! 

" O l His too much for man I but let it ne^er be less ! I "* 



AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 269 

The next stanza is worth repeating, if only for the excess- 
ive comedy of the concluding verse : — 

" The mighty Elijah mounted so on high, 
That second man who leap'd the ditch where all 
The rest of mankind fall, 
And went not downwards to the sky. 
With much of pomp and show 
(As conqu'ring kings in triumph go) 
Did he to heaven approach ; 
A nd wo-ncProus was his way, and wond'rous was his coach ! ! " 

The word " coach," it must be confessed, was not in quite 
such undignified repute then, as now ; but still the poet 
had no business with it. He proceeds, however, to make 
good his words, by a refinement on Ovid's description of 
Phaeton's : — 

" 'Twas gaudy all, and rich in every part : 
Of essences, and gems, and spirit of gold," &c 

There is something not so bad in " spirit of gold ; " but 
he goes on to tell us how it was not only with "moon- 
beams silver'd bright," but 

" Double-gilt with the sun's light ! " 

Enough, however, of the vagaries of dear, noble-hearted, 
genial Cowley, who was among the Tories what Thomson 
was among the Whigs — one of the best specimens of 
hearty British nature, and only liable to want of selectness 
in his taste, because he had a love for every thing. My 
volume of Shelley happens to be lent at this moment, 
otherwise I could quote some fine things out of his ethereal 
pages ; nor am I lucky enough to have by me that of Mr. 
Southey, in which he gives us his beautiful fiction of the 
Glendoveer with his heavenly boat. 

Poetry and matter-of-fact meet oftener than is supposed. 
The first hints of aerostation may be truly said to be lost 



27O AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 

in the clouds of antiquity ; but real and fabulous things of 
all kinds are naturally so confounded in those obscure 
periods of time, that it is not improbable there was some 
foundation in fact for the stories of Abaris, Daedalus, and 
others, beyond even the supposed solution of the difficul- 
ty by means of a ship. Sciences have been lost and re- 
covered. The Chinese had been in possession, for many 
centuries, of inventions supposed to be original to Europe. 
Should there have been no art of printing, the fact of the 
Channel's having been crossed by men in balloons, and of 
the fate of poor Pilatre de Rozier, might, in the course 
of time, become stories of no greater credibility than that 
of Daedalus and his son. Immortal poetry, at all events, 
keeps the tradition alive in some shape or other, not 
omitting those verisimilitudes which enable all stories, real 
or fabulous, to be true to the human heart. With what 
pretty pathos does Ovid describe little Icarus enjoying his 
father's manufacture of the wings, unconscious of the 
death they were to give him ! 

" Puer Icarus una 
Stabat ; et ignarus sua se tractare pericla, 
Ore renidenti, modo quas vaga moverat aura 
Captabat plumas ; flavam modo pollice ceram 
Mollibat ; lusuque suo mirabile patris 
Impediebat opus." Metam. lib. viii. 

" Young Icarus stood by, who little thought 
That with his death he play'd ; and, smiling, caught 
The feathers, tossed by the wandering air ; 
Now chafes the yellow wax with busy care, 
And interrupts his sire. " Sandys. 

" But for men to flye is impossible " (says this fine old 
translator in his notes, where he thinks to make up foi 
his natural credulity by an occasional peremptory standing 
out for some matter of fact) ; " although," continues he, 



AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 27 1 

" I am not ignorant that the like is reported of Simon 
Magus ; which others, by the breaking of their necks, 
have as miserably, as foolishly, attempted. Nero exhibited 
this spectacle to the Romanes in their amphitheater ; the 
poor youth fell not far from his throne, whose blood, to 
upbraid his cruell pastime, besprinkled his garments." 
Contemporary with Sandys, however, arose a learned di- 
vine, Bishop Wilkins, who was of opinion that men might 
not only fly, but fly to the moon. After contending for 
points which are now admitted (such as that the moon is 
a separate planet, has probably sea and land, &c), and 
the supposed absurdity of which at former periods helps 
to give his remaining propositions a less air of the ridic- 
ulous, he gives the three following answers to the objec- 
tion as to ascending above the sphere of the earth's 
attraction : — 

"1. It is not perhaps impossible, that a man may be 
able to flye by the application of wings to his owne body ; 
as angels are pictured, and as Mercury and Daedalus are 
fained, and as hath been attempted by divers, particularly 
by a Turk in Constantinople, as Busbequius relates. 
2. If there be such a great Rock in Madagascar, as 
Marcus Polus the Venetian mentions, the feathers in 
whose wings are twelve foot long, which can swoope up a 
horse and his rider, or an elephant, as our kites doe a 
mouse ; why, then, it is but teaching one of these to carry 
a man, and he may ride up thither, as Ganymed does 
upon an eagle. 3. Or if neither of these ways will serve, 
yet I doe seriously, and upon good grounds, affirm it pos- 
sible to make a flying chariot ; in which a man may sit, 
and give such a motion into it, as shall convey him through 
the aire. And this perhaps might be made large enough 
to carry divers men at the same time, together with food 



272 AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 

for their viaticum, and commodities for traffique. It is 
not the bignesse of any thing in this kind, that can hinder 
its motion, if the motive faculty be answerable thereunto. 
We see a great ship swim as well as a small cork, and an 
eagle flies in the aire as well as a little gnat. This engine 
may be contrived from the same principles by which 
Archytas made a wooden dove, and Regiomontanus a 
wooden eagle. I conceive it were no difficult matter if a 
man had leisure, to show more particularly the meanes 
of composing it. The perfecting of such an invention 
would be of such excellent use, that it were enough, not 
only to make a man, but the age also wherein he lives. 
For besides the strange discoveries that it might occasion 
in this other world, it would be also of inconceivable ad- 
vantage for travelling, above any other conveiance that is 
now in use. So that, notwithstanding all these seeming 
impossibilities, 'tis likely enough, that there may be a 
meanes invented of journeying to the moone. And how 
happy shall they be, that are first successful in this 
attempt ? 

' ' Fcelicesque animae, quas nubila supra 
Et turpes fumos, plenumque vaporibus orbem 
Inserit Ccelo sancti scintilla Promethei ! ' 

" Having thus finished this discourse, I chanced upon 
a late fancy to this purpose, under the feigned name of 
Domingo Gonzales, written by a late reverend and learned 
Bishop (Godwin) ; in which (besides sundry particulars, 
wherein this latter chapter did unwittingly agree with it) 
there is delivered a very pleasant and well-contrived fancy 
concerning a voyage to this other world." * 

* " Biographical Dictionary," art. Wilkins. 

[Addison, in the following letter from a projector, quietly satirizes Wilkins 
and his brother philosophers in the art of flying : — 



AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 273 

The bishop, however, has here overlooked the still 
more formidable objection as to the power of breathing at 
so great an altitude. He seems to have forgotten that a 
man above a certain limit of the atmosphere is like a fish 
out of water. I have not his book at hand to see whether 
he notices this dilemma ; though, doubtless, he would get 



"Knowing that you are a great encourager of ingenuity, I think fit to 
acquaint you that I have made considerable progress in the art of flying. I 
flutter about my room two or three hours in a morning : and when my wings 
are on, can go above a hundred yards at a hop, step, and jump. I can fly al- 
ready as well as a Turkey-cock, and improve every day. If I proceed as I 
have begun, I intend to give the world a proof of my proficiency in this art. 
Upon the next public thanksgiving day, it is my design to sit astride the dragon 
upon Bow steeple, from whence, after the first discharge of the Tower guns, I 
intend to mount into the air, fly over Fleet-street, and pitch upon the Maypole 
in the Strand. From thence, by a gradual descent, I shall make the best of my 
way for St. James's Park, and light upon the ground near Rosamond's pond. 
This, I doubt not, will convince the world that I am no pretender ; but before 
I set out, I shall desire to have a patent for making of wings, and that none 
shall presume to fly, under pain of death, with wings of any other man's 
making. I intend to work for the court myself, and will have journeymen 
under me to furnish the rest of the nation. I likewise desire chat I may have 
the sole teaching of persons of quality, in which I shall spare neither time nor 
pains, till I have made them as expert as myself. I will fly with the women 
on my back for the first fortnight. I shall appear at the masquerade, dressed 
up in my feathers and plumage like an Indian prince, that the quality may see 
how pretty they will look in their travelling habits. You know, Sir, there is an 
unaccountable prejudice against projectors of all kinds ; for which reason, 
when I talk of practising to fly, silly people think me an owl for my pains ; 
but, Sir, you know better things. I need not enumerate to you the benefits 
which will accrue to the public from this invention ; as how much the roads of 
England will be saved when we travel through these new kigkivays, and how 
all family accounts will be lessened in the article of coaches and horses. I 
need not mention posts and packet-boats, with many other conveniences of life, 
which will be supplied this way. In short, Sir, when mankind are in posses- 
ion of this art. they will be able to do more business in three-score and ten 
years, than they could do in a thousand by the methods now in use. I there- 
fore recommend myself and art to your patronage, and am 

"Your most humble servant." — Ed.] 
18 



274 AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 

over it with his usual vivacity. It is not a little that can 
stop a man who has taken his first step towards the moon. 
And yet the banter of the most confident of us may be 
balked by observing that, two years after the publication 
of this book, he sent forth another, " tending to prove 
that it is probable our earth is one of the planets. " The 
man is laughed at now who ventures to think such an 
established tenet improbable. The " flying chariot " has 
been realized since Wilkins's time, in the car of the bal- 
loon ; but the only persons that have succeeded in getting 
to the moon are Cyrano de Bergerac, Domingo Gonzales, 
and Ariosto's hero, Astolfo. 

The first undoubted succeeders in raising a man into 
the air, and enabling him to continue there, were the 
brothers Stephen and Joseph de Montgolfier, paper- 
makers at Lyons : the first person who so rose, but in 
a balloon secured to the earth by ropes, was M. Pilatre 
de Rozier ; and the first persons who quitted the earth 
entirely were the same De Rozier and the Marquis d'Ar- 
landes. They went up together. The following is the 
interesting flroces verbal, giving an account of this ascent, 
and signed, among others, by the illustrious Franklin, who 
was then commissioner in France, from the new American 
government : — 

"To-day, Nov. 21, 1783, at the Chateau de la Muette, 
took place the experiment with the aerostatic machine of 
M. de Montgolfier. The sky was partly clouded, wind N. 
W. At eight minutes after noon, a mortar gave notice 
that the machine was about to be filled. In eight minutes, 
notwithstanding the wind, it was ready to set off, the 
Marquis d'Arlandes and M. Pilatre de Rozier being in the 
car. It was at first intended to retain the machine awhile 
with ropes, to judge what weight it would bear, and see that 



AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 275 

all was right. But the wind prevented it from rising verti- 
cally, and directed it towards one of the garden walks : the 
ropes made several rents in it, one of six feet long. It 
was brought down again, and in two hours was set right. 
Having been filled again, it set off at fifty-four minutes 
past one, carrying the same persons. It rose in the most 
majestic manner, and when it was about two hundred and 
seventy feet high, the intrepid voyagers took off their hats 
and saluted the spectators. No one could help feeling a 
mingled sentiment of fear and admiration. The voyagers 
were soon undistinguishable ; but the machine, hovering 
upon the horizon, and displaying the most beautiful figure, 
rose at least three thousand feet high, and remained visi- 
ble all the time. It crossed the Seine below the barrier 
of La Conference ; and passing thence between the Ecole 
Militaire and the Hotel des Invalides, was in view of all 
Paris. The voyagers, satisfied with their experiment, and 
not wishing to travel farther, agreed to descend ; but 
seeing that the wind was carrying them upon the houses of 
the Rue de Seve, Faubourg St. Germain, they preserved 
their presence of mind, increased the fire, and continued 
their course through the air till they had crossed Paris. 
They then descended quietly on the plain, beyond the 
new boulevard, opposite the mill of Croulebarbe, without 
having felt the slightest inconvenience, and having in the 
car two-thirds of their fuel. They could then, if they 
had wished, have gone three times as far as they did go, 
which was 5000 toises, done in from twenty to twenty-five 
minutes. The machine was seventy feet high ; forty-six 
feet in diameter ; it contained 60,000 cubic feet, and carried 
a weight of from 1600 to 1700 pounds. Given at the 
Chateau of La Muette, at five in the afternoon. Signed, 
Due de Polignac, Due de Guisnes, Comte de Polastron, 



276 AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 

Comte de Vaudreuil, D'Hunaud, Benjamin Franklin, Fau- 
jas de St. Fond, de Lisle, le Roy, of the Academy of Sci- 
ences." 

This proces verbal is taken from an excellent summary 
on the balloon, in the " Penny Cyclopaedia," where it is 
followed by the ensuing extract from a letter of the Mar- 
quis d'Arlandes, who, after stating that he had obtained 
permission from M. Montgolfier to ascend alone, but that, 
by the advice of the latter, M. de Rozier was associated 
with him the evening before the ascent, proceeds thus : 
" We set off at 54 minutes past one. The balloon was so 
placed that M. de Rozier was on the West, and I on the 
East. The machine, says the public, rose with majesty. I 
think few of them saw that, at the moment when it passed 
the hedge, it made a half turn, and we changed our posi- 
tions, which, thus altered, we retained to the end. I was 
astonished at the smallness of the noise or motion occa- 
sioned by our departure among the spectators. I thought 
they might be astonished and frightened, and might stand 
in need of encouragement " (a beautiful trait of coolness 
from the man in the balloon to those on terra firmd). " I 
waved my arm with little success ; I then drew out and 
shook my handkerchief, and immediately perceived a great 
movement in the garden. It seemed as if the spectators 
all formed one mass, which rushed by an involuntary 
motion towards the wall, which it seemed to consider as 
the only obstacle between us. At this moment M. de Ro- 
zier called out, ' You are doing nothing, and we do not 
rise.' I begged his pardon, took some straw, moved the 
fire, and turned again quickly ; but I could not find La 
Muette. In astonishment, I followed the river with my 
eye, and at last found where the Oise joined it. Here 
then, was Conflans ; nearest to them, I repeated, Poissy, 



AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 277 

St. Germain, St. Denis, Seve, then I am still at Poissy, or 
at Chaillot. Accordingly, looking down through the car, 
I saw the Visitation de Chaillot. M. Pilatre said to me 
at this moment, ' Here is the river, and we are descend- 
ing.' ' Well, my friend,' said I, ' more fire ; ' and we set 
to work. But, instead of crossing the river, as our course 
towards the Invalides seemed to indicate, we went along 
the lie des Cygnes, entered the principal bed again, and 
went up the stream till we were above the Barriere la Con- 
ference. I said to my brave associate, ' Here is a river, 
which is very difficult to cross.' ' I think so,' said he ; 
'you are doing nothing.' * I am not so strong as you,' 
I answered ; ' and we are well as we are.' I stirred the 
fire, and seized a bundle of straw, which, being too much 
pressed, did not light well. I shook it over the flame, 
and the instant after I felt as if I had been seized under 
the arms, and I said to my friend, ' We are rising now, 
however.' 'Yes, we are rising,' he answered, coming from 
the interior, where he had been seeing all was right. At 
this moment I heard a noise high up in the balloon, which 
made me fear it had burst. I looked up, and saw nothing ; 
but, as I had my eyes fixed on the machine, I felt a shock, 
the first I had experienced. The shock was upwards, 
and I cried out, 'What are you doing, — are you danc- 
ing ? ' 'I am not stirring.' ' So much the better,' I said ; 
' this must be a new current, which will, I hope, take us 
off the river.' Accordingly, I turned to see where we were, 
and found myself between the Ecole Militaire and the In- 
valides, which we had passed by about 400 toises. M. 
Pilatre said, ' We are in the plain.' ' Yes,' I said, ' we 
are getting on.' ' Let us set to work,' he replied. I 
heard a noise in the machine, which I thought came from 
the breaking of a cord. I looked in and saw that the 



278 AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 

southern part was full of round holes, several of them 
large. I said, ' We must get down.' ' Why ? ' ' Look,' said I. 
At the same time, I took my sponge (pyrotechnical term), 
and easily extinguished the fire, which was enlarging such 
of the holes as I could reach ; but on trying if the balloon 
was fast to the lower circle, I found it easily came off. I 
repeated to my companion, ' We must descend.' He looked 
round him, and said, ' We are over Paris.' Having looked 
to the safety of the cords, I said, ' We can cross Paris.' We 
were now coming near the roofs : we raised the fire, and 
rose again with great ease. I looked under me and saw 
the Missions Etrangeres, and it seemed as if we were going 
towards the towers of St. Sulpice, which I could see. 
Raising ourselves, a current turned us south. I saw on 
my left a wood, which I thought was the Luxembourg. 
We passed the Boulevard ; and I called out, ' Pied a. terre.' 
We stopped the fire, but the brave Pilatre, who did not 
lose his self-possession, thought we were coming upon 
mills and warned me. . . . We alighted at the Butte aux 
Cailles, between the mill Des Merveillcs and the Moulin 
Vieux. The moment we touched land, I held by the car 
with my two hands : I felt the balloon press my head 
lightly. I pushed it off, and leaped out. Turning tow- 
ards the balloon, which I expected to find full, to my 
great astonishment, it was perfectly empty and flattened." 

The second balloon voyage was that of Messrs. Charles 
and Robert, at sunset, from the Tuileries, Dec. 1, 1783. 
M. Charles reascended immediately afterwards, alone, to 
the height of nearly^two miles, and saw the sun 7'ise again, 
" I was the only illuminated object," he says ; "all the rest 
of nature being plunged in shadow." 

M. de Rozier ascended for the third time, in the third 
voyage, in company with Joseph Montgolfier, and six 



AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 279 

other persons. The balloon was " intended for six only, 
and these were found too many, but no one could be in- 
duced to give up his place. The instant after the ropes 
had been cut, a seventh person jumped in. A rent in the 
balloon caused it to descend with great velocity, but no one 
was hurt." 

February 22, 1784, a small balloon, launched by itself, 
from Sandwich, crossed the channel. 

March 2, 1784, M. Blanchard made his first ascent from 
Paris, carrying a parachute in case of need. 

April 25, 1784, Messrs. de Morveau and Bertrand as- 
cended 13,000 English feet, at Dijon, and thought they 
found some effect produced by the use of oars. 

May 20, 1784, ladies first went up, four of them with 
two gentlemen, but in a balloon secured by ropes. Ma- 
dame Thible, however, ascended on the 4th of June, with 
one other person in a free balloon. 

September 15, 1784, the first voyage in England was 
made by Vincenzo Lunardi, who took with him a dog, a 
cat, and a pigeon. He rose from the artillery-ground, and 
landed at Standon, near Ware, in Hertfordshire. 

January 7, 1785, M. Blanchard and Dr. Jeffries crossed 
the channel. June 15, 1785, M. Pilatre de Rozier, and M. 
Romain ascended from Boulogne, with the intention of 
crossing the channel, when the balloon took fire, and the gal- 
lant De Rozier, the jirst aeronaut, together with his unfor- 
tunate companion, fell from a height of a thousand yards, 
and was killed on the spot. 

July 22, General Money ascended at Norwich, and the 
balloon dropped in the water, where the voyager remained 
six hours before he was rescued. 

In 1807, M. Garnerin ascended from Paris, and landed 
at, or rather "was dashed against Mount Tonnerre, 300 
miles from that place, after running very great risks." 



28o AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 

September 21, 1802, M. Garnerin descended from a bal- 
loon by means of a parachute, near the Small-pox Hospi- 
tal, at St. Pancras. I remember seeing him, frightfully 
swung about at first, but afterwards coming down steadily, 
to the great relief of an enormous multitude, whose sudden 
gathering together in the fields almost astonished me as 
much as the parachute. 

Several ascents have been made for the purpose of scien- 
tific experiments ; among others, one by M. Gay Lussac, 
at Paris, to the height of 23,000-feet. 

"In 1806, Carlo Brioschi, astronomer-royal at Naples, 
ascended with Signor Andreani, who had been the first 
Italian aeronaut. Trying to rise higher than M. Gay Lus- 
sac, they got into an atmosphere so rarefied as to burst the 
balloon. Its remnants checked the velocity of their de- 
scent ; and this, with their falling on an open space, saved 
their lives ; but Brioschi contracted a complaint, which 
brought him to his grave." 

Since this period many ascents have been made both in 
France and England, by a variety of aeronauts, one of 
whom, in the latter country, generally keeps possession of 
the public curiosity for a certain time, and makes the bal- 
loon a sort of profession. It is said in the publication 
above quoted, that the balloon is now a " toy in which as- 
cents are sometimes made to amuse a crowd," and that 
what "was honorable risk, so long as any thing could be 
gained to science, is now mere foolhardiness, and will con- 
tinue to be so until some definite object be proposed, and 
some probable means suggested of attaining it." But this 
is surely too harsh a judgment. Amusement is worth 
something for its own sake, and courage too ; and by fa- 
miliarity with the machine, gradual improvements in its 
construction must be acquired, and its safety made greater, 



AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 28 1 

for greater purposes. It is a long time since any catastro- 
phe has happened to a balloon made of the ordinary ma- 
terials. 

The greatest fault to be found with aerial voyagers is the 
dulness of the narratives which they put forth. One 
v:ould expect from their strange experiences more lively 
and copious accounts ; but whether it is that they are not 
gifted with too much observation themselves, or have less 
to observe than might be supposed, — whether they are 
not imaginative or well informed enough, or the air is for 
the most part as barren of sights as the ocean, nothing 
can be more barren or brief than their narratives in gen- 
eral. - All which the traveller tells us is, that he rose to a 
certain height, and went to a certain distance ; that the 
spectacle around him was very imposing, or grand, or 
magnificent ; that he saw Kensington Gardens distinctly, 
or the old London docks ; that the trees looked like 
hedges ; and that he alighted safely at such and such a 
place, where he was treated with great hospitality by Mr. 
Jenkins ; after which, he and his balloon returned to town 
the same evening by a post-chaise. Truth is certainly not 
" more wondrous than fiction " here. Ariosto's hippogriff 
and Mr. Southey's aerial boat are abundantly more enter- 
taining. 

In the first navigations of this kind, allowance is to be 
made for the fluttered feelings of the voyagers, which, 
indeed, are a zest of themselves. And perhaps the same 
allowance is to be made now, especially as there is still a 
tendency in the parties to compliment one another upon 
their courage. The thing to be desired, however (besides 
going up in more picturesque and varied countries — 
mountainous, in particular), is, that they would tell us all 
they feel or see, giving us the minutest details, scenery, 



282 AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 

sensation, experiment, disappointment, every thing. It is 
hard if the results would not be more interesting than at 
present. Why does not Lord Clanricarde favor us with 
an account ? Or Captain Currie ? It would be curious to 
see the characters of the different minds, and of the im- 
pressions made upon them. By and by, people would be 
going up to record their experiences ; and being on the 
watch for observation, new appearances would be noticed. 
How should you feel, reader, up in the sky ? What should 
you say or do ? Do you think you should be inclined 
to be merry or grave ? or timid or bold ? — or neither ? 
Should you think most of the third heaven, or of Pic- 
cadilly ? 

Horace is of opinion that the man who first went to sea 
must have had a heart triple-hooped with brass. What 
would he have said to the first aeronaut ? He has antici- 
pated without knowing it, in the same ode : — 

Coelum ipsum petimus stultitia. 

Our folly strives to reach the heav'ns themselves. 

It is thought a fearful thing at sea to have only a plank 
between you and death ; but you have a comparatively 
kindly element to fall into, something more substantial, 
and which gives you a chance. You can struggle with it, ' 
swim, cry out, get upon a piece of wood or a hen-coop. 
Being a swimmer myself, I never feel as if I should be 
lost in water, as long as I had only myself to attend to. 
But think of a plank's being between you and a distance 
of three miles and a half, — all sheer emptiness ! Down 
you go, precipitate, chucked out ; a dreg at once tragical 
and ridiculous ; a fluttering bit of humanity, no securer 
than a lump of lead, no stronger than a feather. To be 
sure, there are instances of being saved ; but who could 
think of them at the moment of ejaculation ? 



AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 283 

Should a time, however, arrive when balloons shall be 
equally safe and guidable, steerable against the wind, &c., 
(and who, in this age of science and steam-engines, shall 
say there will not ?) it is very pleasant to fancy one's self 
keeping one's Walloon, like a carriage, ordering it hither 
and thither, visiting one's friends over the house-tops, and 
"looking in," not at the street door, but at the drawing- 
room window, &c. The poet wishes that he could fly ; so 
that when pleasure flagged in the East, he might 

" Order his wings, and be off to the West." 

This undoubtedly would be pleasanter ; more convenient, 
and not so expensive. But he might have both ; and 
wings, compared with a balloon, would be like horse-keep- 
ing, compared with a carriage. Beaux, instead of cantering 
beside barouches, would then flutter three miles high by 
the side of a car ; and a hero in a novel would gloriously 
catch his mistress in his arms, if her balloon burst, and 
convey her safely to earth, as Mercury did Psyche. People 
would then be accused, not of running, but of flying after 
the girls ; and we should see an air-lounger fifty feet above 
Regent Street, pursuing some maid-servant, or pretty mil- 
liner, in and out the chimneys.* 



* " I have fully considered the project of these our modern Daedalists," says 
Addison, in the " Guardian," " and am resolved so far to discourage it, as to pre- 
vent any person from flying in my time. It would fill the world with innumer- 
able immoralities, and give such occasions for intrigues, as people cannot meet 
with who have nothing but legs to carry them. You should have a couple of 
lovers making a midnight assignation upon the top of the monument, and see 
the cupola of St- Paul's covered with both sexes, like the outside of a pigeon- 
house. Nothing would be more frequent than to see a beau flying in at a 
garret window, or a gallant giving chase to his mistress, like a hawk after a 
lark. There would be no walking in a shady wood without springing a covey 
of toasts. The poor husband could not dream what was doing over his head : 
if he were jealous, indeed, he might clip his wife's wings; . . . what con- 



284 ON THE TALKING OF NONSENSE. 

But war ! What a horrible thing to be shot in a bal- 
loon ! To " fall gloriously " that way, in battle ! 

" There was mounting 'mong Graemes of the Netherby clan ; 
Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they 'rose? and they ran." 

Think of two armies, or navies rather, meeting over Salis- 
bury Plain, and commencing their broadsides ! What a 
tumbling forth of bodies and cocked hate ; of mid-balloon- 
men, and admirals of the sky-blue ! " Sky-scraper " would 
then indeed be a proper term for the top of a vessel ; and 
" Pegasus," and " Bellerophon," names to some purpose. 
But war must go out, as nations advance, whether they 
arrive at these altitudes or not. Peaceful railroads will 
supersede hostile inroads (as old Fuller would have said) : 
nations will no more go to war, when they become such 
close neighbors and their interests are so bound up to- 
gether, than Middlesex will fight with Surrey, or trades- 
men with their employers. 




ON THE TALKING OF NONSENSE. 

J HERE is no greater mistake in the world than 
the looking upon every sort of nonsense as 
want of sense. Nonsense, in the bad sense 
of the word, like certain suspicious ladies, is 
very fond of bestowing its own appellation, — 
particularly upon what renders other persons agreeable. 



cern would the father of a family be in all the time his daughter was upon 
the wing? Every heiress must have an old woman flying at her heels. In 
short, the whole air would be full of this kind of gibier, as the French call it." 
— Ed. 



ON THE TALKING OF NONSENSE. 285 

But nonsense, in the good sense of the word, is a very 
sensible thing in its season ; and is only confounded with 
the other by people of a shallow gravity, who cannot afford 
to joke. 

These gentlemen live upon credit, and would not have 
it inquired into. They are perpetual beggars of the ques- 
tion. They are grave, not because they think, or feel the 
contrast of mirth, for then they would feel the mirth itself; 
but because gravity is their safest mode of behavior. 
They must keep their minds sitting still, because they are 
incapable of a motion that is not awkward. They are 
waxen images among the living, — the deception is undone, 
if the others stir, — or hollow vessels covered up, which 
may be taken for full ones, — the collision of wit jars 
against them, and strikes out their hollowness. 

In fact, the difference between nonsense not worth talk- 
ing, and nonsense worth it, is simply this : the former is 
the result of a want of ideas, the latter of a superabun- 
dance of them. This is remarkably exemplified by Swift's 
" Polite Conversation," in which the dialogue, though intend- 
ed to be a tissue of the greatest nonsense in request with 
shallow merriment, is in reality full of ideas, and many of 
them very humorous ; but then they are all common- 
place, and have been said so often, that the thing upper- 
most in your mind is the inability of the speakers to utter 
a sentence of their own ; — they have no ideas at all. 
Many of the jokes and similes in that treatise are still the 
current coin of the shallow ; though they are now pretty 
much confined to gossips of an inferior order, and the 
upper part of the lower classes. 

On the other hand, the wildest rattling, as it is called, 
in which men of sense find entertainment, consists of 
nothing but a quick and original succession of ideas, — a 



286 ON THE TALKING OF NONSENSE. 

finding, as it were, of something in nothing, — a rapid 
turning of the hearer's mind to some new face of thought 
and sparkling imagery. The man of shallow gravity, be- 
sides an uneasy half-consciousness that he has nothing of 
the sort about him, is too dull of perception to see the 
delicate links between one thought and another ; and he 
takes that for a mere chaos of laughing jargon, in which 
finer apprehensions perceive as much delightful associa- 
tion, as men of musical taste do in the most tricksome 
harmonies and accompaniments of Mozart or Beethoven. 
Between such gravity and such mirth, there is as much 
difference as between the driest and dreariest psalmody, 
and that exquisite laughing trio, — E voi ridete, — which 
is sung in Cosi Fan Tutte. A quaker's coat and a garden 
are not more dissimilar ; — nor a death-bell, and the birds 
after a sunny shower. 

It is on such occasions indeed that we enjoy the perfec- 
tion of what is agreeable in humanity, — the harmony of 
mind and body, — intellect and animal spirits. Accord- 
ingly the greatest geniuses appear to have been proficients 
in this kind of nonsense, and to have delighted in dwelling 
upon it, and attributing it to their favorites. Virgil is no 
joker, but Homer is : and there is the same difference be- 
tween their heroes, ^Eneas and Achilles, the latter of 
whom is also a player on the harp. Venus, the most 
delightful of the goddesses, is philomeides, the laughter- 
loving ; — an epithet, by the bye, which might give a good 
hint to a number of very respectable ladies, "who love 
their lords," but who are too apt to let ladies less respect- 
able run away with them. Horace represents Pleasantry 
as fluttering about Venus in company with Cupid, — 

Quem Jocus circumvolat, et Cupido ; 

and these are followed by Youth, the enjoyer of animal 



ON THE TALKING OF NONSENSE. 287 

spirits, and by Mercury, the god of persuasion. There is 
the same difference between Tasso and Ariosto as between 
Virgil and Homer ; that is to say, the latter proves his 
greater genius by a completer and more various hold on 
the feelings, and has not only a fresher spirit of Nature 
about him, but a truer, because a happier ; for the want 
of this enjoyment is at once a defect and a deterioration. 
It is more or less a disease of the blood ; — a falling off 
from the pure and uncontradicted blithesomeness of child- 
hood ; a hampering of the mind with the altered nerves ; — 
dust gathered in the watch, and perplexing our passing 
hours. 

It may be thought a begging of the question to mention 
Anacreon, since he made an absolute business of mirth 
and enjoyment, and sat down systematically to laugh as 
well as to drink. But on that very account, perhaps, 
his case is still more in point ; and Plato, one of the 
gravest, but not the shallowest, of philosophers, gave him 
the title of the Wise. The disciple of Socrates appears 
also to have been a great enjoyer of Aristophanes ; and 
the divine Socrates himself was a wit and a joker. 

But the divine Shakespeare ; — the man to whom we go 
for every thing, and are sure to find it, grave, melancholy, 
or merry, — what said he to this exquisite kind of non- 
sense ? Perhaps next to his passion for detecting nature, 
and over-informing it with poetry, he took delight in pur- 
suing a joke ; and the lowest scenes of his in this way 
say more to men whose faculties are fresh about them, 
and who prefer enjoyment to criticism, than the most 
doting of commentators can find out. They are instances 
of his animal spirits, — of his sociality, — of his passion 
for giving and receiving pleasure, — of his enjoyment of 
something wiser than wisdom. 



288 ON THE TALKING OF NONSENSE. 

The greatest favorites of Shakespeare are made to 
resemble himself in this particular : Hamlet, Mercutio, 
Touchstone, Jaques, Richard the Third, and Falstaff, " in- 
imitable Falstaff," are all men of wit and humor, modified 
according to their different temperaments or circumstan- 
ces, — some from health and spirits, others from sociality, 
others from a contrast with their very melancholy. Indeed 
melancholy itself with the profoundest intellects, will rarely 
be found to be any thing else than a sickly temperament, 
induced or otherwise, preying in its turn upon the disap- 
pointed expectation of pleasure, — upon the contradiction 
of hopes, which this world is not made to realize, though 
(let us never forget) it is made, as they themselves prove, 
to suggest. Some of Shakespeare's characters, as Mer- 
cutio and Benedick, are almost entirely made up of wit 
and animal spirits ; and delightful fellows they are ; and 
ready, from their very taste, to perform the most serious 
and manly offices. Most of his women, too, have an abun- 
dance of natural vivacity. Desdemona herself is so 
pleasant of intercourse in every way, that upon the prin- 
ciple of the respectable mistakes above mentioned, the 
Moor, when he grows jealous, is tempted to think it a 
proof of her want of honesty. But we must make Shake- 
speare speak for himself, or we shall not know how to be 
silent on this subject. What a description is that which 
he gives of a man of mirth, — of a mirth too, which he 
has expressly stated to be within the limit of what is be- 
coming ! It is in Love's Labor Lost. 

" A merrier man, 
Within the limit of becoming mirth, 
I never spent an hour's talk withal. 
His eye begets occasion for his wit : 
For every object that the one doth catch, 
The other- turns to a mirth-moving jest ; 



ON THE TALKING OF NONSENSE. 289 

Which his fair tongue, conceit's expositor, 
Delivers in such apt and gracious words, 
That aged ears play truant at his tales, 
And younger hearings are quite ravished ; 
So sweet and voluble is his discourse." 

We have been led into these reflections, partly to intro- 
duce the conclusion of this article, — partly from being 
very fond of a joke ourselves, and so making our self-love 
as proud as possible, — and partly from having spent some 
most agreeable hours the other evening with a company, 
the members of which had all the right to be grave and 
disagreeable that rank and talent are supposed to confer, 
and yet from the very best sense or forgetfulness of both, 
were as lively and entertaining to each other as boys. 
Not one of them perhaps but had his cares, — one or two, 
of no ordinary description ; but what then ? These are 
the moments, if we can take advantage of them, when 
sorrows are shared, even unconsciously ; — moments, when 
melancholy intermits her fever, and hope takes a leap into 
enjoyment ; — when the pilgrim of life, if he cannot lay 
aside his burden, forgets it in meeting his fellows about a 
fountain ; and soothes his weariness and his resolution 
with the sparkling sight, and the noise of the freshness. 

To come to our anticlimax, for such we are afraid it 
must be called after all this grave sentiment and mention 
of authorities. The following dialogue is the substance 
of a joke (never meant for its present place) that was 
started the other day upon a late publication. The name 
of the book it is not necessary to mention, especially as it 
was pronounced to be one of the driest that had appeared 
for years. We cannot answer for the sentences being put 
to their proper speakers. The friends, whom we value 
most, happen to be great hunters in this way ; and the 
reader may look upon the thing as a specimen of a joke 

19 



29O ON THE TALKING OF NONSENSE. 

run down, or of the sort of nonsense above mentioned ; 
so that he will take due care how he professes not to 
relish it. We must also advertise him, that a proper 
quantity of giggling and laughter must be supposed to be 
interspersed, till towards the end it gradually becomes too 
great to go on with. 

A. Did you ever see such a book ? 

B. Never, in all my life. It's as dry as a chip. 

A. As a chip ? A chip's a slice of orange to it. 

B. Ay, or a wet sponge. 

A. Or a cup in a currant tart. 

B. Ah, ha ; so it is. You feel as if you were fingering 
a brick-bat. 

A. It makes you feel dust in the eyes. 

B. It is impossible to shed a tear over it. The lachry- 
mal organs are dried up. 

A. If you shut it hastily, it is like clapping together a 
pair of fresh-cleaned gloves. 

B. Before you have got far in it, you get up to look at 
your tongue in a glass. 

A. It absolutely makes you thirsty. 

B. Yes : — If you take it up at breakfast, you drink four 
cups instead of two. 

A. At page 30 you call for beer. 

B. They say it made a Reviewer take to drinking. 

A. They have it lying on the table at inns to make you 
drink double. The landlord says "A new book, Sir," 
and goes out to order two neguses. 

B. It dries up every thing so, it has ruined the draining 
business. 

A. There is an Act of Parliament to forbid people's 
passing a vintner's with it in their pockets. 



ON THE TALKING OF NONSENSE. 29I 

B. The Dutch subscribed for it to serve them instead 
of dykes.* 



* A witty correspondent of Leigh Hunt — probably Charles Lamb — 
thus "pampers" into pleasant "exaggeration" the joke about the "dry 
book:" — 

What? and do you really mean to say that this is " a specimen of a joke 
run down ? " For "run down," read "wound up." There are limits to 
human wisdom, but none to folly. Hercules might come to a stand-still, but 
our merry friend with the bauble was never heard to exclaim ne plus ultra. 
After reading your pleasant article in our coterie the other evening, we took 
down " the book " you allude to (it gets into most libraries of any size), and 
it quickly inspired us with the following dry jokes : — 

A . Et certamen erat, Corydon cum Thyrside, magnum, — Posthabui 

seria ludo. Allons. I know an infant who, on merely seeing it, was cured of 
water in the head. 

B. A dropsical gentleman, given over by his physicians, was never tapped 
again after he had read it. 

A . Cany a copy under your arm, and you need no umbrella. 

B. A number were sent over to Ireland, just at the time they had almost 
abandoned the idea of reclaiming bogs. 

C. A friend of mine on the coast has recovered ninety acres of land from 
the sea, by possessing a copy. He calls it his Copyhold land. 

A . Southey tells me, that Kehama had one in his pocket when he walked 
into the ocean, and it divided. 

B. When I travel, I always take it to read in bed ; and though I never use 
a warming pan, I never had the rheumatism in my life. 

A. It must be a very ancient work, for we owe to it the origin of the terms 
" dry study," " dry reading," &c. 

C. It is not generally known, but the conjurer rubs himself with it, before 
he dips his arm in boiling water. 

B. Some one swearing, kissed it in jest, which brought on the complaint 
of parched lips. Feeling this, he threw it down, and trampling on it, was laid 
up with chilblains. 

C. It is an excellent substitute in bathing for an oil-skin cap. 

A . It is said to be very superior in efficacy to a deviled biscuit. 

D. It is found in most libraries, which occasions such an accumulation of 
dust in those places. 

B. A nurse, who took it up by accident, was obliged to wean the child 
directlv. 

D. A widow that I know, after burying her husband, retired to her closet, 




292 A RAINY DAY. 



A RAINY DAY. 

ilHE day that we speak of is a complete one of 
its kind, beginning with a dark wet morning, 
and ending in a drenching night. When you 
come down stairs from your chamber,, you 
find the breakfast-room looking dark, the rain- 
spout pouring away, and unless you live in a street of 
traffic, no sound out of doors but a clack of pattens and 
an occasional clang of milk-pails. (Do you see the rogue 
of a milkman ? He is leaving them open to catch the 
rain.) 

We never see a person going to the window on such a 
morning, to take a melancholy look out at the washed 
houses and pavement, but we think of a reanimation which 
we once beheld of old Tate Wilkinson. But observe how 
sour things may run into pleasant tastes at last. We are 
by no means certain that the said mimetic antique, Tate 
Wilkinson, was not Patentee of the York Theatre, wore 
a melancholy hat tied the wrong way, and cast looks of 



and having read a page, never shed another tear. This may be considered its 
greatest miracle ! 

C. Its author, who is said to have run mad during the dog-days, wrote it 
on the sands of Africa;, from whence it was brought to this quarter of the globe 
by means of the Sirocco. " Nil dictum, quod non dictum prius," is, as you 
now see, a mighty foolish maxim ; and, as a foolish bit of Latin makes a very 
appropriate conclusion to the English that precedes it, 

" Vivas in amore j ocisque — 
Vive vale." 

[Live and preserve your health for other folks, 

And don't forget to love, and crack your jokes ] — Ed. 



A RAINY DAY. 



2 93 



unutterable dissatisfaction at a rainy morning, purely to 
let his worthy successor and surpasser in mimicry, Mr. 
Charles Mathews, hand down his aspect and countenance 
for the benefit of posterity. We once fell into company 
with that ingenious person at a bachelor's house, where 
he woke us in the morning with the suspicious sound of 
a child crying in another room. It was having its face 
washed; and had we been of a scandalizing turn, or 
envied our host for his hospitality, we should certainly 
have gone and said that there was a child in his house who 
inherited a sorrowful disposition from somebody, and who 
might be heard (for all the nurse's efforts of a morning) 
whining and blubbering in the intervals of the wash- 
towel ; — now bursting into open-mouthed complaint, as it 
left him to dip in the water ; and anon, as it came over his 
face again, screwing up its snubbed features and eyes, and 
making half-stifled obstinate moan with his tight mouth. 
The mystery was explained at breakfast ; and as it hap- 
pened to be a rainy morning, we were entertained with the 
reanimation of that "living dead man," poor Tate afore- 
said, — who had been a merry fellow, too, in his day. 
Imagine a tall, thin, withered, desponding-looking old gen- 
tleman, entering his breakfast-room with an old hat on, tied 
under his chin the wrong way of the flap, — a beaver some- 
what of the epicene order, so that you do not know whether 
it is his wife's or his own. He hobbles and shrinks up to 
the window, grunting gently with a sort of preparatory 
despair ; and having cast up his eyes at the air, and seen 
the weathercock due east and the rain set in besides, drops 
the corners of his mouth and eyes into an expression of 
double despondency, not unmixed (if we may speak unpro- 
fanely) with a sort of scornful resentment ; and turns off 
with one solitary, brief, comprehensive, and groaning 



294 



A RAINY DAY. 



ejaculation of u Eh — Christ ! " — We never see anybody 
go to the window of a rainy morning, but we think of this 
poor old barometer of a Patentee, whose face, we trust, 
will be handed down in successive fac-similes to posterity, 
for their edification as well as amusement ; for Tate had 
cultivated much hypochondriacal knowledge in his time, 
and been a sad fellow, in a merry sense, before he took to 
it in its melancholy one. 

The preparation for a rainy day in town is certainly not 
the pleasantest thing in the world, especially for those who 
have neither health nor imagination to make their own 
sunshine. The comparative silence in the streets, which 
is made dull by our knowing the cause of it, — the window- 
panes drenched and ever-streaming, like so many helpless 
cheeks, — the darkened rooms, — and at this season of the 
year, the having left off fires ; — all fall like a chill shade 
upon the spirits. But we know not how much pleasantry 
can be made out of unpleasantness, till we bestir ourselves. 
The exercise of our bodies will make us bear the weather 
better, even mentally ; and the exercise of our minds will 
enable us to bear it with patient bodies in-doors, if we 
cannot go out. Above all, some people seem to think 
that they cannot have a fire made in a chill day, because 
it is summer-time, — a notion which, under the guise of 
being seasonable, is quite the reverse, and one against 
which we protest. A fire is a thing to warm us when we 
are cold ; not to go out because the name of the month 
begins with J. Besides, the sound of it helps to dissipate 
that of the rain. It is justly called a companion. It 
looks glad in our faces ; it talks to us ; it is vivified at our 
touch ; it vivifies in return ; it puts life and warmth and 
comfort in the room. A good fellow is bound to see that 
he leaves this substitute for his company when he goes 



A RAINY DAY. 295 

out, especially to a lady ; whose solitary work-table in a 
chill room on such a day, is a very melancholy refuge. 
We exhort her, if she can afford it, to take a book and a 
footstool, and plant herself before a good fire. We know 
of few baulks more complete, than coming down of a chill 
morning to breakfast, turning one's chair as usual to the 
fireside, planting one's feet on the fender and one's eyes 
on a book, and suddenly discovering that there is no fire 
in the grate. A grate, that ought to have a fire in it, and 
gapes in one's face with none, is like a cold, grinning, 
empty rascal. 

There is something, we think, not disagreeable in issu- 
ing forth during a good, honest summer rain, with a coat 
well buttoned up, and an umbrella over our heads. The 
first flash open of the umbrella seems a defiance to the 
shower, and the sound of it afterwards, over our dry heads, 
corroborates the triumph. If we are in this humor, it 
does not matter how drenching the day is. We despise 
the expensive effeminacy of a coach ; have an agreeable 
malice of self-content at the sight of crowded gate-ways ; 
and see nothing in the furious little rain-spouts, but a live- 
ly emblem of critical opposition, — weak, low, washy, and 
dirty, gabbling away with a perfect impotence of splutter. 

Speaking of malice, there are even some kinds of legs 
which afford us a lively pleasure in beholding them 
splashed. 

Lady. Lord, you cruel man ! 

Author. Nay, I was not speaking of yours, madam. 
How could I wish ill to any such very touching stockings ? 
And yet, now I think of it, there are very gentle and sen- 
sitive legs (I say nothing of beautiful ones, because all 
gentle ones are beautiful to me), which it is possible to 
behold in a very earthy plight ; — at least the feet and 
ankles. 



296 A RAINY DAY. 

L. And pray, sir, what are the very agreeable circum- 
stances under which we are to be mudded ? 

Author. Fancy, madam, a walk with some particular 
friend, between the showers, in a green lane ; the sun 
shining, the hay sweet-smelling, the glossy leaves sparkling 
like children's cheeks after tears. Suppose this lane not 
to be got into, but over a bank and a brook, and a good 
savage assortment of wagon-ruts. Yet the sunny-green 
so takes you, and you are so resolved to oblige your friend 
with a walk, that you hazard a descent down the slippery 
bank, a jump over the brook, a leap (that will certainly be 
too short) over the ploughed mud. Do you think that a 
good thick-mudded shoe and a splashed instep would not 
have a merit in his barbarous eyes, beyond even the neat 
outline of the Spanish leather, and the symbolical white- 
ness of the stocking ? Ask him. 

L. Go to your subject, do. 

Author. Well, I will. You may always know whether 
a person wishes you a pleasant or unpleasant adventure, 
by the pleasure or pain he has in your company. If he 
would be with you himself (and I should like to know the 
pleasant situation, or even the painful one, if a share of 
it can be made pleasant, in which we would not have a 
woman with us), you may rest assured that all the mischief 
he wishes you is very harmless. — At the same time, if 
there are situations in which one could wish ill even to a 
lady's leg, there are legs and stockings which it is possible 
to fancy well-splashed upon a very different principle. 

GentlemoM. Pray, sir, whose may those be ? 

Author. Not yours, sir, with that delicate flow of trou- 
ser, and that careless yet genteel stretch-out of toe. There 
is an humanity in the air of it, — a graceful, but at the same 
time manly, sympathy with the drapery beside it. I allude, 



A RAINY DAY. 297 

sir, to one of those portentous legs, which belong to an 
over-fed money-getter, or to a bulky methodist parson, 
who has doating dinners got up for him by his hearers. 
You know the leg I mean. It is " like unto the si^n of 
the leg," only larger. Observe, I do not mean every kind 
of large leg. The same thing is not the same thing in 
every one, — if you understand that profound apophthegm. 
As a leg, indifferent in itself, may become very charming, 
if it belongs to a charming owner ; so even when it is of 
the cast we speak of in a man, it becomes more or less 
unpleasant according to his nature and treatment of it. I 
am not carping at the leg of an ordinary jolly fellow, which 
good temper as well as good living helps to plump out, 
and which he is, after all, not proud of exhibiting ; keeping 
it modestly in a boot or trousers, and despising the 
starched ostentation of the other : but at a regular, dull, 
uninformed, hebetudinous, " gross, open, and palpable " 
leg, whose calf glares upon you like the ground-glass of a 
post-chaise lamp. In the parson it is somewhat obscured 
by a black stocking. A white one is requisite to display 
it in all its glory. It has a large balustrade calf, an ankle 
that would be monstrous in any other man, but looks small 
from the contrast, a tight knee, well buttoned, and a seam 
inexorably in the middle. It is a leg at once gross and 
symbolical. Its size is made up of plethora and super- 
fluity ; its white cotton stockings affect a propriety ; its 
inflexible seam and side announce the man of clock-work. 
A dozen hard-worked dependants go at least to the mak- 
ing up of that leg. If in black, it is the essence of infinite 
hams at old ladies' Sunday dinners. Now, we like to see 
a couple of legs, of this sort, in white, kicking their way 
through a muddy street, and splashed unavoidably as they 
go, till their horrid glare is subdued into spottiness. A 



298 A RAINY DAY. 

lamplighter's ladder is of use, to give him a passing spurn : 
upon which the proprietor, turning round to swear, is run 
against in front by a wheelbarrow ; upon which, turning 
round again to swear worse, he thrusts his heel upon the 
beginning of a loose stone in the pavement, and receives 
his final baptism from a fount of mud. 

Our limits compel us to bring this article to a speedier 
conclusion, than we thought ; and, to say the truth, we are 
not sorry for it ; for we happened to break off here in 
order to write the one following, and it has not left us in 
a humor to return to our jokes.* 

We must therefore say little of a world of things we 
intended to descant on, — of pattens, — and eaves, — and 
hackney-coaches, — and waiting in vain to go out on a 
party of pleasure, while the youngest of us insists every 
minute that " it is going to hold up," — and umbrellas 
dripping on one's shoulder, — and the abomination of 
soaked gloves, — and standing up in gate-ways, when you 
hear now and then the passing roar of rain on an umbrel- 
la, — and glimpses of the green country at the end of 
streets, — and the footmarked earth of the country-roads, — 
and clouds eternally following each other from the west, — 
and the scent of the luckless new-mown hay, — and the 
rainbow, — and the glorious thunder and lightning, — and 
a party waiting to go home at night, — and, last of all, the 
delicious moment of taking off your wet things, and rest- 
ing in the dry and warm content of your gown and slip- 
pers.f 



* "The Italian Girl," in the " Indicator." — Ed. 

t Years after the publication of this sprightly effusion, the author wrote an 
other article on " A Rainy Day," which the reader will find (if he cares to 
look for it) in " The Seer." — Ed. 




THE TRUE ENJOYMENT OF SPLENDOR. 299 

THE TRUE ENJOYMENT OF SPLENDOR. 

A CHINESE APOLOGUE. 

]OUBTLESS, saith the illustrious Me, he that 
gaineth much possession hath need of the 
wrists of Hong and the seriousness of Shan- 
Fee, since palaces are not built with a tea- 
spoon, nor are to be kept by one who runneth 
after butterflies. But above all it is necessary that he 
who carrieth a great burden, whether of gold or silver, 
should hold his head as lowly as is necessary, lest on lift- 
ing it on high he bring his treasure to nought, and lose 
with the spectators the glory of true gravity, which is 
meekness. 

Quo, who was the son of Quee, who was the son of 
Quee-Fong, who was the five-hundred and fiftieth in lineal 
descent from the ever-to-be-remembered Fing, chief min- 
ister of the Emperor Yau, one day walked out into the 
streets of Pekin in all the lustre of his rank. Quo, be- 
sides the greatness of his birth and the multitude of his 
accomplishments, was a courtier of the first order, and his 
pigtail was proportionate to his merits, for it hung down 
to the ground and kissed the dust as it went with its 
bunch of artificial roses. Ten huge and sparkling rings, 
which incrusted his hands with diamonds, and almost 
rivalled the sun that struck on them, led the ravished eyes 
of the beholders to the more precious enormity of his 
nails, which were each an inch long, and by proper nibbing 
might have taught the barbarians of the West to look with 
just scorn on their many writing-machines. But even 



300 THE TRUE ENJOYMENT OF SPLENDOR. 

these were nothing to the precious stones that covered 
him from head to foot His bonnet, in which a peacock's 
feather was stuck in a most engaging manner, was sur- 
mounted by a sapphire of at least the size of a pigeon's 
egg ; his shoulders and sides sustained a real burden of 
treasure ; and as he was one of the handsomest men at 
court, being exceedingly corpulent, and indeed, as his 
flatterers gave out, hardly able to walk, it may be imagined 
that he proceeded at no undignified pace. He would have 
ridden in his sedan, had he been lighter of body, but so 
much unaffected corpulence was not to be concealed, and 
he went on foot that nobody might suspect him of pre- 
tending to a dignity he did not possess. Behind him, 
three servants attended, clad in the most gorgeous silks ; 
the middle one held his umbrella over his head ; he on 
the right bore a fan of ivory, whereon were carved the 
exploits of Whay-Quang ; and he on the left sustained a 
purple bag on each arm, one containing opium and Areca- 
nut, the other the ravishing preparation of Gin-Seng, 
which possesses the Five Relishes. All the servants 
looked the same way as their master, that is to say, 
straight forward, with their eyes majestically half-shut, 
only they cried every now and then with a loud voice, 
"Vanish from before the illustrious Quo, favorite of the 
mighty Brother of the Sun and Moon." 

Though the favorite looked neither to the right nor to 
the left, he could not but perceive the great homage that 
was paid him as well by the faces as the voices of the 
multitude. But one person, a Bonze, seemed transported 
beyond all the rest with an enthusiasm of admiration, and 
followed at a respectful distance from his side, bowing to 
the earth at every ten paces and exclaiming, " Thanks to 
my lord for his jewels ! " After repeating this for about 



THE TRUE ENJOYMENT OF SPLENDOR. 30I 

six times, he increased the expressions of his gratitude, 
and said, " Thanks to my illustrious lord from his poor ser- 
vant for his glorious jewels," — and then again, "Thanks 
to my illustrious lord, whose eye knoweth not degradation, 
from his poor servant, who is not fit to exist before him, 
for his jewels that make the rays of the sun look like ink." 
In short, the man's gratitude was so great, and its lan- 
guage delivered in phrases so choice, that Quo could 
contain his curiosity no longer, and turning aside, de- 
manded to know his meaning : " I have not given you the 
jewels," said the favorite, "and why should you thank 
me for them ? " 

" Refulgent Quo ! " answered the Bonze, again bowing 
to the earth, " what you say is as true as the five maxims 
of Fo, who was born without a father: — but your slave 
repeats his thanks, and is indeed infinitely obliged. You 
must know, O dazzling son of Quee, that of all my sect I 
have perhaps the greatest taste for enjoying myself. See- 
ing my lord therefore go by, I could not but be transported 
at having so great a pleasure, and said to myself, ' The 
great Quo is very kind to me and my fellow-citizens : he 
has taken infinite labor to acquire his magnificence ; he 
takes still greater pains to preserve it, and all the while, I, 
who am lying under a shed, enjoy it for nothing.' " 

A hundred years after, when the Emperor Whang heard 
this story, he diminished the expenditure of his household 
one half, and ordered the dead Bonze to be raised to the 
rank of a Colao. 




302 MEN WEDDED TO BOOKS. 



RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW — MEN WEDDED 
TO BOOKS — THE CONTEST BETWEEN THE 
NIGHTINGALE AND MUSICIAN. 

E have often had occasion to think of the ex- 
clamation of that ingenious saint, who, upon 
reading a fine author, cried out " Pereant 
male qui ante nos nostra dixerunt ! " — ■ 
" Deuce take those who have said our good 
things before us ! " — Now, without mentioning the ex- 
tendibility (we are writing in high spirits, early on a fine 
morning, and cannot stop to find a better word) — without 
mentioning the extendibility of this judicious imprecation 
to deeds, as, " Deuce take those who have anticipated our 
exploits ; " or to possessions, as " Confound those fellows 
that ride in our coaches and eat our asparagus ; " — we 
cannot help thinking the phrase particularly applicable to 
those who have read our authors — " Plague take those 
who anticipate our articles, — who quote our highly inter- 
esting passages out of old books." 

Here is a Retrospective Review set up, which with an 
alarming precision of prepositions undertakes to make 
" Criticisms upon, Analyses of, and Extracts from, curi- 
ous, useful, and valuable Books in all languages, that have 
been published from the Revival of Literature to the Com- 
mencement of the Present Century ; " — And what is very 
inconsiderate, it performs all this, and more. Its criti- 
cisms are of a very uncritical kind ; deep and well-tem- 
pered. It can afford to let other people have their merits. 
Proud of the literature of past ages, it is nevertheless not 
at all contemptuous of the present ; and even in reading a 



MEN WEDDED TO BOOKS. 303 

lecture to modern critics, as it does admirably in its second 
number in an article on the once formidable John Dennis, 
it expostulates in so genial and informing a spirit, that he 
must be a very far gone critical old woman indeed, who 
does not feel inclined to leave off the brandy-drinking of 
abuse, — the pin-sticking of grudging absurdity. It is 
extremely pleasant to see it travelling in this way over so 
wide a range of literature, warming as well as penetrating 
as it goes, with a sunny eye, — now fetching out the re- 
motest fields, and anon driving the shadows before it and 
falling in kindly lustre upon ourselves. The highest com- 
pliment that we can pay it, or indeed any other work, is to 
say, that the enthusiasm is young, and the knowledge old ; 
— a rare, a wise, and a delightful combination.* 

It is lucky for us that we happened to speak of this 
work in another publication, the very day before the ap- 
pearance of the second number ; for the latter contained 
a very kind mention of the little work now before the 
reader ; and thus our present notice might have been laid 



* "The Retrospective Review," says Lowell, in a pleasant passage of his 
uncollected prose writings, "continues to be good reading, in virtue of the 
antique aroma (for wine only acquires its bouquet by age) which pervades its 
pages. Its sixteen volumes are so many tickets of admission to the vast and 
devious vaults of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, through which we 
wander, tasting a thimbleful of rich Canary, honeyed Cyprus, or subacidulous 
Hock, from what dusty butt or keg our fancy chooses. The years during which 
this Review was published were altogether the most fruitful in genuine appre- 
ciation of old English literature. Books were prized for their imaginative, and 
not their antiquarian, value, by young writers who sat at the feet of Lamb and 
Coleridge." One of the best and most agreeable contributors to the " Retro- 
spective Review " was Thomas Noon Talfourd, the biographer of Lamb, and 
the early friend and literary guide of Dickens. He wrote the article on John 
Dennis, mentioned above, and those on North's " Life of Lord Guilford," 
" Rymer on Tragedy," Colley Cibber's "Apology for his Life," and Wal- 
lace's ''Prospects of Mankind, Nature, and Providence." — Ed. 



304 MEN WEDDED TO BOOKS. 

to the account of a vanity, which, however gratified, is not 
the cause of it. The value of praise as well as rebuke 
does indeed depend upon the nature of the persons from 
whom it comes ; and it is as difficult not to be delighted 
with panegyric from some, as it is easy to be indifferent to 
it, or even pained by it, from others. But when we con- 
fess our pleasure in this instance, we can say with equal 
truth, that all our feelings and hopes being identified with 
the cause of what we think good and kind, our very self- 
love becomes identified with it ; and we would consent to 
undergo the horrible moment of annihilation and oblivion 
the next instant, could we be assured that the world would 
be as happy as we were unremembered. And yet what a 
Yes ! would that be ! 

But to get from under the imagination of this crush of 
our being, and emerge into the lightness and pleasurability 
of life, — it was very hard of the Retrospective Review, 
that, while it praised us, it should pick our intentional 
pockets of an extract we had long thought of making from 
an old poet. We allude to the poem called " Music's 
Duel" from Crashaw. Here the feelings expressed at 
the head of our paper come over us again. It has been 
said of fond students that they were "wedded to their 
books." We have even heard of ladies who have been 
jealous of an over-seductive duodecimo ; as perhaps they 
might, if every literary husband or lover were like the col- 
legian in Chaucer, who would rather have 

At his bed's head, 
A twenty books, clothed in black or red, 
Of Aristotle and his philosophy, ( , 
Than robes rich, or fiddle, or psaltry. 

And yet we feel that we could very well like them too at 
the bed's head, without at all diminishing our regard for 



MEN WEDDED TO BOOKS. 305 

what should be at the bed's heart. We could sleep under 
them as under a bower of imaginations. We are one of 
those who like to have a book behind one's pillow, even 
though we know we shall not touch it. It is like having 
all our treasures at hand. 

But if people are to be wedded to their books, it is hard 
that under our present moral dispensations, they are not 
to be allowed the usual exclusive privileges of marriage. 
A friend thinks no more of borrowing a book nowadays, 
than a Roman did of borrowing a man's wife ; and what is 
worse, we are so far gone in our immoral notions on this 
subject, that we even lend it as easily as Cato did his 
spouse. Now what a happy thing ought it not to be to 
have exclusive possession of a book, — one's Shakespeare, 
for instance ; for the finer the wedded work, the more 
anxious of course we should be, that it should give nobody 
happiness but ourselves. Think of the pleasure not only 
of being with it in general, of having by far the greater 
part of its company, but of having it entirely to one's self ; 
of always saying internally, " It is my property ; " of seeing 
it well-dressed in "black or red," purely to please one's 
own eyes ; of wondering how any fellow could be so im- 
pudent as to propose borrowing it for an evening ; of being 
at once proud of his admiration, and pretty certain that it 
was in vain ; of the excitement nevertheless of being a 
little uneasy whenever we saw him approach it too nearly ; 
of wishing that it could give him a cuff of the cheek with 
one of its beautiful boards, for presuming to like its beau- 
ties as well as ourselves ; of liking other people's books, 
but not at all thinking it proper that they should like ours ; 
of getting perhaps indifferent to it, and then comforting 
ourselves with the reflection that others are not so, though 
to no purpose ; in short, of all the mixed transport and 

20 



306 MEN WEDDED TO BOOKS. 

anxiety to which the exclusiveness of the book-wedded 
state would be liable ; not to mention the impossibility of 
other people's having any literary offspring from our fair 
unique, and consequently of the danger of loving any 
compilations but our own. Really if we could burn all 
other copies of our originals, as the Roman Emperor once 
thought of destroying Homer, this system would be worth 
thinking of. If we had a good library, we should be in 
the situation of the Turks with their seraglios, which are 
a great improvement upon our petty exclusivenesses. 
Nobody could then touch our Shakespeare, our Spenser, 
our Chaucer, our Greek and Italian writers. People might 
say, " Those are the walls of the library ! " and " sigh, 
and look, and sigh again ; " but they should never get in. 
No Retrospective rake should anticipate our privileges of 
quotation. Our Mary Woolstonecrafts and our Madame 
de Staels, — no one should know how finely they were 
lettered, — what soul there was in their disquisitions. We 
once had a glimpse of the feelings which people would 
have on these occasions. It was in the library of Trinity 
College, Cambridge. The keeper of it was from home ; 
and not being able to get a sight of the Manuscript of 
Milton's " Comus," we were obliged to content ourselves 
with looking through a wire work, a kind of safe, towards 
the shelf on which it reposed. How we winked, and 
yearned, and imagined we saw a corner of the all-precious 
sheets, to no purpose ! The feelings were not very pleas- 
ant, it is true ; but then as long as they were confined to 
others, they would of course only add to our satisfaction. 

But to come to our extract ; for not being quite recov- 
ered yet from our late ill-health, we mean to avail ourselves 
of it still. It is remarkable, as the Reviewer has ob- 
served, for " a wonderful power over the resources of our 



MEN WEDDED TO BOOKS. 307 

language." The original is in the " Prolusions of Strada," 
where it is put into the mouth of the celebrated Castig- 
lione, as an imitation of the style of Claudian. From all 
that we recollect of that florid poet, the imitation, to say 
the least of it, is quite as good as any thing in himself. 
Indeed, as a description of the niceties of a musical per- 
formance, we remember nothing in him that can come up 
to it. But what will astonish the reader, in addition to the 
exquisite tact with which " Strada " is rendered by the 
translator, is his having trebled the whole description, and 
with an equal minuteness in his exuberance. We cannot 
stop to enter into the detail of the enjoyment, as we 
would ; and indeed we should not know perhaps how to 
express our sense of it but by repeating his masterly 
niceties about the " clear un wrinkled song," the "warbling 
doubt of dallying sweetness," the " ever-bubbling spring," 
the kindling of the bird's 

" soft voice 
In the close murmur of a sparkling noise," 

the " quavering coyness," with which the musician " tastes 
the strings," the "surges of swoln rhapsodies," the "full- 
mouthed diapason swallowing all ; " and, in short, the whole 
"pride, pomp, and circumstance" of masterly playing, 
from its lordly sweep over the full instrument to the 
" capering cheerfulness " of a guitar accompaniment. The 
man of letters will admire the power of language ; and to 
the musician and other lovers of music we are sure we are 
affording a great treat. Numbers of them will never have 
found their sensations so well analyzed before. Part of the 
poetry, it is true, is in a false and overcharged taste ; but 
in general the exuberance is as true as it is surprising, for 
the subject is exuberant and requires it. 

We should observe, before the concert begins, that 



308 MUSICAL DUEL. 

Castiglione is represented by Strada as having been pres- 
ent at this extraordinary duel himself; and however fabu- 
lous this may seem, there is a letter extant from Bartolomeo 
Ricci to Giambattista Pigna, contemporaries of Tasso, in 
which he says, that Antoniano, a celebrated improvisatore 
of those times, playing on the lute after a rural dinner which 
the writer had given to his friends, provoked a nightingale 
to contend with him in the same manner. Dr. Black, in 
his " Life of Tasso," by way of note upon this letter, quotes 
a passage from Sir William Jones, strongly corroborating 
such stories ; and indeed, when we know what parrots and 
other birds can do, especially in imitating and answering 
each other, and hear the extravagant reports to which the 
powers of the nightingale have given rise, such as the 
story of an actual dialogue in Buffon, we can easily imagine 
that the groundwork of the relation may not be a mere 
fable. " An intelligent Persian," says Sir William, " de- 
clared he had more than once been present, when a cele- 
brated lutanist, surnamed Bulbul (the nightingale), was 
playing to a large company in a grove near Shiraz, where 
he distinctly saw the nightingales trying to vie with the 
musician ; sometimes warbling on the trees, sometimes 
fluttering from branch to branch, as if they wished to ap- 
proach the instrument, and at length dropping on the 
ground in a kind of ecstasy, from which they were soon 
raised, he assured me, by a change in the mode." 

music's duel. 

Now westward Sol had spent the richest beams 
Of noon's high glory, when hard by the streams 
Of Tiber, on the scene of a green plat, 
Under protection of an oak, there sat 
A sweet lute's-master : in whose gentle airs 
He lost the day's heat and his own hot cares. 
Close in the covert of the leaves there stood 



MUSICAL DUEL. 309 

A nightingale, come from the neighbouring wood ; 

(The sweet inhabitant of each glad tree, 

Their muse, their syren, harmless syren she) 

There stood she list'ning, and did entertain 

The music's soft report : and mould the same 

In her own murmurs, that whatever mood 

His curious fingers lent, her voice made good : 

The man perceiv'd his rival and her art, 

Dispos'd to give the light-foot lady sport 

Awakes his lute, and 'gainst the fight to come 

Informs it, in a sweet praeludium 

Of closer strains ; and ere the war begin, 

He lightly skirmishes on every string, 

Charged with a flying touch : and straightway she 

Carves out her dainty voice as readily, 

Into a thousand sweet distinguish' d tones, 

And reckons up in soft divisions, 

Quick volumes of wild notes ; to let him know 

By that shrill taste, she could do something too. 

His nimble hands* instinct then taught each string 
A capering cheerfidness, and made them sing 
To their own dance ; now negligently rash 
He throws his ann, and with a long-di'awn dash 
Blends all together ; then distinctly trips 
From this to that ; then quick returning skips 
And snatches this again, and pauses there. 
She measures every measure, everywhere 
Meets art with art ; sometimes, as if in doubt, 
Not perfect yet, and fearing to be out, 
Trails her plain ditty in one long-spun note, 
Through the sleek passage of her open throat, 
A clear unwr inkle d so7ig ; then doth she point it 
With tender accents, and severely joint it 
By short diminutives, that being rear'd 
In controverting warbles evenly shard, 
With her sweet self she wrangles. He amaz'd 
That from so small a channel should be rais'd 
The torrent of a voice, whose melody 
Could melt into such sweet variety, 
Strains higher yet, that tickled with rare art 
The tattling strings (each breathing in his part) 
Most kindly do fall out ; the grumbling base 
In surly groans disdains the treble's grace : 



3*0 MUSICAL DUEL. 

The high-perch'd treble chirps at this, and chides, 
Until his finger (moderator) hides 
And closes the sweet quarrel, rousing all 
Hoarse, shrill, at once ; as when the trumpets call 
Hot Mars to th' harvest of death's field, and woo 
Men's hearts into their hands : this lesson too 
She gives him back ; her supple breast thrills out 
Sharp airs, and staggers in a warbling doubt 
Of dallying sweetness, hovers o'er her skill, 
And folds in wav'd notes, with a trembling bill, 
The pliant series of her slippery song ; 
Then starts she suddenly into a throng 
Of short thick sobs, whose thund'ring volleys float, 
A nd roll themselves over her lubric throat 
In panting murmurs, stilPd out of her breast. 
That ever-bubbling spring, the sugar' d nest 
Of her delicious soul, that there does lie 
Bathing in streams of liquid melody ; 
Music's best seed-plot, where, in ripen'd airs 
A golden-headed harvest fairly rears 
His honey-dropping tops, plow'd by he- breath 
Which there reciprocally laboureth. 
In that sweet soil, it seems a holy choir, 
Founded to th' name of great Apollo's lyre, 
Whose silver roof rings with the sprightly notes 
Of sweep-lipp'd angel-imps, that swill their throats 
In cream of morning Helicon, and then 
Prefer soft anthems to the ears of men, 
To woo them from their beds, still murmuring 
That men can sleep while they their matins sing : 
(Most divine service) whose so early lay 
Prevents the eye-lids of the blushing day ! 
There you might hear her kindle her soft voice 
In the close murmur of a sparkling noise, 
And lay the ground-work of her hopeful song, 
Still keeping in the forward stream, so long 
Till a sweet whirlwind (striving to get out) 
Heaves her soft bosom, wanders round about, 
And makes a pretty earthquake in her breast, 
Till the fledg'd notes at length forsake their nest, 
Fluttering in wanton shoals, and to the sky, 
Wing'd with their own wild echoes, prattling fly. 
She opes the floodgate, and lets loose a tide 



MUSICAL DUEL. 311 

Of streaming sweetness, which in state dpth ride 

On the wav'd back of every swelling strain, 

Rising and falling in a pompous train. 

And while she thus discharges a shrill peal 

Of flashing airs, site qualifies their zeal 

With the cool epode of a graver note, 

Thus high, thus low, as if her silver throat 

Would reach the brazen voice of war's hoarse bird ; 

Her little soul is ravish'd : and so pour'd 

Into loose ecstasies, that she is plac'd 

Above herself, music's enthusiast. 

Shame now and anger mix'd a double strain 
In the musician's face ; yet once again, 
Mistress, I come ; now reach a strain, my lute, 
Above her mock, or be forever mute. 
But tune a song of victory to me ; 
As to thyself, sing thine own obsequy ; 
So said, his hands sprightly as fire he flings, 
A nd with a quavering coyness tastes the strings, 
The sweet-lip'd sisters musically frighted, 
Singing their fears, are fearfully delighted. 
Trembling as when Apollo's golden hairs 
Are fann'd and frizzled in the wanton airs 
Of his own breath : which, married to his lyre, 
Doth tune the spheres, and make heaven's self look higher. 
From this to that, from tJiat to this he flies, 
Feels mztsic's pulse in all her arteries, 
Caught in a net which there Apollo spreads, 
His fingers struggle with the vocal threads, 
Following those little rills, he sinks into 
A sea of Helicon ; his hand does go 
Those parts of sweetness which with nectar drop, 
Softer than that which pants in Hebe's cup. 
The humourous strings expound his learned touch 
By various glosses ; now they seem to grutch, 
And murmur in a buzzing din, then gingle 
In shrill-tongu'd accents, striving to be single. 
Every smooth turn, every delicious stroke 
Gives life to some new grace ; thus doth invoke 
Sweetness by all her names ; thus, bravely thus 
(Fraught with a fury so harmonious) 
The lute's light genius now does proudly rise, 
Heaved on the surges of swoln rhapsodies, 



312 MUSICAL DUEL. 

Whose flourish (meteor-like) doth curl the air 

With flash of high-born fancies ; here and there 

Dancing in lofty measures, and anon 

Creeps on the soft touch of a tender tone : 

Whose trembling murmurs melting in wild airs 

Run to and fro <, complaining his sweet cares ; 

Because those precious mysteries that dwell 

In music's ravish'd soul he dares not tell, 

But whisper to the world : thus do they vary, 

Each string his note, as if they meant to carry 

Their master's blest soul (snateh'd out at his ears 

By a strong ecstasy) through all the spheres 

Of music's heaven, and seat it there on high 

In th' empyreum of pure harmony. 

At length, (after so long, so loud a strife 

Of all the strings, still breathing the best life 

Of blest variety, attending on 

His fingers' fairest revolution, 

In many a sweet rise, many as sweet a fall) 

A full-mouth^ d diapason swallows all. 

This done, he lists what she would say to this, 
And she, although her breath's late exercise 
Had dealt too roughly with her tender throat, 
Yet summons all her sweet powers for a note. 
Alas ! in vain ! for while (sweet soul) she tries 
To measure all those wild diversities 
Of chatt'ring strings, by the small size of one 
Poor simple voice, rais'd in a natural tone ; 
She fails, and failing grieves, and grieving dies. 
She dies : and leaves her life the victor's prize, 
Falling upon his lute ; O fit to have 
(That liv'd so sweetly) dead, so sweet a grave ! 

This exquisite story has had another relator in Ford, 
the dramatist, and according to a great authority, a finer 
one.* The passage is very beautiful, certainly, especially 
in the outset about Greece ; and if the story is to be taken 



* Charles Lamb ; who says, in one of the notes to his " Specimens of 
English Dramatic Poets," " This story, which is originally to be met with in 
* Strada's Prolusions,' has been paraphrased in rhyme by Crashaw, Ambrose 



MUSICAL DUEL. 313 

as a sentiment, it must be allowed to surpass the other ; 
but as an account of the Duel itself, it is assuredly as 
different as playing is from no playing. Sentiment, how- 
ever, completes everything, and we hope our readers will 
enjoy with us the concluding from Ford : — 

Menaphon. Passing from Italy to Greece, the tales 
Which poets of an elder time have feign'd 
To glorify their Tempe, bred in me 
Desire of visiting that paradise. 
To Thessaly I came, and living private, 
Without acquaintance of more sweet companions 
Than the old inmates to my love, my thoughts, 
I day by day frequented silent groves 
And solitary walks. One morning early 
This accident encounter'd me : I heard 
The sweetest and most ravishing contention 
That art and nature ever were at strife in. 

A metkus. I cannot yet conceive what you jnfer 
By art and nature. 

Men. I shall soon resolve ye. 

A sound of music touch'd mine ears, or rather 
Indeed entranc'd my soul ; as I stole nearer, 
Invited by the melody, I saw 
This youth, this fair-fac'd youth, upon his lute, 
With strains of strange variety and harmony, 
Proclaiming, as it seem'd, so bold a challenge 
To the clear choristers of the woods, the birds, 
That as they flock'd about him, all stood silent, 
Wond'ring at what they heard. I wonder' d too. 

A met. And so do I ; good, on ! 

Men. A nightingale, 

Nature's best skill'd musician, undertakes 
The challenge, and for ev'ry several strain 
The well-shap'd youth could touch, she sung her down ; 
He could not run division with more art 
Upon his quaking instrument, than she, 

Phillips, and others ; but none of these versions can at all compare for harmony 
and grace with this blank verse of Ford's ; it is as fine as anything in Beaumont 
and Fletcher ; and almost equals the strife it celebrates." — Ed. 



314 MUSICAL DUEL. 

The nightingale, did with her various notes 
Reply to. For a voice, and for a sound, 
Amethus, 'tis much easier to believe 
That such they were, than hope to hear again. 

A met. How did the rivals part ? 

Men. You term them rightly, 

For they were rivals, and their mistress harmony. 
Some time thus spent, the young man grew at last 
Into a pretty anger, that a bird 
Whom art had never taught clefs, moods, or notes, 
Should vie with him for mastery, whose study 
Had busied many hours to perfect practice : 
To end the controversy, in a rapture 
Upon his instrument he plays so swiftly, 
So many voluntaries, and so quick, 
That there was curiosity and cunning, 
Concord in discord, lines of diif 'ring method 
Meeting in one full centre of delight. 

A -met. Now for the bird. 

Men. The bird, ordain'd to be 

Music's first martyr, strove to imitate * 

These several sounds : which, when her warbling throat 
Fail'd in, for grief down dropp'd she on his lute 
And brake her heart. It was the quaintest sadness, 
To see the conqueror upon her hearse, 
To weep a funeral elegy of tears, 
That, trust me, my Amethus, I could chide 
Mine own unmanly weakness, that made me 
A fellow-rnourner with him. 

A met. I believe thee. 

Men. He lookM upon the trophies of his art, 
Then sigh'd, then wip'd his eyes, then sigh'd and cried, 
" Alas, poor creature ! I will soon revenge 
This cruelty upon the author of it ; 
Henceforth this lute, guilty of innocent blood, 
Shall never more betray a harmless peace 
To an untimely end : " and in that sorrow, 
As he was dashing it against a tree, 
I suddenly stept in. 




THE MURDERED PUMP. 315 

THE MURDERED PUMP. 

A STORY OF A WINTER'S NIGHT. 

||HE hero of the following sketch is a real per- 
son, and the main points in it, the pump and 
the refuge in the cellar, are recorded as facts. 
The latter took place in the house of Sir John 
Trevor, the Master of the Rolls, a kinsman 
of Mr. Lloyd's, who was a proud and irritable Welshman. 

Time. The Beginning of the Last Century. 

Scene. A Fog in Holbom towards Dawn. Enter Two Middle-aged 

Gentlemen, of tJie names of Lane and Lloyd, coming towards an old 

Pump. 

Lane. You're so quarrelsome, when you drink. 

Lloyd. {Hiccuping.) No, I ain't. 

Lane. Always contradicting everybody. 

Lloyd. {Hiccuping.) No, I ain't. 

Lane. So eager to say No, merely because other people say Yes. 

Lloyd. {Hiccuping.) No, I ain't. 

Lane. Why, you do it this very instant. 

Lloyd. No, I don't. 

Lane. You can't say Yes, if you would. 

Lloyd. {Hiccuping.) Yes, I can. 

Lane. No, you can't. Your very Yes is a No. You merely say it to 
contradict. 

Lloyd. No, I don't. 

Lane. Pooh, nonsense ! And then you must draw your sword, forsooth, 
and add fury to folly. You'll get some tremendous lesson some day, and you 
really need it. I should like to give it you. 

Lloyd. {Violently.) Take care, George Lane. (Lloyd stumbles.) 

Lane. Take you care, of the gutter. I shan't pick you up. I shall leave 
you to cool yourself. 

Lloyd. {Hiccuping.) No, you won't. 

Lane. Oh, what, you remember my carrying you home last Thursday, do 
you ? And this is your gratitude. 



316 



THE MURDERED PUMP. 



Lloyd. Damn gratitude ! I'll not be insulted. 

Lane. Yes, you will, — by forgiveness. You'll insult others, and be for- 
given. 

Lloyd. No, I won't. Nobody shall forgive Roderick Lloyd. I should 
like to see 'em. {Standing still, putting his hand on his sword, and trying 
to speak very loudly.) Who forgives me ? Who forgives Lloyd, I say? Come 
into the court, you rascal. 

Lane. {Laughing.) Come along. Nonsense. 

Lloyd. Who forgives Roderick Lloyd, — Promontory, Pro — thonotaryof — 

Lane. Of North Wales, Marshal to Baron Price, and so forth. Come 
along, and don't be an ass. 

Lloyd. Fire and fury ! A what? {Drawing his sword, and coming on.) 
A prothonotary called — {He stumbles against the Pump.) Who the devil 
are you ? Get out of the way. 

Lane. {Aside.) A good thmg, faith. He shall have it out. 

Lloyd. {To the Pump.) Who are you, I say ? Why don't you speak ? 

Lane. He says you may go to the devil. 

Lloyd. The devil he does ! Draw, you scoundrel, or you're a dead man. 

Lane. He stands as stiff as a post. 

Lloyd. {Furiously.) Draw, you infernal fool. 

Lane. He says he defies your toasting-fork, and your Welsh-rabbit to 
boot. 

Lloyd. Blood and thunder ! {He runs the Pump through the body.) 

Lane. Good Heavens, Lloyd ! what have you done ? We must be off. 

Lloyd. Pink'd an infernal Welsh-rabbit — I mean a toasting, damnation 
prothonotary. Who's afraid ? 

Lane. Come along, man. This way, this way. Here, down the lane. 
The constables are coming, and you've done it at last, by Heavens ! 

\_Exeunt down Chancery Lane. 

Scene II. Daylight in a cellar. Lloyd and Lane discovered listening. 

Lane. It's nobody, depend on't. It's too early. Nobody is stirring yet. 
Don't be down-hearted, Rory. You're a brave man, you know ; and the 
worse the luck, the greater the lion. 

Lloyd. But I've left my sword in him. 

Lane. No, have you though ? That's unlucky. 

Lloyd. Oh, that punch, that punch! and that cursed fool — poor fool, I 
should say, — Progers. I shall come to shame, George. Oh, I shall. To 
shame and to suffering. {He walks to and fro.) 

Lane. No, no. The sword had no name on it ? 

Lloyd. Yes, it had. 

Lane. B ut only initials. 



THE MURDERED PUMP. 317 

Lloyd. No. Full length. 

Lane. What, titles and all? Roderick Lloyd, Prothono — ■ 

Lloyd. No, no. But name and address. Oh, wouldn't it be better if you 
would go out and see how matters are going on ? 

Lane. What, the crowd, and all that? No, I think best not. We are too 
well known hereabouts. 

Lloyd. Then why didn't you go further ? 

Lane. You were too far gone already, Rory. I don't mean to jest. You 
can't suppose me guilty of that. But it's a phrase, you know. You were very 
drunk, and to say the truth, very wilful 

Lloyd. Oh, I was, I was. 

Lane. You wouldn't be guided at all. 

Lloyd. Too true, too true. 

Lane. I was twenty minutes getting you away from that apple-woman, and 
half an hour, I'm sure, in persuading you to rise from the door- way. {Lloyd 
groans.} Then you wouldn't let me take your sword (for I was afraid of some 
mischief), and you must have stood, I think, ten minutes against that shop- 
window, damning us all round — all the friends you had been disputing with. 

Lloyd. Oh, don't tell me all that again. It's cruel of you, George. Listen ! 
great Heavens, listen ! 

Lane. It's only some milkman. 

Lloyd. Only a milkman ! How do you know ? Besides, what do you 
mean by "only a milkman?" Can't a milkman hang me? Can't a milk- 
man be furious ? furious about a man that's killed ? 

Lane. Pray, sit down, and be easy. Sir John, 'tis true, doesn't appear ; 
but that's his way. He never stands by a friend, you know ; that is to say, 
openly. But secretly he can do any thing ; and he will. I tell you again, 
that I woke him directly we came into the house, and he gave me his solemn 
oath that he would smuggle you into Wales, in the boot of his carriage. It is 
not a very big boot, but it's better than nothing. 

Lloyd. Oh, a paradise, a paradise, if I were but in it. But repeat to me, 
George. What sort of a man was it that I had the misfortune to — .to — . Tell 
me he was a bad fellow at any rate — a mohawk — a gallows bird, or some- 
thing of that sort. 

Lane. I wish I could. But he was a young gentleman, plainly in liquor 
himself. 

Lloyd. Didn't he carry himself very stiffly? 

Lane. Wonderfully, but with a sort of innocence too. 

Lloyd. But he said insulting things. 

La7ie. Not he. That was your fancy. 

Lloyd. What, didn't he tell me to go to the devil, and all that? 

Lane. Not a bit. He was quite silent, and, in fact, evidently did not hear 
a word you uttered. 



3 i8- 



THE MURDERED PUMP. 



Lloyd. How strange, how horribly strange 1 and that I should have had 
all those drunken fancies ! 

Lane. That's your way, you know, owing to your confounded temper. I 
beg your pardon. 

Lluyd. Oh, I beg yours — everybody's — his. 

Lane. You do ? Roderick Lloyd beg pardon ! Is it positively come to 
that ? to that, which you have sworn a thousand times you would never do 
to any man living, be the circumstances what they might. Well, this is a 
change. Ah, ha! {Laughing.) A change and a lesson, eh, Rory? And 
you'll be a good boy, and never do the like again, I suppose ? 

Lloyd. {Astonished.) What has come to you ? Is this kindness ? Is this 
humanity ? 

Lane. Yes, Rory, very good kindness indeed, and very good humanity ; 
for I have now a piece of news to tell you, that will pay you for all you have 
suffered, and me for all that you have ever made me suffer ; for what with 
frights for you, and perils of fights for you, and some three or four flounderings 
in the gutter, there has been no mean balance, let me tell you, on the side of 
your old friend. So, mark me, you didn't leave your sword in the man, for I've 
got it ; and you didn't do him any mischief at all, for you couldn't ; and he was 
no man whatsoever, Rory, for he was a Pump. 

Lloyd. A Pump ? — Swear it. Shout it. Make me sure of it somehow or 
other, and I'm in heaven. 

Lane. {Tenderly.) Do you think I'd play with you, Rory, any longer, 
and in a way like this ? 

{Here Mr. Roderick Lloyd, Prothonotary of North Wales, after em- 
bracing his friend, jumps and dances in ecstasy about the cellar. ) 

Lloyd. By Heaven, it's almost worth going through misery, in order to 
taste of such happiness. 

Lane. That's one of the very points I have so often insisted on in our dis- 
putes. Hail to your new metaphysics, Rory ; — to your enlightened theosophy. 

Lloyd. Come ; let's to breakfast then somewhere, out of this infernal 
cellar. I own my lesson, George. You might have let me off too, a little sooner, 
I think, eh ? Spared me a few sharp sentences. ( They prepare to go.) 

Lane. I'm afraid you're growing a little disconcerted, Rory. 

Lloyd. No, I ain't; but — 

Lane. A little contradictory again. 

Lloyd. No, I ain't ; but — 

Lane. You contradict me, however, as usual. 

Lloyd. No, I don't. Oh, damn it, come along. {Looking red, and 
laughing with his companion. ) You won't tell anybody, will you, George ? 

Lane. Haven't I the blood of the Lloyds in me. Am I not a gentleman, 
Rory? 

Lloyd. You are, you are. So we will drink gallons of tea to settle that 



CHRISTMAS EVE AND CHRISTMAS DAY. 319 

confounded punch; and, I think, I'll never say "No, I don't" as long as I 
live ; at least not to you, my boy ; that is to say, if you behave yourself. 

Lci7te. Ah, you feel a little angry with me still. 

Lloyd. No, I — (Lane laughs.) Damn it. Well, I do; but not half so 
angry as happy, either. So, come along. [Exeutti. 




CHRISTMAS EVE AND CHRISTMAS DAY. 

F the three great annual holidays, Christmas 
day is, for many reasons, the greatest ; and 
one reason among others is, that it stands out 
of the winter-time, the first and warmest of 
them. It is the eye and fire of the season, as 
the fire is of Christmas and of one's room. We have al- 
ways loved it, and ever shall ; first (to give a child's rea- 
son, and a very good one, too, in this instance), because 
Christmas day is Christmas day ; second (which is included 
in that reason, or rather includes it, for it is the greatest), 
because of a high argument, which will more properly 
stand by itself at the close of this article ; third, because 
of the hollies and other evergreens which people conspire 
to bring into cities and houses on this day, making a kind 
of summer in winter, and reminding us that — 

" The poetry of earth is never dead ; " 

fourth, because we were brought up in a cloistered school,* 
where carols had not gone out of fashion, and used to sit 
in circles round huge fires, fit to roast an ox, making in- 
conceivable bliss out of cakes and sour oranges ; fifth, 
because of the fine things which the poets and others have 

* Christ's Hospital. 



320 CHRISTMAS EVE AND CHRISTMAS DAY. 

said of it ; sixth, because there is no business going on, — 
" Mammon " is suspended ; and seventh, because New- 
Year's-day and Twelfth-day come after it ; that is to say, 
because it is the leader of a set of holidays, and the spirit is 
not beaten down into commonplace the moment it is over. 
It closes and begins the year with cheerfulness. We have 
collected, under the head of " The Week,"* some notices 
of the other principal points connected with Christmas. 
Most of them are now losing their old lustre, only to give 
way, we trust, by and by, to better evidences of rejoicing. 
The beadle we can dispense with, and even the Christmas- 
boxes ; especially as we hope nobody will then want them. 
And the " Bellman's Verses " shall turn to something no- 
bler, albeit we have a liking for him ; ay, for his very 
absurdities ; there is something in them so old, so unpre- 
tending, and so reminiscent about him. As long as the 
bellman is alive, one's grandfather does not seem dead, 
and his cocked hat lives with him. Good "Bellman's 
Verses " will not do at all. There have been some such 
things of late, "most tolerable and not to be endured." 
We have even seen them witty, which is a great mistake. 
Warton and Cowper unthinkingly set the way to them. 
You may be childlike at Christmas ; you may be merry ; 
you may be absurd, — in the worldly sense of the term ; 
but you must write with a faith, and so redeem your old 
Christmas reputation somehow. Belief in something great 
and good preserves a respectability, even in the most child- 
ish mistakes ; but it feels that the company of banter is 
unworthy of it. The very absurdity of the "Bellman's 
Verses " is only bearable, nay, only pleasant, when we sup- 



* A column of original and selected miscellany published under this caption 
in the " London Journal." — Ed. 



CHRISTMAS EVE AND CHRISTMAS DAY. 32 1 

pose them written by some actual doggerel-poet in good 
faith. Mere mediocrity hardly allows us to give our 
Christmas-box, or to believe it nowadays in earnest ; and 
the smartness of your cleverest worldly-wise men is felt to 
be wholly out of place. No, no ; give us the good old 
decrepit " Bellman's Verses," hobbling as their bringer, 
and taking themselves for something respectable like his 
cocked-hat, or give us none at all. We should not like 
even to see him in a round hat. He would lose something 
of the old and oracular by it. If in a round hat, he should 
keep out of sight, and not contradict the portrait of him- 
self at the top of his sheet of verses, with his bell and his 
beadle's staff. The pictures round the verses may be new ; 
but we like the old better, no matter how worn-out, pro- 
vided the subject be discernible ; no matter what blots for 
the eyes, and muddiness for the clouds. The worst of 
these old wood-cuts are often copied from good pictures ; 
and, at all events, they wear an aspect of the old sincer- 
ity.* 

Give us, in short, a foundation of that true old Christ- 
mas sincerity to go upon (no matter under what modification 
of belief, provided it be of a Christian sort), and, like the bet- 
ter sort of Catholics, who go to church in the morning and 
to their dance in the evening, we can begin the day with a 
mild gravity of recollection, and finish it with all kinds of 
forgetful mirth, — forgetful, because realizing the happiness 
for which we are thoughtful. It is a pernicious mistake 
among persons who exclusively call themselves religious, 



* We learn from Hone's " Every-Day Book n that for the use of this per- 
sonage there was a book, entitled " The Bellman's Treasury, containing above a 
hundred several verses, fitted for all Humours and Fancies, and suited to all 
times and seasons." London, 1707, 8vo. — Ed. 

21 



322 CHRISTMAS EVE AND CHRISTMAS DAY. 

to think they ought never to be cheerful, without calling to 
mind considerations too vast and grand for cheerfulness ; 
thereby representing the object of their reverence after the 
fashion of an officious and tyrannical parent, who should 
cast the perpetual shadow of his dignity over his children's 
sports. Those sports are a part of the general ordinance 
of things. Man is a laughing as well as a thinking crea- 
ture ; and " there is a time ," says the wise man, " for all 
things." Formal set times for being religious and thought- 
ful are, to be sure, not the only times ; but a perpetual 
formality is merely the same mistake rendered thorough- 
going and entire ! It might be thought unnecessary to 
touch upon this point nowadays, and a violation of our own 
inculcations of seasonableness to notice it in the present 
article ; but a periodical writer who is in earnest is much 
hampered by certain inconsistencies in the demands of 
some of his readers ; and what we feel, we express. 

To have a thorough sense, then, of Christmas,' grave 
and gay, and to reconcile as much as possible of its old 
times to the new, one ought to begin with Christmas Eve, 
to see the log put on the fire, the boughs fixed somewhere 
in the room, and to call to mind what is said by the poets, 
and those beautiful accounts of angels singing in the air, 
which inspired the seraphical strains of Handel and 
Corelli. Those who possess musical instruments should 
turn to these strains, or procure them, and warm their 
imaginations by their performance. In paintings from 
Italy (where the violin, on account of its greater mastery, 
and the enthusiasm of the people, is held in more esteem 
than with us), we often see choral visions of angels in the 
clouds, singing and playing on that instrument as well as 
the harp ; and certainly, if ever a sound which may be 
supposed to resemble them, was yet heard upon earth, 



CHRISTMAS EVE AND CHRISTMAS DAY. 323 

it is in some of the harmonies of Arcangelo Corelli. 
And the recitative of Handel's divine strain, " There 
were shepherds abiding in the fields," is as exquisite for 
truth and simplicity as the cheek of innocence. See what 
Milton has sung of these angelic symphonies in the 
ode " On the Morning of Christ's Nativity." Shakespeare 
has touched upon Christmas Eve with a reverential tender- 
ness, sweet as if he had spoken it hushingly. 

" Some say that ever 'gainst that season conies, 
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, 
The bird of dawning singeth all night long. 
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad ; 
The nights are wholesome ; then no planets strike, 
No fairy takes, nor "witch hath power to charm ; 
So hallow d and so gracious is the time." 

Upon which (for it is a character in Hamlet who is speak- 
ing) Horatio observes, in a sentence remarkable for the 
breadth of its sentiment as well as the niceness of its 
sincerity (like the whole of that apparently favorite charac- 
ter of the poet, who loved a friend), 

" So have I heard, and do z« part believe it: " 

that is to say, he believed all that was worthy, and recog- 
nized the balmy and Christian effect produced upon well- 
disposed and sympathetic minds by reflections on the 
season. 

The Waits, that surprise us with music in the middle 
of the night, evidently originated in honor of the heavenly 
visitation. They are, unfortunately, not apt to be very 
celestial of their kind. There is a fellow in particular, 
that plays the bass, who seems to make a point of being 
out of tune. He has two or three notes that are correct 
enough, that enable him to finish in a style of grandeur 



324 CHRI9TMAS EVE AND CHRISTMAS DAY. 

and self-satisfaction, but his " by-play," for the most part, 
is horrible. However, the very idea of music is good, 
especially in the middle of the night ; and a little imagin- 
ation and Christian charity, together with a considera- 
tion of his cold fingers, will help us to be thankful for his 
best parts, and slip as we can over his worst. When the 
English become a more musical people, zealous amateurs 
will volunteer their services on fine nights, and, going 
forth with their harps and guitars, charm their friends and 
neighbors with strains rendered truly divine by the hour 
and the occasion, — 

" Divinely-warbled voice 
Answering the stringed noise." 

(See Milton's ode, as above-mentioned.) 

" Soft stillness and the night 
Become the touches of sweet harmony." 

Merchant of Venice. 

A Christmas day, to be perfect, should be clear and cold, 
with holly branches in berry, a blazing fire, a dinner with 
mince-pies, and games and forfeits in the evening. You 
cannot have it in perfection, if you are very fine and fash- 
ionable. Neither, alas ! can it be enjoyed by the very 
poor ; so that, in fact, a perfect Christmas is impossible to 
be had, till the progress of things has distributed comfort 
more equally. But when we do our best, we are privileged 
to enjoy our utmost ; and charity gives us a right to hope. 
The completest enjoyer of Christmas (next to a lover who 
has to receive forfeits from his mistress), is the holiday 
school-boy who springs up early, like a bird, darting hither 
and thither, out of sheer delight, thinks of his mince-pies 
half the morning, has too much of them when they come 
(pardon him this once), roasts chestnuts and cuts apples 



CHRISTMAS EVE AND CHRISTMAS DAY. 325 

half the evening, is conscious of his new silver in his 
pocket, and laughs at every piece of mirth with a loudness 
that rises above every other noise. Next day what a peg- 
top will he not buy ! what string, what nuts, what ginger- 
bread ! And he will have a new clasp-knife, and pay three 
times too much for it. Sour oranges also will he suck, 
squeezing their cheeks into his own with staring eyes ; and 
his mother will tell him they are not good for him, — and 
let him go on. 

A Christmas evening should, if possible, finish with 
music. It carries off the excitement without abruptness, 
and sheds a repose over the conclusion of enjoyment. 

A word respecting the more serious part of the day's 
subject alluded to above. It is but a word, but it may 
sow a seed of reflection in some of the best natures, es- 
pecially in these days of perplexity between new doctrines 
and old. It appears to us, that there is a point never 
enough dwelt upon, if at all, by those who attempt to bring 
about a reconciliation between belief and the want of it. It 
is addressed only to the believers in a Providence, but those 
who have that belief, if they have no other, are a numer- 
ous body. The point is this, — that Christianity, to say 
the least of it, is a great event. It has had a wonder- 
ful effect on the world, and still has, even in the workings 
of its apparently unfllial daughter, modern philosophy, who 
could never have been what she is but for the doctrine of 
boundless sympathy, grafted upon the elegant self-reference 
of the Greeks, and the patriotism of the Romans, which was 
go often a mere pretext for the most unneighborly injustice. 
Now so great an event must have been in the contempla- 
tion of Providence, — one of the mountain-tops of its 
manifestation ; and, if we say, even of a Shakespeare and 
a Plato (and not without reason), that there is something 



326 



NEW YEARS GIFTS. 



" divine " in them, that is to say, something partaking of a 
more energetic and visible portion of the mysterious spirit 
breathed into mankind, how much more, and with how 
much more reverential a love, ought we not to have a di- 
vine impression of the nature of Him, who drew the great 
line between the narrowness of the Old World and the uni- 
versalities of the New, and uttered to the earth, through the 
angelical organ of his whole being, life and death, that 
truly celestial doctrine, " Think of others I " 



NEW YEAR'S GIFTS. 




ORMERLY, everybody made presents on New 
Year's Day, as they still do in Paris, where 
our lively neighbors turn the whole metrop- 
olis into a world of cakes, sweetmeats, jewel- 
lery, and all sorts of gifts and greetings. The 
Puritans checked that custom, out of a notion that it was 
superstitious, and because the heathens did it ; which was 
an odd reason, and might have abolished many other inno- 
cent and laudable practices — eating itself, for one — and 
going to bed. Innumerable are the authorities which (had 
we lived in those days) we would have brought up in be- 
half of those two customs, in answer to the New-Year's- 
Day-knocking-down folios of Mr. Prynne, the great 
" blasphemer of custard." Unfortunately if the Puritans 
thought gift-giving superstitious, the increasing spirit of 
commerce was too well inclined to admit half its epithet, 
and regard the practice as, at least, superfluous — a thing 
over and above — and what was not always productive of 



NEW YEAR'S GIFTS. 327 

a " consideration." " Nothing is given for nothing now- 
adays," as the saying is. Nay, it is doubtful whether 
next to nothing will always be given for something. There 
are people, we are credibly informed, taken for persons 
M well to do " in the world, and of respectable character, 
who will even turn over the pages of the " London Journal," 
and narrowly investigate whether there is enough wit, 
learning, philosophy, lives, travels, poetry, voyages, and 
romances in it, for three halfpence.* 

This must be mended, or there will be no such thing as 
a New Year by and by. Novelty will go out ; the sun will 
halt in the sky, and prudent men sharply consider whether 
they have need of common perception. 

Without entering into politics, something is to be said, 
nowadays, for an Englishman's being averse to making 
presents ; and, as it behooves us to make the best of a bad 
thing, reasons might be shown also why it is not so well 
to have a formal and official sort of day for making 
presents, as to leave them to more spontaneous occa- 
sions. Besides, if everybody gives and everybody re- 
ceives, where, it may be asked, is the compliment ? And 
how are people to know whether they would have given 
or received anything, had it not been the custom ? 

How are they to be sure, whether a very pretty present 
is not a positive insult, till they compare it with what has 
been received by others ? And how are men in office and 
power to be sure that in the gifts of their inferiors there 
is anything but self-seeking and bribery ? It was formerly 



* Such a one was not Walter Savage Landor, who thus wrote, from Italy 
to a friend in England: "Let me recommend to you Leigh Hunt's 'London 
Journal,' three halfpence a week. It contains neither politics nor scandal, 
but very delightful things in ever}' department of graceful literature." — Ed. 



328 NEW YEAR'S GIFTS. 

the custom in England to load princes and ministers with 
New- Year's Gifts. Queen Elizabeth, who had the soul of 
a mantuamaker as well as of a monarch, received whole 
wardrobes of gowns and caps, as well as caskets of jewel- 
lery. What a day must she have passed of it, with all the 
fine things spread out before her ! And yet with all her 
just estimation of herself, and her vanity to boot, bitter 
suspicions must occasionally have crossed her, that all 
this was but so much self-interest appealing to self-love. 
But suppose a Duke or an Earl did not send a gift good 
enough. Here was ground for anger and jealousy, and 
all the pleasure-spoiling self-will which see no good in 
what is given it, provided something be wanting. Dryden 
addressed some verses on New- Year's Day to Lord Chan- 
cellor Hyde (Clarendon), which he begins as follows : — 

" My Lord, 
While flattering crowds officiously appear 
To give themselves, not you, a happy year, 
And by the greatness of their presents, prove 
How much they hope, but not how well they love," &c 

Here was a blow (not very well considered, perhaps) at 
the self-complacency induced by the receipt of "great 
presents." Suppose Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst, or Lord 
Chancellor Brougham, had similar presents sent them on 
the like occasion. How could the one be sure that his 
great legal knowledge, or the other, that even his great 
genius and tact for all knowledge, had anything to do with 
the compliment ? Or that it was not as mere a trick for 
court-favor as anything which they would now despise ? 
We grant that (where there is any right to bestow it at all) 
a present is a present ; that it is an addition to one's stock, 
and, at all events, a compliment to one's influence ; and 
influence is often its own proof of a right to be compli- 



NEW YEAR S GIFTS. 329 

mented ; as want of influence is sometimes a greater. 
But, for the sake of fair-play among mankind, every ad- 
vantage must have its drawback ; and it is a drawback in 
the power to confer benefits, that it cannot always be sure 
of the motives of those who do it honor. If a day is to 
be set apart for such manifestations of good-will, the 
birthday would seem better for them than New-Year's 
Day. The compliment would be more particular and per- 
sonal ; others might not know of it, and so would not 
grudge it ; and real affections would thus be indulged, not 
mere ceremonies. 

We own that we think there is something in that dis- 
tinction. Yet our sprightly-blooded neighbors would no 
doubt have replies to all these arguments ; and, for our 
part, we are for cutting the knot of the difficulty thus : 
Make us all rich enough, and then we could indulge our- 
selves both with New- Year's Day and the birthday, both 
on the general occasions and the particular one. For, to 
say the truth, we people who are not rich, and who, there- 
fore, have nothing perhaps worth withholding, are long in 
coming to understand how it is that rich people can resist 
these anniversary opportunities of putting delight into the 
eyes of their friends and dependants, and distributing 
their toys and utilities on all sides of them. Presents 
(properly so called) are great ties to gratitude, and there- 
fore great increasers of power and influence, especially if 
they are of such a kind as to be constantly before the eye, 
thus producing an everlasting association of pleasant ideas 
with the giver.* They tell the receiver that he is worth 
something in the giver's eyes, and thus the worth of the 
giver becomes twenty-fold. Nor do we say this sneer- 

* Presents endear absents. — Charles Lamb. 



33° NEW YEARS GIFTS. 

ingly, or in disparagement of the self-love which must of 
necessity be, more or less, mixed up with every one's na- 
ture ; for the most disinterested love would have nothing 
to act upon without it ; and the most generous people in 
the world, such as most consult the pleasure of others 
before their own, must lose their very identity and personal 
consciousness before they can lose a strong desire to be 
pleased. 

Oh ! but rich people, it will be said, are not always so 
rich as they are supposed to be ; and even when they are, 
they find plenty of calls upon their riches, without going 
out of their way to encourage them. They have estab- 
lishments to keep up, heaps of servants, &c., their wives 
and families are expensive, and then they are cheated 
beyond measure. 

Making allowances for all this, and granting in some 
instances that wealth itself be poor, considering the de- 
mands upon it, nevertheless for the most part real wealth 
must be real wealth ; that is to say, must have a great 
deal more than enough. You do not find that a rich man 
(unless he is a miser) hesitates to make a great many 
presents to himself, — books, jewels, horses, clothes, fur- 
niture, wines, or whatever the thing may be that he most 
cares for ; and he must cease to do this (we mean of 
course in its superfluity) before he talks of his inability to 
make presents to others. 




SALE OF THE LATE MR. WESTS PICTURES. 33 1 



SALE OF THE LATE MR. WEST'S PICTURES. 

:l T is a villanous thing to those who have known 
a man for years, and been intimate with the 
quiet inside of his house, privileged from in- 
trusion, to see a sale of his goods going on 
upon the premises. It is often not to be 
helped, and what he himself wishes and enjoins ; but still 
it is a villanous necessity, — a hard cut to some of one's 
oldest and tenderest recollections. There is a sale of this 
kind now going on in the house we spoke of last week.* 
We spoke of it then under an impulse not easy to be re- 
strained, and not difficult to be allowed us ; and we speak 
of it now under another. We were returning the day be- 
fore yesterday from a house, where we had been entertained 
with lively accounts of foreign countries, and the present 
features of the time, when we saw the door in Newman 
Street standing wide open, and disclosing to every passen- 
ger a part of the gallery at the end of the hall. All our 
boyhood came over us, with the recollection of those who 
had accompanied us into that house. We hesitated 
whether we should go in, and see an auction taking place 
of the old quiet and abstraction ; but we do not easily 
suffer an unpleasant and vulgar association to overcome 
a greater one ; and, besides, how could we pass ? Having 
passed the threshold, without the ceremony of the smiling 
old porter, we found a worthy person sitting at the door 
of the gallery, who, on hearing our name, seemed to have 



* In an article entitled " A Nearer View of Some of the Shops," in " The 
Indicator." — Ed. 



332 SALE OF THE LATE MR. WESTS PICTURES. 

old times come upon him as much as ourselves, and was 
very warm in his services. We entered the gallery, which 
we had entered hundreds of times in childhood, by the 
side of a mother, who used to speak of the great persons 
and transactions in the pictures on each side of her with a 
hushing reverence as if they were really present. But the 
pictures were not there, — neither Cupid with his doves, 
nor Agrippina with the ashes of Germanicus, nor the 
Angel slaying the army of Sennacherib, nor Death on the 
Pale Horse, nor Jesus Healing the Sick, nor the Deluge, 
nor Moses on the Mount, nor King Richard pardoning his 
brother John, nor the Installation of the old Knights of the 
Garter, nor Greek and Italian stories, nor the landscapes 
of Windsor Forest, nor Sir Philip Sidney, mortally wound- 
ed, giving up the water to the dying soldier. They used 
to cover the wall ; but now there were only a few engrav- 
ings. The busts and statues also were gone. But there 
was the graceful little piece of garden as usual, with its 
grass plat and its clumps of lilac. They could not move 
the grass plat, even to sell it. Turning to the left, there 
was the privileged study, which we used to enter between 
the Venus de Medicis and the Apollo of the Vatican. 
They were gone, like their mythology. Beauty and intel- 
lect were no longer waiting on each side of the door. 
Turning again, we found the longer part of the gallery like 
the other; and in the vista through another room, the 
auction was going on. We saw a throng of faces of busi- 
ness with their hats on, and heard the hard-hearted 
knocks of the hammer, in a room which used to hold the 
mild and solitary Artist at his work, and which had never 
been entered but with quiet steps and a face of consider- 
ation. We did not stop a minute. In the room between 
this and the gallery, huddled up in a corner, were the busts 



SALE OF THE LATE MR. WESTS PICTURES. 333 

and statues which had given us a hundred thoughts. 
Since the days when we first saw them, we have seen 
numbers like them, and many of more valuable materials ; 
for though good of their kind, and of old standing, they 
are but common plaster. But the thoughts and the recol- 
lections belonged to no others ; and it appeared sacrilege 
to see them in that state. 

" Apollo from his shrine 
Can no more divine : 

# # # # * 
And each peculiar power foregoes his wonted seat." 

Into the parlor, which opens out of the hall and into the 
garden, we did not look. We scarcely know why ; but 
we did not. In that parlor we used to hear of our maternal 
ancestors, stout yet kind-hearted Englishmen, who set up 
their tents with Penn in the wilderness. And there we 
learned to unite the love of freedom with that of the graces 
of life ; for our host, though born a Quaker, and appointed 
a royal painter, and not so warm in his feelings as those 
about him, had all the natural amenity belonging to those 
graces, and never truly lost sight of that love of freedom. 
There we grew up acquainted with the divine humanities 
of Raphael. There we remember a large colored print 
of the old lion-hunt of Rubens, in which the boldness of 
the action and the glow of the coloring overcome the hor- 
ror of the stuggle. And there, long before we knew any 
thing of Ariosto, we were as familiar as young playmates 
with the beautiful Angelica and Medoro, who helped to 
fill our life with love. 

May a blessing be upon that house, and upon all who 
know how to value the genius of it ! 




334 TRANSLATION FROM 



TRANSLATION FROM MILTON INTO 
WELSH. 

]E are going to do a thing very common with 
critics ; — we are about to speak of a work 
we do not understand. What is not so com- 
mon, however, we are not going to condemn 
it. On the contrary, the evident spirit under 
which it is written, gives it a very advantageous character 
in our opinion ; and we shall proceed to show those 
eminent and dissatisfied persons, how possible it is by the 
help of a little good humor and modesty to be pleased 
instead of provoked, and to enjoy one's imagination in- 
stead of resenting one's ignorance. 

The reader is aware perhaps, that there is a kind of 
Poetical Order existing among our Welsh brethren, the 
object of which is to keep up the genius as well as remem- 
brance of their ancient Bards. The members look upon 
themselves, in love at least, as their successors ; take the 
same title of Bards ; distribute harps as prizes ; and en- 
deavor to catch the reflection of their old fire on the same 
mountains. Nor is this second-hand inspiration, we dare 
say, without the occasional production of something fine. 
In a populous modern city, with its sophistications, such 
an establishment might be regarded as a mere game at 
antiques. But in persons of simplicity of life and earnest- 
ness of intention, especially in solitudes peopled with 
grand human recollections, it is difficult to love anything 
fervently, and never speak of it in a worthy manner. We 
have seen poems in the English language written by 
Welshmen of this character, which were as good as some 



MILTON INTO WELSH. 335 

of the English productions of Burns ; and the inference 
is, that in their own language, and on the subject of their 
own affections, they have not always produced poetry un- 
worthy of ranking with his Scotch. Even upon subjects 
of mere antiquity, the inspiration above mentioned may 
act upon them as that of the great poets of Greece and 
Italy has acted upon their own. Great times and men 
may literally be said never to die in point of effect. Their 
touch reaches us from afar. Their eye is upon us out of 
the clouds of time. We feel their memory in our ears, 
like the tremble of an eternal song. If their own works 
help to divert us from the more natural soil out of which 
they drew the flowers and fountains of their immortality, 
they serve to create a new stratum of fertility, not so fine 
indeed as the other, but still fine and abundant, and full 
of a second vitality. Death itself helps to beautify them. 
We walk among their memories, as we do among the 
leaves of autumn, or the ruins of great places ; and sup- 
ply the want of present perfection with the love of that 
which is past. 

In our youth, we met with one of the Modern Welsh 
Bards, who had all the character we speak of. He was a 
man of primeval simplicity of manners ; that is to say, 
one who without any of the conventional substitutes for the 
humanities of intercourse, possessed that natural polite- 
ness of benignity, which is so instantly felt to be their 
vital spirit. He had the true Welsh face improved by 
information, hair and eyes black as a raven, and an ex- 
pression of great candor and good nature. If we remem- 
ber rightly, we gathered from his conversation, that he had 
risen, by dint of his love of letters, and much to the credit 
of those who noticed him, from an humble origin ; which 
origin he neither affected to hide nor to boast of. He 



336 TRANSLATION FROM 

occasionally came up to London ; took his meals with the 
best society among his countrymen or at his own hermit- 
like table ; and hired an humble lodging near the Museum, 
where it was his delight to go and study Welsh antiquities. 
Thus if he came to London, he brought his country with 
him ; found his bards and his very quiet about him, wher- 
ever he pleased, in the shape of books ; and in default of 
his goats and mountains, could get among animals and 
things which perhaps he loved as well, and thought almost 
as real, the dragons and golden fields of Cambrian heraldry. 
Among other advantages of the remoteness and romantic 
nature of the sphere in which he grew up, it had kept him 
free from the small pedantry and self-sufficiency so often 
observable in the leading wits of country towns and minor 
cities, who think their own amount of knowledge the 
sum of all that is accomplished, and have a particular 
fancy for setting Londoners^ in the right. He had the 
humanity to think well of what he did not know. He 
loved his country's music and its poets, and in our fond- 
ness for an air on the piano-forte and an ode of Horace 
was pleased to discover something which he thought 
worthy both of his sympathy and his respect. 

This pleasant Cambro-Briton, of whom we are speak- 
ing, once took us to see a countryman of his, whose taste 
in urbanities and antiquities resembled his own. He lived 
in a small quiet house near the fields ; and we found him 
up to the eyes in good humor, books, and a Welsh harp. 
If we are not much mistaken, this is the author of the 
Welsh Milton. 

There is something very beautiful to us to see the whole 
souls of men yearning in this manner towards their native 
country, when its power has long ceased to exist. They 
have all the merit of adhering to a great friend in adver- 



MILTON INTO WELSH. 337 

sity ; and yet the friend is perhaps greater than ever he 
was, and can reward them more. The ancient Britons 
had in them the seeds of a great nation, even in our 
modern sense of the word. They had courage ; they had 
reflection ; they had imagination. When driven from 
their larger possessions by the mere power which the 
world then adored, they soon found out the two great 
secrets of adversity, — that of softening reality with ro- 
mance, and of turning experience to reformation. They 
possessed, in an extraordinary degree, the spirit of legis- 
lative improvement. Power at last made a vassal of their 
prince. There were writers in those times ; harpers and 
bards, who made the instinct of that brute faculty turn 
cruel out of fear. But there were no presses to let all the 
world know what the writers thought, and to give intel- 
lectual power its fair chances with brute. They bequeathed 
to their countrymen, however, the glory of their memories. 
They, and time together, have consecrated their native 
hills, so as they were never before consecrated. Existing, 
in a maimer, no longer as a thing of the common world, 
the country took an elevation nearer heaven. It lifted up 
its head in the light of love and poetry, and its tops shine 
to this day in the reverted eyes of its wanderers. 

" Fond impious man, thinkst thou yon sanguine cloud 
Raised by thy breath, has quenched the orb of day? 
To-morrow he repairs the golden flood, 
And warms the nations with redoubled ray." 

Violence is the grown childhood of the world. Its man- 
hood is intellect and equanimity ; and part of the grace 
of manhood consists in recollecting the better things of 
infancy. Edward the First, who made vassals of the 
Welsh, is now an inferior person in our eyes compared 
with Howell the legislator. We would rather see Alfred 



338 TRANSLATION FROM 

the Great than the widest-ruling of all the Roman Em- 
perors. We should expect more in his face. We should 
recognize in him a greater existing man, — a finer contem- 
porary, — or rather a more becoming fellow-creature for 
the Shakespeares and Bacons : for when we speak of 
modern times, we mean the intellectual times which such 
great men have produced for us. Even the smallness of 
the territory, to which the old Britons were confined, 
serves to concentrate and make strong the gaze of recol- 
lection. Mere greatness acts through the medium of 
pride or fear. It always inflicts a sort of uneasy con- 
sciousness of the gross nature of its pretensions. Break 
it, and it resolves its compounds into littleness. You can 
only contrast it with mere smallness, or pity it because it 
is not entire. It cannot afford to be otherwise. Its com- 
pounds have no principle of growth, — no power of vol- 
untary aggrandizement, — no charm with which to call 
associations about them. But break a heart into a thou- 
sand shivers, and every atom shall be reverenced. Love 
is great enough for itself. Such phrases as the Great 
King and the Great Nation, even though warranted in 
point of physical power, are nothing but vanity, and are 
felt to be so. Both imply a want of individual importance, 
and by the same reason a want of general humanity. 
They make the recollections either too vaguely public, or 
too minutely private. The Persian in Greece, or the 
Turk in Candia, was angry at being killed by a petty re- 
publican, or regretted only his harem or his houris ; but 
the Greek who " dying, thought of sweet Argos," * and 



'■ Sternitur infelix alieno vulnere, ccelumque 
Adspicit, et dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos. 

Virgil, Lib. 10, v. 781. 



MILTON INTO WELSH. 339 

the Florentine who turned at hearing Dante speak in his 
native language, and felt his heart live again at "the 
dialect of Arno's vale," thought of his home and his 
country as one. 

It is a feeling connected with this love of country, which 
most particularly strikes us in the translation of Milton. 
Here is an author fond of authorship, an author living 
among Englishmen, and well aware of the universality of 
their language, and yet he contents his ambition with pro- 
ducing a long work which none but his countrymen shall 
understand. It is sufficient for him if he can give them a 
new source of pleasure. It is enough for the true large- 
ness of his spirit if he can give a thousand times more 
than he can receive, — happy in obtaining the thanks of 
the modern Howells and Llewellyns, and in being re- 
nowned in a country about twice the size of Yorkshire. 

On opening the book, we are then struck with the 
delight it must afford to those who have no other lan- 
guage, and amused with the unreadable face it presents 
to thosei who are not acquainted with it. One's familiarity 
with the original, and utter inability to make out its ex- 
pounder, make up a very pleasant perplexity. We will 
quote a passage from both, which in Milton is like the 
coming of an army with music, and which must present 
high associations, of another sort, to the Welsh reader. 
Satan has just numbered his forces : — 

" And now his heart 
Distends with pride, and hard'ning in his strength 
Glories : for never, since created man, 
Met such embodied force, as named with these 
Could merit more than that small infantry 
Warr'd on by cranes ; though all the giant brood 
Of Phlegra with th' heroic race were join'd 
That fought at Thebes and Ilium, on each side 



34° TRANSLATION FROM 

Mix'd with auxiliar gods ; and what resounds 
In fable or romance of Uther's son 
Begirt with British and Armorick knights ; 
And all who since, baptiz'd or infidel, 
Jousted in Aspramont, or Montalban, 
Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond, 
Or whom Biserta sent from Africk shore, 
When Charlemain with all his peerage fell 
By Fontarabia." 

Yna ymfulchi'a, 
Ei galon, a chaledu yn ei nerth 
Ymorfoledda : canys nid erised 
Er pan fu dyn, yr ymddygyrchai lu 
Wrth y rhai hyn teilyngach fyddent nog 
Oedd y peddytos man a gyrchent gynt 
Greyrod ; er pe cawri Phlegra oil 
Yn gyflu ag y glewion a gateynt 
Rhag Thebes a rhag Ilion, cymhlith o 
Gyfneirthiaid Dduwiau y ddwy blaid ; a pheth 
A soniant chwedlau am fab Uthr ar gyrch 
Marchogion Prydain ac Armorica ; 
Ac wedi hwynt oil, cred neu anghred lu, 
Yn Aspramont neu Montalbar, neu yn 
Damasco, neu Marocco, neu Trebisond, 
Neu o Affric dorf Biserta, yn y drin 
Wrth Fontarabia, pan y syrthiai holl 
Urddolion Carlo Mawr ac efe ei hun. 

Here are some fine words to the eye : — 

Yna ymfalchia 
Ei galon, a chaledu yn ei nerth 
Ymorfoledda. 

And again : — 

Marchogion Prydain ac Armorica : 

And, — 

Yn y drin 
Wrth Fontarabia, pan y syrthiai holl 
Urddolion Carlo Mawr ac efe ei hun. 

Charles the Great keeps up his old triumphs. He always 



MILTON INTO WELSH. 34 1 

gets well off in every tongue and nation, — Charlemain, 
Carlo Mano, Carolus Magnus. Even his plain mono- 
syllable, Carl, which Camden tells us is the only appellation 
on his coins, has a self-sufficing and dominant sound. 
But we know not that he ever cut a more imperial figure 
than in this lofty and solemn agnomen of Carlo Mawr. 
It reminds one of the mountain.* The names that abound 
in this passage serve only to show to greater effect the 
obscurity of the rest. Uthr and Prydain we can make 
out : Damasco and Marocco, and Trebisond, are as fa- 
miliar to us as the sounds of a trumpet ; but " what the 
devil," as Brantome would say, is " oedd y pedditos 
man ? " There happens to be a note to these words ; 
and the idea of explanation is so united with that of a 
note, that one looks involuntarily for some instruction on 
the point. The following is the elucidation. " Odd y 
pedditos many'] — Syniad yw hyn am y ddammeg o ryfel 
rhwyng y crbrod ac y creyrodP Even the Preface, we 
find, has nothing in it for us Saxons ; nor the Index 
either. 'At last, in the former, we hit upon some Greek 
letters, and thought that some light was going to break in 
upon us, when lo ! we know not for what cause, but these 
Greek letters contained only Welsh words. This was 
" the unkindest cut of all." But they look like some 
memorial about a lady, perhaps an affectionate one ; and we 
return to our gravities. 

The only remaining observation we have to make, is the 



* Those rogues the punsters, who will be levelling every thing, and laying 
every language double, have already got hold of the translation of Mr. Owen 
Pughe. One of them, the other day, seeing the words "Mr. Tomkins " at 
the head of an advertisement, and finding that it concerned that late eminent 
writing-master, said that he was the greatest man that flourished during the 
last century, and that he ought to be called Penman- Mawr. 



342 TRANSLATION FROM MILTON. 

pleasure with which the great poet himself would have 
witnessed a translation of his work into this language : 
there has lately been an Icelandic version of Paradise 
Lost This would have gratified him, from feelings com- 
mon to all writers. The Italian ones were a matter of 
course. But a translation into old British would have 
been particularly curious to one, who had meditated an 
epic poem on the exploits of King Arthur, and had no 
doubt made himself as well acquainted as possible with 
Welsh antiquities, for that purpose. The overflowings of 
this first intention of his, when it was afterwards diverted, 
are visible in the little streams of romance which occa- 
sionally run into its other sphere. Among the subjects 
also which he has left on record for tragedy, are passages 
from the same period ; and when he began a History of 
Britain, he delighted to go as far back as possible, and do 
justice to Briton as well as Saxon. He speaks of the 
intended epic poem in various parts of his writings, and 
talks of his subject with a zeal and even a British sort of 
partiality, which is as striking as the ardor of his verse. 
See particularly the famous passage in his Latin poem to 
Tasso's friend, Manso, where after expressing his wish to 
meet with so understanding a patron, and to write about 
the Round Table and Arthur, who " at that moment was 
preparing his wars under ground," he bursts out in a 
strain like the clang of metal : — 

Et, O modo spiritus adsit, 
Frangam Saxonicas Britonum sub Marte phalangas ! 

And oh, did spirit come on me but fit for those high wars, 
I'd crash the Saxon phalanxes beneath the British Mars ! 

Perhaps considering what a proud patriot Milton was, 
notwithstanding all his cosmopolitical qualities, it affords 



THE BULL-FIGHT. 343 

some additional explanation to this British part of his 
enthusiasm, to find that his mother was of Welsh origin. 
His connections were probably a good deal among the 
countrymen of her family. His first wife was the daughter 
of a Powell. That he did not do what he intended, has 
been regretted by every poet who has alluded to it, from 
Dryden to Walter Scott. We remember a note in the 
latter's edition of Dryden, where he asks, what would not 
have been done with such subjects as the Perilous Chapel 
and the Forbidden Seat ? So much, that being compelled 
to bring this article to a close, we dare not trust ourselves 
with dwelling upon it, — with fancying a thousandth part 
of the grand and the gorgeous things, the warlike and the 
peaceful, the bearded and the vermeil-cheeked, the manly, 
the supernatural, and the gentle, with which his poem 
would have burnt brightly down to us, like windows 
painted by enchantment. 



THE BULL-FIGHT; 

OR, THE STORY OF DON ALPHONSO DE MELOS AND 
THE JEWELLER'S DAUGHTER. 

I1VERYBODY has heard of the bull-fights in 
Spain. The noble animal is brought into an 
arena to make sport, as Samson was among 
the Philistines. And truly he presents him- 
self to one's imagination, as a creature equally 
superior with Samson to his tormentors ; for the sport 
which he is brought in to furnish, is that of being mur- 
dered. The poor beast is not actuated by a perverse will, 




344 THE BULL-FIGHT. 

and by a brutality which is deliberate. He does but obey 
to the last the just feelings of his nature. He would not 
be forced to revenge himself, if he could help it. He would 
fain return to the sweet meadow and the fresh air, but his 
tyrants will not let him. He is stung with arrows, goaded 
and pierced with javelins, hewn at with swords, beset with 
all the devilries of horror and astonishment that can ex- 
asperate him into madness ; and the tormentors themselves 
feel that he is in the right, if he can but give bloody deaths 
to his bloody assassins. The worst of it is, that some of 
these assassins, who are carried away by custom, are per- 
sons who are otherwise among the best in the kingdom. 
They err from that very love of sympathy, and of the ad- 
miration of their fellows, which should have been employed 
to teach them better. 

The excuse for this diabolical pastime is, that it keeps 
up old Spanish qualities to their height, and prevents the 
nation from becoming effeminate. To what purpose ? And 
in how many instances ? Are not the Spanish nobility 
the most degenerate in Europe ? Has not its court, for 
three generations, been a scandal and a burlesque ? and 
would any other nation in Christendom consent to be made 
the puppets of such superiors ? What could Spain have 
done against France without England ? What have all its 
bull-fights, and all its other barbarities, done for it, to save 
it from the shame of being the feeblest and most supersti- 
tious of European communities, and of having no voice in 
the affairs of the world ? 

Poor foolish Matadore ! Poor, idle illiterate, unreflect- 
ing cavallero /that is to say, "horseman ! " which, by the 
noble power or privilege of riding a horse (a thing that any 
groom can do in any decent country), came to mean " gen- 
tleman ! " (and no other country has derived its idea of a 



THE BULL-FIGHT. 345 

gentleman from that of a centaur), can you risk your life 
for nothing better than this ? Must you stake wife, chil- 
dren, mistress, father and mother, friends, fortune, love, 
and all which all of them may bring you, at no higher 
price than the power of having it said you are a better man 
than the butcher ? Is there no sacred cause of country to 
fight for ? No tyrant to oppose ? No doctrine worth 
martyrdom ? that you must needs, at the hazard of death 
and agony, set the only wits or the best qualities you 
possess on outdoing the greatest fools and ruffians in your 
city ? And can you wonder that your country has no cause 
which it can stand to without help, or to any purpose ? 
that your tyrants are cruel and laugh at you ? and that 
your very wives and mistresses (for the most part) think 
there is nothing better in the world than a flaring show 
and a brutal sensation ? 

Bull-fights are going on now, and bull-fights were going 
on in the wretched time of King Charles the Second, of the 
House of Austria, whose very aspect seemed ominous of 
the disasters about to befall his country ; for his face was 
very long, his lips very thick, his mouth very wide, his 
nose very hooked, and he had no calves to his legs, and 
no brains in his skull. His clemency consisted in letting 
assassins go, because passion was uncontrollable ; and his 
wit, in sending old lords to stand in the rain, because they 
intimated that it would be their death. However, he was 
a good-natured man, as times went, especially for a King 
of Spain ; and it is not of public disasters that we are to 
speak, but of the misery that befell two lovers in his day, 
in consequence of these detestable bull-fights. 

Don Alphonso de Melos, a young gentleman of some 
five-and-twenty years of age, was the son of one of those 



346 THE BULL-FIGHT. 

Titulados of Castile, more proud than rich, of whom it was 
maliciously said, that " before they were made lords, they 
didn't dine ; and after they were made lords, they didn't 
sup." He was, however, a very good kind of man, not too 
poor to give his sons good educations ; and of his second 
son, Alphonso, the richest grandee might have been proud ; 
for a better or pleasanter youth, or one of greater good 
sense, conventionalisms apart, had never ventured his life 
in a bull-fight, which he had done half a dozen times. He 
was, moreover, a very pretty singer ; and it was even said, 
that he not only composed the music for his serenades, 
but that he wrote verses for them equal to those of Gar- 
cilaso. So, at least, thought the young lady to whom they 
were sent, and who used to devour them with her eyes, 
till her very breath failed her, and she could not speak for 
delight. 

Poor, loving Lucinda ! — We call her poor, though she 
was at that minute one of the richest as well as happiest 
maidens in Madrid ; and we speak of her as a young lady, 
for such she was in breeding and manners, and as such 
the very grandees treated her, as far as they could, though 
she was only the daughter of a famous jeweller, who had 
supplied half the great people with carcanets and rings. 
Her father was dead : her mother too ; she was under the 
care of guardians ; but Alphonso de Melos had loved her 
more than a year ; had loved her with a real love, even 
though he wanted her money ; would, in fact, have thrown 
her money to the dogs, rather than have ceased to love 
her ; such a treasure he had found in the very fact of his 
passion. Their marriage was to take place within the 
month ; and as the lady was so rich, and the lover, how- 
ever noble otherwise, was only of the lowest or least 
privileged order of nobility {a class who had the misfor- 



THE BULL-FIGHT. 347 

tune of not being able to wear their hats in the king's pres- 
ence, unless his majesty expressly desired it), the loftiest 
grandees, who would have been but too happy to marry 
the lovely heiress, had her father been anything but a mer- 
chant, thought that the match was not only pardonable in 
the young gentleman, but in a sort of way noticeable, and 
even in some measure to be smilingly winked at and en- 
couraged ; nay, perhaps, envied ; especially as the future 
husband was generous, and had a turn for making presents, 
and for sitting at the head of a festive table. Suddenly, 
therefore, appeared some of the finest emeralds and sap- 
phires in the world upon the fingers of counts and mar- 
quises, whose jewels had hitherto been of doubtful value ; 
and no little sensation was made, on the gravest and most 
dignified of the old nobility, by a certain grandee, remark- 
able for his sense of the proprieties, who had discovered 
" serious reasons for thinking " that the supposed jeweller's 
offspring was a natural daughter of a late prince of the 
blood. i 

Be this as it may, Don Alphonso presented himself one 
morning, as usual, before his mistress, and after an inter- 
change of transports, such as may be imagined between 
two such lovers, about to be joined for ever, informed her, 
that one only thing more was now remaining to be done, 
and then — in the course of three mornings — they would 
be living in the same house. 

"And what is that?" said Lucinda, the tears rushing 
into her eyes for excess of adoring happiness. 

" Only the bull-fight," said the lover, affecting as much 
indifference, as he could affect in anything when speaking 
with his eyes on hers. But he could not speak it in quite 
the tone he wished. ■ 

" The bull-fight ! " scarcely ejaculated his mistress, turn- 



348 THE BULL-FIGHT. 

ing pale. " Oh, Alphonso ! you have fought and conquered 
in a dozen ; and you will not quit me, now that we can be 
so often together? Besides — " And here her breath 
began already to fail her. 

But Alphonso showed her, or tried to show her, how he 
must inevitably attend the bull-fight. " Honor demanded 
it ; custom ; everything that was expected of him ; " his 
mistress herself, who would 6l otherwise despise him." 

His mistress fainted away. She fell, a death-like burden, 
into his arms. 

When she came to herself, she wept, entreated, implored, 
tried even with pathetic gayety to rally and be pleasant ; 
then again wept ; then argued, and for the first time in her 
life was a logician, pressing his hand, and saying with a 
sudden force of conviction, " But hear me ; " then begged 
again; then kissed him like a bride ; reposed on him like 
a wife ; did everything that was becoming and beautiful, 
and said everything but an angry word ; nay, would have 
dared perhaps to pretend to say even that, had she thought 
of it ; but she was not of an angry kind, or of any kind but 
the loving, and how was the thought to enter her head ? 
Entire love is a worship, and cannot be angry. 

The heart of the lover openly and fondly sympathized 
with that of his poor mistress ; and, secretly, it felt more 
even than it showed. Not that Don Alphonso feared for 
consequences, though he had not been without pangs and 
thoughts of possibilities, even in regard to those ; for to 
say nothing of the danger of the sport in ordinary, the 
chief reason of his being unpersuadable in the present 
instance was a report that the animals to be encountered 
were of more than ordinary ferocity ; so that the cavalleros 
who were expected to be foremost in the lists in general, 
now felt themselves to be particularly called on to make 



THE BULL-FIGHT. 



349 



their appearance, at the hazard of an alternative too dread- 
ful for the greatest valor to risk. 

The final argument which he used with his mistress 
was, the very excess of that love, and the very position in 
which it stood at that bridal moment, to which he in vain 
appealed. He showed how it had ever and irremediably 
been the custom to estimate the fighter's love by the meas- 
ure of his courage ; the more " apparent " the risk (for he 
pretended to laugh at any real danger), the greater the 
evidence of passion and the honor done to the lady ; and 
so, after many more words and tears, the honor was to be 
done accordingly, grievously against her will, and custom 
triumphed. Custom! That "little thing," as the people 
called it to the philosopher. "That great and terrible 
thing," as the philosopher justly thought it. To show how 
secure he was, and how securer still it would render him, 
he made her promise to be there ; and she required little 
asking : for a thought came into her head, which made her 
pray with secret and sudden earnestness to the Virgin ; 
and the same thought enabled her to give him final looks, 
not only of resigned lovingness, but of a sort of cheered 
composure ; for, now that she saw there was no remedy, 
she would not make the worst of his resolve, and so they 
parted. 

How differently from when they met ! and how dread- 
fully to be again brought together ! 

The day has arrived ; the great square has been duly set 
cut ; the sand, to receive the blood, is spread over it ; the 
barricadoes and balconies (the boxes) are all right ; the king 
and his nobles are there ; Don Alphonso and his Lucinda 
are there also ; he, in his place on the square, on horse- 
back, with his attendants behind him, and the door out of 



350 THE BULL-FIGHT. 

which the bull is to come, in front ; she, where he will be- 
hold her before long, though not in the box to which he has 
been raising his eyes. All the gentlemen who are to fight 
the bulls, each in his turn, and who, like Alphonso, are 
dressed in black, with plumes of white feathers on their 
heads, and scarfs of different colors round the body, have 
ridden round the lists a quarter of an hour ago, to salute 
the ladies of their acquaintance ; and all is still and wait- 
ing. The whole scene is gorgeous with tapestries, and 
gold, and jewels. It is a theatre in which pomp and pleas- 
ure are sitting in a thousand human shapes to behold a 
cruel spectacle. 

The trumpets sound ; crashes of other music succeed ; 
the door of the stable opens ; and the noble creature, the 
bull, makes his appearance, standing still awhile, and 
looking as it were with a confused composure before 
him. Sometimes when the animal first comes forth, it 
rushes after the horseman who has opened the door, and 
who has rushed away from the mood in which it has shown 
itself. But the bull on this occasion was one that, from 
the very perfection of his strength, awaited provoking. He 
soon has it. Light, agile footmen, who are there on pur- 
pose, vex him with darts and arrows, garnished with paper 
set on fire. He begins by pursuing them hither and 
thither, they escaping by all the arts of cloaks and hats 
thrown on the ground, and deceiving figures of pasteboard. 
Soon he is irritated extremely ; he stoops his sullen head 
to toss ; he raises it, with his eyes on fire, to kick and 
trample ; he bellows ; he rages ; he grows mad. His 
breath gathers like a thick mist about his head. He gal- 
lops, amidst cries of men and women, franticly around 
the square, like a racer, following and followed by his tor- 
mentors ; he tears the horses with his horns ; he disem- 



THE BULL-FIGHT. 35 1 

bowels them ; he tosses the howling dogs that are let loose 
on him ; he leaps and shivers in the air like a very stag or 
goat. His huge body is nothing to him in the rage and 
might of his agony. 

For Alphonso, who had purposely got in his way to 
shorten his Luanda's misery (knowing her surely to be 
there, though he has never seen her), has gashed the bull 
across the eyes with his sword, and pierced him twice 
with the javelins furnished him by his attendants. Half 
blinded with the blood, and yet rushing at him, it should 
seem, with sure and final aim of his dreadful head, the 
creature is just upon him, when a blow from a negro who 
is helping one of the pages, turns him distractedly in that 
new direction, and he strikes down, not the negro, but the 
youthful, and in truth wholly frightened and helpless, page. 
The page, in falling, loses his cap, from which there flows 
a profusion of woman's hair, and Alphonso knows it on the 
instant. He leaps off his horse, and would have shrieked, 
would have roared out with horror ; but something which 
seemed to wrench and twist round his very being within 
him, prevented it, and in a sort of stifled and almost 
meek voice, he could only sobbingly articulate the word, 
" Lucinda ! " But in an instant he rose out of that self- 
pity into frenzy ; he hacked wildly at the bull, which was 
now spinning as wildly round ; and though the assembly 
rose, crying out, and the king bade the brute be dispatched, 
which was done by a thrust in the spine by those who 
knew the trick, (ah ! why did they not do it before ?) the 
poor youth has fallen, not far from his Lucinda, gored 
alike with herself to death, though neither of them yet 
expiring. 

As recovery was pronounced hopeless, and the deaths 
- of the lovers close at hand, they were both carried into 



35^ THE BULL-FIGHT. 

the nearest house, and laid, as the nature of the place 
required, on the same bed. And, indeed, as it turned out, 
nothing could be more fitting. Great and sorrowful was 
the throng in the room : some of the greatest nobles were 
there, and a sorrowing message was brought from the 
king. Had the lovers been princes, their poor insensible 
faces could not have been watched with greater pity and 
respect. 

At length they opened their eyes, one after the other, 
to wonder — to suffer — to discover each otherwhere they 
lay — and to weep from abundance of wretchedness, and 
from the difficulty of speaking. They attemped to make a 
movement towards each other, but could not even raise 
an arm. Lucinda tried to speak, but could only sigh and 
attempt to smile. Don Alphonso said at last, half sobbing, 
looking with his languid eyes on her kind and patient 
face — " She does not reproach me, even now." 

They both wept afresh at this, but his mistress looked 
at him with such unutterable love and fondness, making, 
at the same time, some little ineffectual movements of her 
hand, that the good old Duke de Linares said, " She wishes 
to put her arm over him ; and he too — see — his arm over 
her." Tenderly, and with the softest caution, were their 
arms put accordingly ; and then, in spite of their anguish, 
the good Duke said, " Marry them yet." And the priest 
opened his book, and well as he could speak for sympathy, 
or they seem to answer to his words, he married them ; 
and thus — in a few moments, from excess of mingled 
agony and joy, with their arms on one another, and smil- 
ing as they shut their eyes — their spirits passed away 
from them, and they died. 






LOVE AND WILL. 353 



LOVE AND WILL. 

INDING, upon inquiry, that Steele's little 
periodical paper, called " The Lover," is 
still less known than we supposed, we shall 
here give some account of it, and then pro- 
ceed to some other reflections to which it has 
given rise. We have already intimated,* that it was one 
of the numerous publications of the kind to which Steele's 
necessities and lively impulses united gave birth, and which, 
for similar reasons, were speedily brought to a close. Ton- 
son collected the forty papers of which it consisted into a 
duodecimo volume, in which he included a political paper 
entitled " The Reader," which reached only its ninth 
number ; and this is the book now before us. The dedi- 
cation to Gartn is surmounted by one of those rude little 
wood-cuts or copperplates, half flower and half figure, 
formerly, we believe, called head-pieces (perhaps still so, 
otherwise we know not the technical word). It presents 
us with ,Sir Samuel's coats of arms (two lions passant 
gardant between three-cross crosslets) supported, or rather 
attended, by two Cupids : one with a lyre for the doctor's 
poetry, and the other holding his professional emblem, the 
staff of ^sculapius. The first number is, in like manner, 
graced with a head of Queen Anne, and so is that of 
" The Reader." We reckon upon our own reader's not 
being averse to the mention of these amenities, partly 
from his love of anything connected with books, and 

* In an article on " Garth, Physicians, and Love-Letters," in " Men, 
Women, and Books." — Ed. 

23 



354 LOVE AND WILL. 

partly because they help to show the manners and feel- 
ings of the times ; and we confess we have another regard 
for them ourselves, owing to school recollections, and to 
the minutes of bliss we snatched, during the hardness of 
our tasks, from those figures of Venuses and Amphitrites, 
which sail along the tops of Ovid and other classics in 
the edition of Mattaire. 

Steele, whether as an attraction, or a blind (if the latter, 
it was the most transparent of all blinds), puts forth his 
" Lover," as " written in imitation of the ' Tatler.' " He 
supposes himself to be one " Marmaduke Myrtle," a ten- 
der-hearted and speculative gentleman " about town," 
crossed in love, assisted in his lucubrations by four others, 
who have met with various good or ill success in their 
honorable passion for some lady, particularly one Mr. 
Severn, a young gentleman who is his " hero," and whom 
he describes in the most exquisite manner of the " Tat- 
ler," as one that treats every woman of a " certain age " 
so respectfully, " that in his company she can never give 
herself the compunction of having lost anything which 
made her agreeable." Of this hero, however, we hear 
nothing further but in one paper, and the author makes 
but the like mention of one of his other assistants. In 
short, beautiful as some of the papers are, and touched 
with equal knowledge of the world and delicacy of feeling, 
it did not "take," and Steele soon got tired. It went 
upon too exclusive a subject, and professed too open an 
intention of discountenancing the town ideas of love, to 
be acceptable to those who could have brought a man of 
wit his greatest number of readers ; while, on the other 
hand, Steele had such a healthy and unhypocritical sense 
of the corporeal as well as spiritual part of the passion, 
that he offended such of his readers as had chosen to take 



LOVE AND WILL. 355 

him for a kind of sermonizer on love. In one of his papers 
is an account of an accident which happened to a young 
lady on horseback in the cross-country road, between 
Hampstead and Highgate, and which with an exquisite 
mixture of playfulness and delicacy, he represented as 
furnishing a sort of compulsory, but charming, reason 
why the young gentleman who happened to be with her 
was to be accepted as her husband. With this anecdote 
some "heavy rogue," as he truly calls him in a contem- 
porary publication, chose to pick one of those quarrels 
which, by the degrading turn of their thoughts and the 
stupidity of their ostentation, create the indecency of which 
they complain ; and this, no doubt, did him a disservice 
with the dull and commonplace, and added to the per- 
plexity arising from his own mixed pretensions. To com- 
plete his causes of failure, he was a zealous politician, 
and, before he hi.d written a dozen papers, could not help 
falling foul of the Tories ; which in a gentleman so ab- 
sorbed in the belle passion as Mr. Myrtle, was certainly 
not so well, and must have frightened such of his fair 
readers as patched their cheeks on the Tory side, and 
could only fall in love on high-church principles.* 

* About the Middle of Last Winter I went to see an Opera at the Theatre 
in the Haymarket, where I could but take notice of two Parties of very fine 
Women, that had placed themselves in the Opposite Side-Boxes, and seemed 
drawn up in a kind of Battle-Array one against another. After a short Survey 
of them, I found they were Patched differently ; the Faces on one Hand being 
spotted on the Right side of the Forehead, and those upon the other on the 
Left. I quickly perceived that they cast hostile Glances upon one another ; 
and that their Patches were placed in those different Situations, as Party-Sig- 
nals to distinguish Friends from Foes. In the Middle-Boxes, between those two 
opposite Bodies, were several Ladies who patched indifferently on both Sides 
of their Faces, and seemed to sit there with no other Intention but to see the 
Opera. Upon inquiry I found that the Body of the Amazons on my Right 
Hand, were Whigs, and those on my Left, Tories ; And that those who had 



356 LOVE AND WILL. 

In our last number, we extracted from this book two 
charmingly pathetic letters, which brought the reader ac- 
quainted with a pair of real lovers.* It shall now furnish 
us with a tragedy of a different sort, though pretending to 
be equally founded on love, and (as the paragraph adver- 
tisements say) of " startling interest." Steele says he had 
it from a gentleman who was " an eye-witness of several 
parts of it." The relief which the feelings experienced 
amidst the terrors of the former story arose from the 
sweetness of its affections. In the present, the love is 
of as bitter a sort as the catastrophe, but consoles us by 
driving matters to a pitch of the ludicrous in the very 
excess of its will. The heroine is a great spoiled child, 
who insists upon tearing her lover's breast open, and 
taking him with her into the other world, just as a smaller 
one might its drum. 

"About ten years ago," says Steele, "there lived at 
Vienna a German count, who had long entertained a 
secret amour with a young lady of a considerable family. 
After a correspondence of gallantries, which had lasted 
two or three years, the father of the young count, whose 
family was reduced to a low condition, found out a very 
advantageous match for him ; and made his son sensible, 
that he ought in common prudence to close with it. The 
count, upon the first opportunity, acquainted his mistress 
very fairly with what had passed, and laid the whole mat- 
placed themselves in the Middle-Boxes were a Neutral Party, whose Faces had 
not yet declared themselves. These last, however, as I afterwards found, di- 
minished daily, and took their Party with one Side or the other ; inasmuch as 
that I observed, in several of them, the Patches which were before dispersed 
equally, are now all gone over to the Whig or Tory Side of the Face. — Ad- 
dison, The Spectator, No. 81. — Ed. 

* See the article on "Garth, Physicians, and Love-Letters, " in "Men, 
Women, and Books." — Ed 



LOVE AND WILL. 357 

ter before her with such freedom and openness of heart, 
that she seemingly consented to it. She only desired of 
him that they might have one meeting more, before they 
parted for ever. The place appointed for this their meet- 
ing was a grove, which stands at a little distance from the 
town. They conversed together in this place some time, 
when on a sudden the lady pulled out a pocket-pistol, and 
shot her lover into the heart, so that he immediately fell 
dead at her feet. She then returned to her father's house, 
telling every one she met what she had done. Her friends, 
upon hearing her story, would have found out means for 
her to make her escape ; but she told them she had killed 
her dear count, because she could not live without him ; 
and that, for the same reason, she was resolved to follow 
him by whatever way justice should determine. She was 
soon seized, but she avowed her guilt ; rejected all excuses 
that were made in her favor, and only begged that her exe- 
cution might be speedy. She was sentenced to have her 
head cut off, and was apprehensive of nothing but that 
the interest of her friends would obtain a pardon for her. 
When the confessor approached her, she asked him where 
he thought was the soul of her dead count. He replied 
that his case was very dangerous, considering the circum- 
stances in which he died. Upon this so desperate was 
her frenzy, that she bid him leave her, for that she was 
resolved to go to the same place where the count was. 
The priest was forced to give her better hopes for the 
deceased, from considerations that he was upon the point 
of breaking off so criminal a commerce, and leading a 
new life, before he could bring her mind into a temper fit 
for one who was so near her end. Upon the day of her 
execution she dressed herself in all her ornaments, and 
walked toward the scaffold more like a bride than a con- 



35§ LOVE AND WILL. 

demned criminal. My friend tells me that he saw her 
placed in the chair, according to the custom of that place, 
where, after having stretched out her neck with an air of 
joy, she called upon the name of the count, which was the 
appointed signal for the executioner, who, with a single 
blow of his sword, severed her head from her body." 

What a woman ! and what a love, to stick to the poor 
devil of a count to all eternity ! very lucky for him was 
it, that she could not settle matters in the next world with 
the same tragical nonchalance as in this ! though, in the 
excess of her vanity, she seems to have taken for granted 
that she could ; and that the angels were all to tremble 
before her, as the poor foolish people had been accus- 
tomed to do in her father's house. For, observe, she 
reckons confidently upon going to heaven, instead " of the 
other way." The very mention of the latter puts her in a 
frenzy, to which the priest himself is obliged to accommo- 
date his last offices, before he can bring her mind to a 
temper fit to die in. It is impossible her "dear count" 
can go to the devil, precisely because she has made up 
her mind to go elsewhere ; such an erroneous proceed- 
ing is not to be thought of : she has taken him from his 
new mistress (upon the contrast of whose mild manners 
he had just been hugging himself) — has given him his 
directions with a pocket-pistol which way to go, as much 
as to say, "There, get you along first," — and then sets 
out for heaven after him by the execution-stage, shaking 
her loving fist towards the stars, and resolved to have him 
all to herself, till time and termagancy shall be no more ! 

This is, perhaps, the most extraordinary sample on 
record of the modesty and tenderness of self-will — of 
the having the "reciprocity" (as the Irishman said) "all 
on one side." I love you, says the lady, therefore you 



LOVE AND WILL. 359 

must love me ; or it is no matter whether you do or not, 
compared with my treating you as if you did, and tor- 
menting you if you don't. You are very amiable, there- 
fore be so to me above anybody else, whether I am amiable 
or not. You have a will and wishes of your own, perhaps, 
as well as other people ; but yours and all other people's 
must of course give way to mine ; for that is but reason- 
able : all are fools and scoundrels who " offer to believe 
otherwise," and I could knock them all on the head, if I 
cared for them enough to do so ; but that is a favor which 
I reserve for yourself. So there (shoots him through the 
body) — and now, with this new wound in your heart, come 
you along with me, and be delighted with me and my com- 
pany, world without end ! 

To go to the other extreme of lovely generosity, how 
different is the wish expressed by Shakespeare, in the con- 
templation of his own death : of Shakespeare himself, ob- 
serve — not of the dramatist speaking in the person of 
another, but of the great poet and human being speaking 
in his own person — of the creator of the characters of 
Imogen and Desdemona — and of the man who could 
create those characters, because he felt as he spoke in 
uttering these sentiments. How else, indeed, could he 
so have spoken them ? Observe the simple words — the 
pure and daring trust in the belief of his reader — the great 
and good mind, that in spite of its having run the whole 
round of experience, or rather because it had done so, 
could retain feelings so enthusiastic and generous above 
all worldly price. 

" No longer mourn for me when I am dead, 
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell 
Give warning to the world that I am fled 
From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell : 
Nay, if you read this line, remember not 



360 LOVE AND WILL. 

The hand that writ it ; for I love you so, 

That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot, 

If thinking on me then should make you woe. 

Oh, if, (I say), you look upon this verse, 

When I, perhaps, compounded am with clay, 

Do not so much as my poo • name rehearse ', 

But let your love even with my life decay ; 

Lest the wise world should look into your moan, 

And mock you with me after I am gone." 

What beautiful writing ! What common, every-day words 
made divine by love ! But it may be said that the poet 
may have written all this, without exactly feeling what 
he said ; that other poets have done as much who were 
notoriously no very admirable lovers ; that it is imagina- 
tion — an art — fiction. 

Do not believe it. Put no faith in the envy, or the 
want of faith, that thus attempts to level performance 
with pretension. You might as well proclaim truth to be 
a lie. No poets have so written who have not thoroughly 
felt what they professed to feel. If they had, if incom- 
pleteness could thus be completeness, we should have had 
a thousand Shakespeares instead of one — a thousand 
Chaucers, a thousand Homers, a thousand Burnses — 
for we do not mean to say that in every instance the very 
greatest genius must accompany the truest feeling. It is 
sufficient that there is entire truth in the feeling to be ex- 
pressed, and genius enough to express that truth. 

" Here's a health to ane I lo'e dear ! 
Here's a health to ane I lo'e dear ! 
Thou art sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet y 
A nd soft as their parting tear — Jessy ! 

" Although thou maun never be mine, 
Although even hope is denied, 
' Tis sweeter for thee despairing, 
Than aught in the world beside" 

And so he goes on through the whole of that exquisite 



LOVE AND WILL. 36 1 

song, the last but one that he wrote (so unwitherable is 
the heart of a true poet). Hear the verse of another : — 

" Yestreen when to the trembling string, 
The dance gaed through the lighted ha', 
To thee my fancy took its wing, 
I sat, but neither heard nor saw. 
Though this was fair and that was braw, 
And you the boast of a' the town, 
I sighed, and said among them a' : 
1 Ye are na Mary Morrison? " 

And again in a lighter strain, — 

" The deil himself he could na scaith 
Whatever wad belang thee ; 
He'd look into thy bonnie face, 
A nd say, ' 7" canna tvrang thee. ' ' ' 

Burns and Ariosto had here hit upon the same thought, 
because they had received the same truthful impression of 
the power of a beautiful face to turn away from injury. 

Stese la mano in quella chioma d'oro, 
E strasimollo a se con violensa ; 
Ma come gli occhi a quel bel velto mise, 
Gli ne venne pietade, e non l'uccise. 

Orlando Furioso, Canto 19. 

"The warrior thrust his hand into those locks of gold, 
and fiercely dragged back the youth ; but when he set 
eyes on that sweet face, pity came into his heart, and he 
did not kill him." Which Mr. Hoole (the most presump- 
tuous of translators, but the most pardonable in his pre- 
sumption, because the dullest), thus defaces, as if no such 
feeling had existed. (It should be mentioned that the 
youth had been begging a respite from death, in order to 
bury his prince's body ; otherwise the reader would see 
no reason at all for his being spared !) 

" Zerbino soon, his wrath decreasing, felt 
His manly soul with love and pity melt V ' 



362 LOVE AND WILL. 

Not a word of the face ! not a word of the dragging back, 
nor the locks of gold, nor the whole beautiful picture ! 
(When will the booksellers cease to give us editions of 
this absurd versifier ?) We have not at hand the old 
translation of Sir John Harrington (better, at all events, 
than Hoole's), nor the new one by Mr. Stewart Rose, who 
is a man full of sympathy with his species, and therefore 
has doubtless loved this passage as it deserves.* 

What has made Marot, almost the only French poet till 
the days of Beranger, that an Englishman or Italian can 
read with thorough faith in his faith, but such passages as 
the following, simple and straightforward as those of 
Shakespeare : — - 

" Ou sont ces yeux, lesquels me regardozent 
Souvent en ris, souvent avecques larmes ? 
Ou sont les mots, qui tant ni ont fait d'alarmes ; 
Ou est la bouche aussi qui ni appaisoit, 
Quand tant defois et si bien me baisoit ? " 

" Where are those eyes which used to look at me, often in smiles, often with 
tears? Where are the words which made my heart beat so? Where the 
mouth which gave me peace, when it kissed me so often and so well ? " 

Compared with such writing as this, and some passages 
in their very greatest dramatic poets and Madame des 
Houlieres, the whole French Parnassus up to the present 



* Here is Mr. Rose's version of the passage : — 

" In furious heat, he springs upon Medore, 

Exclaiming, ' Thou of this shalt bear the pain.' 
One hand he in his leeks of golden ore 

Enwreathes, and drags him to himself amain ; 
But, as his eyes that beauteous face survey, 
Takes pity on the boy, and does not slay." 
Hunt, however, in the preface to the " Stories from the Italian Poets," 
says that although Rose was a man of wit and a scholar, " he has undoubtedly 
turned the ease and animation of Ariosto into inversion and insipidity." — Ed. 



LOVE AND WILL. 363 

day, in their most serious moments, seem never to have 
had a thorough belief in what they were saying, apart from 
that curse of all half-performance, the wish to produce an 
effect ! They could not love a woman, without beseeching 
some by-standers to admire them ! nor go into solitude 
itself, unaccompanied by a pocket-mirror to adjust their 
wigs in ! 

It is thus, whether in word or deed, that the something 
true is spoiled by the something impertinent — something 
that does not belong to it. The writer, who is only half 
in earnest, wishes to produce a whole true effect, and of 
course cannot do it, any more than half a motive is suffi- 
cient for what is wholly to be moved. The love that is 
not wholly love pieces itself out with vanity, with will, with 
fury, perhaps is more than half made up of it, and yet ex- 
pects wholly to be loved. Nay, the more expects it in pro- 
portion as it is violent instead of strong, and demands 
instead of deserves. It is for this reason we ought always 
to be cautious how we bestow our sympathy on the pro- 
fession of one passion, while the demand is evidently 
made us by another. Even in those unhappy cases of 
suicide, for instance, which so frequently appear in the 
newspapers, how manifest is it that, in nine cases out of 
ten, the claim is of very equivocal worth indeed ! The 
hasty pity of society (we are the last to quarrel with it, we 
would only have it not misbestowed) is too apt to take 
for granted, that so violent an end proves whatsoever is 
charged against the party living ; whereas, all which it 
unanswerably proves, is the violence (one way or other) 
of the suicide's feelings ; and it would be generally found, 
we suspect, on due inquiry, that this was the very feature 
in the character which produced the alienation on the part 
of the supposed offender. Often do these poor wretches, 



364 LOVE AND WILL. 

whether male or female, threaten the catastrophe long 
beforehand^ in order to substitute their will for that of the 
person threatened. Often do they declare, in loud sullen 
tones, their determination to repeat the attempt when it is 
prevented. Sometimes they abuse the people that help 
them out of it, and not seldom are suicides committed out 
of avowed spite and revenge, and for the most trivial con- 
tradiction. We have read of a girl who threw herself into 
the water because her sister had refused her some more 
bread and butter ! All this has nothing to do with so 
gentle, and generous, and enduring, and sweet-seeing a 
passion as love ; which, like charity, makes the best of 
what it cannot help, tends to repose on all loving aids and 
patiences, and desires above everything the happiness of 
its object — not indeed as its every-day wish (that would 
be too much to expect of human nature), but certainly as 
its preference in the last resort, if it is to bequeath miser- 
able or consolatory thoughts to its object. 

" For I love you so, 
That I in your thoughts would be forgot. 
If thinking on me then should make you woe." 

Not that he desired to be forgot; oh no, — he desired 
infinitely to be remembered, but not 

" If thinking on me then should make you woe." 

In that case he desired that the object of his love, whom 
he would fain think of in his grave to his last dust, should 
clean forget that ever there was such a being as one Will- 
iam Shakespeare, whose love had brought tears into her 
eyes, and with whose memory she might associate, per- 
haps, something to blame in her own treatment of him. 

The newspapers now and then give an account, some- 
times touching, sometimes provoking, sometimes as ludi- 
crous as a scene in a farce, of some enamored youth 



LOVE AND WILL. 365 

or female who follows the beloved object about with an 
inveteracy of passion that leaves it no repose, — some 
romantic post-boy or milkmaid that besets the other's 
door or person, and at length brings the neighbors about 
it, to the destruction of business on both sides, and some- 
times of the windows. In proportion to the violence or 
gentleness of the suffering in these cases, you may know 
whether there is any real love or otherwise. If there is, 
the object is pursued in so much the better taste accord- 
ingly, and the pursuer is content with eternal gazing and 
a reasonable quantum of the self-pity of tears : in short, 
the love may be altogether true in that case, however fan- 
tastically set ; for love is in the heart and imagination of 
the lover, and not of necessity founded on real merit in the 
object. But if there is no real love, but simply a childish 
or fierce desire of having " one's way," then the tears, the 
noise, the visitations, are violent accordingly, and the hap- 
piness of the object is clearly of no importance whatever 
in the persecutor's eyes, compared with the ridiculous 
assumption that it must and shall arise from nothing 
but the happiness of the persecutor! — of that sole and 
modest individual, who is taking such pains to show an 
utter unfitness for the task of making happy. 

Love, in every mind, is colored by the prevailing passion 
or quality of that mind ; and in proportion as the latter is 
more or less, so is the love. Thus pride will fall in love 
(as far as it can) on account of something to be proud 
of in the object ; mere animal passion for mere animal 
beauty ; sentiment with sentiment ; and a violent will shall 
ardently desire to become master or mistress of a char- 
acter totally the reverse of itself, out of the same will and 
pleasure with which it shall please it to desire anything 
else that is best of its kind, and the attainment of which 



366 LOVE AND WILL. 

is a confirmation of power. " How dearly I love my own 
sweet Will!" said the lady in the epigram ; and the hus- 
band doubted her not. " I would rather see my husband 
dead, than guilty of the crime of infidelity," said a lady of 
what has been happily termed " outrageous virtue." * It 
was the selfish Abelard who made Eloisa shut herself up 
in a convent, when she could no longer be his property. 
The stupid monster Caligula delighted to handle the little 
throat of his favorite wife Caesonia, and to think of the 
power which his throne gave him to order it to be cut off, 
wishing that all Rome had but one such throat, that he 
might enjoy the greater idea in the less. Henry VIII., 
the beast of prosperity, did cut off his wife's, — nay, two 
of them ; and was within an ace of doing as much for a 
third ; — in the last instance, for the lady's differing with 
him in theology! Yet all these people, when it suited 
them, thought themselves in love ; and they were so after 
their respective fashions ; that is to say, with their own 
"sweet will." It is impossible for such natures to love 
anybody but themselves. When the question comes, 
which is to get the better, the sense of their own self- 
importance, or the happiness of the supposed beloved 
object, down goes the happiness, like a thing kicked and 
despised. Its very worth becomes an aggravation of the 
offence. The despot's charming little beauty is sent to 
the scaffold. The heart that would have endeared thou- 
sands is thrust into the nunnery, — 

" Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon." 

God forbid, for our own sakes as well as theirs, that any 
one's fellow-creatures should be denied such merits or 

* By Steele : " Will Honeycomb calls these over-offended Ladies, the 
Outrageously Virtuous." The Spectator ; No. 266. — Ed. 



LOVE AND WILL. 367 

excuses as they may have, let their natures otherwise be 
as provoking, or even revolting, as they may — much less 
that all impulses to suicide should be confounded, and the 
fascinated terror of a gentle mind like Cowper's be dealt 
with like vulgar rage and resentment, or the desperation 
of a Nero. The Neros and Henrys themselves were the 
growth of circumstances. Many a disturber of the peace 
of private life — nay, all — must have had causes for being 
what they are, apart from their full-grown wills and mis- 
takes ; otherwise there would be no such things in the 
world as parents and ancestors, and educations and breed- 
ings, and nurses, and imperfect laws, and all that makes 
society what it is — a commonplace so obvious, that it 
would be ridiculous to repeat it, did not intelligent people 
sometimes startle you with arguing as if the case was 
otherwise, only showing, all the while, one of the conse- 
quences of their own breeding, and thus confirming every 
word they think they are refuting. Our heroine who mur- 
dered her " dear count," had an energy which might have 
been turned to better purpose ; she evinced a taste for a 
companionship better than her own (for we may suppose 
the count to have had no mean attractions that way) ; and, 
at all events, she did not mind going through pain and 
death, to secure, as she thought, the society of another 
fellow-creature. There was probably no little need of our 
charity on the count's own part, if we knew all the story. 
Where indeed is the fellow-creature who shall say he 
has none ? And how ill would it become those whose need 
is the least, to be finally bitter against such as have had the 
misfortune to want more. The editor of the new " Pic- 
torial Edition " of Shakspere (by the way, we adopt with 
him that new spelling of the name, happy to do the least 
and most trivial thing as Shakspere himself appears to 



368 LOVE AND WILL. 

have done it) has well defended the great poet from the 
strange charge brought against him of being too chari- 
table. The sky might as well be accused of bending too 
equally " over all." If the very representative of Nature 
must not be as charitable as he is inclined to be, then 
would it be no inclination of Nature herself; and what an 
awful consideration for us, in the last resort, would that 
be ! But the great mother is "justified of her children ; " 
and no depth of the human heart was ever sounded to its 
extreme point, in which the rod did not pierce through 
sweet waters as well as through stubborn clay. 



Cambridge : Press of John Wilson & Son. 

3^77-4 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proces 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: April 2009 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 1 6066 
(724)779-2111 






LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 492 953 6 «l