Molière's Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, and his Femmes Sçavantes, in which latter play a set of people expose, in themselves, the absurdities which they charge on others. One immortal little passage in particular is worth a thousand instances. I have been told that whenever the actors come to it on the Parisian stage, the audience are sure to listen with breathless attention, and to laugh as if they had not heard it a thousand times. An author is haranguing on the folly of authors, who pester people with reading their compositions to them : Le défaut des auteurs, dans leurs productions, It is the vice of authors to become absolute tyrants in private, and prevent all conversation. Meet with them where you will, at court, out of doors, or at table, there they are, reading their detestable verses. For my part, I can see nothing so ridiculous in the whole world as a fellow going about with this kind of petition in his hand for praise; seizing on the first ears he meets with, and nailing them down to martyrdom. I'm of the opinion of the Greek, who expressly forbids such absurdity, and holds it to be utterly unworthy of a man of sense. (He takes a paper out of his pocket.) By-the-by, here are some little verses of mine Audience roar with laughter. 10th. Conscious Humors Indulged; as in the characters of Falstaff and Lord Foppington, of Matthew Bramble in Smollett, and of Sir Walter Scott's Antiquary. 11th. Humors of Nations and Classes; as Irishmen and Frenchmen, Englishmen, Spaniards, Beggars, Lawyers, Physicians, Friars, Actors, &c. Chaucer is famous for them; so are Le Sage and Boccaccio, Addison and Fielding. I regret that I cannot quote passages out of the exquisite Tory Foxhunter of Addison; especially as he is still pretending to be alive among us. Everybody knows the no less admirable Squire Western of Fielding. Lawyer Dowling in Tom Jones, who had so much to attend to that he wished he could "cut himself into a thousand pieces," had his prototype in Chaucer's Lawyer, of whom we are told that No where so busy a man as he there n'as (was not) And yet he seemèd busier than he was. I quote a few sallies from Sydney Smith, perfect in wit, and exquisite for the scholarly precision of style before mentioned : Classically-worded Banter and Simile.-"Whoever has had the good fortune to see Dr. Parr's wig, must have observed, that while it trespasses a little on the orthodox magnitude of perukes in the anterior parts, it scorns even episcopal limits behind, and swells out into boundless convexity of frizz, the μɛya lavμa* of barbers, and the terror of the literary world. After the manner of his wig the Doctor has constructed his sermon, giving a discourse of no common length, and subjoining an immeasurable mass of notes, which appear to concern every learned thing, every learned man, and almost every unlearned man, since the beginning of the world." -Works, vol. i., p. 1.† Great Writers cantingly criticised by small Writers.- -"Of whom Dr. Parr might be happy to say, that they have profundity without obscurity— perspicuity without prolixity-ornament without glare-terseness without barrenness-penetration without subtlety—comprehensiveness without digression—and a great number of other things without a great number of other things."-Id., p. 8. Phenomena of Botany Bay." In this remote part of the earth, nature (having made horses, oxen, ducks, geese, oaks, elms, and all regular and useful productions, for the rest of the world) seems determined to have a bit of play, and amuses herself as she pleases. Accordingly she makes cherries with the stone on the outside, and a monstrous animal as tall as a grenadier, with the head of a rabbit, a tail as big as a bedpost, hopping along at the rate of five hops to a mile, with three or four young kangaroos looking out of its false uterus to see what is passing. Then comes a quadruped as big as a large cat, with the eyes, color, and skin of a mole, and the bill and web-feet of duck-puzzling Dr. Shaw, and rendering the latter half of his life miserable, from the utter inability to determine whether it was a bird or a beast. Add to this a parrot, with the eyes of a sea-gull; a skate, with the head of a shark; and a bird of such monstrous * Marvel. In excuse for thus sporting with the Doctor's wig while he was living, Sydney Smith added the following note respecting him to the passage in his collected works:-"A great scholar, as rude and violent as most Greek scholars are, unless they happen to be bishops. He has left nothing behind him worth leaving: he was rather fitted for the law than the church, and would have been a more considerable man if he had been more knocked about among his equals. He lived with country gentlemen and clergymen, who flattered and feared him." dimensions, that a side bone of it will dine three real carnivorous Englishmen;-together with many other productions that agitate Sir Joseph,* and fill him with mingled emotions of distress and delight."-Works, vol. i., p. 322. A Contrast.-" A picture is drawn of a clergyman with £130 per annum, who combines all moral, physical, and intellectual advantages; a learned man, dedicating himself intensely to the care of his parish; of charming manners and dignified deportment; six feet two inches high, beautifully proportioned, with a magnificent countenance, expressive of all the cardinal virtues and the ten commandments;—and it is asked with an air of triumph, if such a man as this will fall into contempt on account of his poverty? But substitute for him an average, ordinary, uninteresting minister; obese, dumpy; neither ill natured nor good natured; neither learned nor ignorant; striding over the stiles to church with a second-rate wife, dusty and deliquescent, and four parochial children, full of catechism and bread and butter; or let him be seen in one of those Shem-Ham-and-Japhet buggies made on Mount Ararat soon after the subsidence of the waters, driving in the High-street of Edmonton, among all his penurious, saponaceous, oleagineous parishioners. Can any man of sense say that all these outward circumstances of the ministers of religion have no bearing on religion itself?"—Vol. iii., p. 200. It might be answered, that these two are not the only descriptions of people from whom the choice of a Christian pastor might be made; but the writer's wit ran away with his argument. Wants of Ireland." What is the object of all government? The object of all government is roast mutton, potatoes, claret, a stout constable, an honest justice, a clean highway, a free chapel. What trash to be bawling in the streets about the Green Isle, and the Isle of the Ocean; the bold anthem of Erin go bragh! A far better anthem would be, Erin go bread and cheese; Erin go cabins that keep out the rain; Erin go pantaloons without holes in them!"-Id., p. 466. Very ludicrously turned, this; irresistibly comic; very sensible; though, after all, it does not quite settle the question between the two countries. Nations do not live entirely by bread and cheese alone, or even by the clerical comforts of roast mutton and claret. Sydney Smith, like Swift, ought to have been a statesman instead of a clergyman. He had a genuine Christian sympathy with his fellow-creatures, and far more serious intentions in almost all he wrote than the gravest of his opponents could well imagine; but the habit of wit subjected him to * Banks. the charge of levity; consciousness of his powers tempted him to defy the charge; and it must be owned that when professional interests came into play, he ceased to exhibit his customary greatness of motive. He was an extraordinary man, however, and did a great deal of good. 12th. Humors of Mere Temperament; as Molière's Malade Imaginaire, Sheridan's Sir Anthony Absolute, &c. 13th. Moral or Intellectual Incongruities; as in all humors more or less, conventionally considered, or with regard to appearances; but particularly in Don Quixote, who is the representative of the most affecting struggles of society itself, if society did but know it. And indeed society seems to be finding it out, and to be at once restoring Don Quixote to his reason, and giving him hopes of his island. Veniat regnum. A delicious minor character of the incongruous order, is that of Major Bath in Fielding's novel of Amelia; a poor and pompous but nobleminded gentleman, who swears "by the honor and dignity of man," and is caught cooking some gruel in a saucepan for his ailing sister. 14th and last, and above all, not only as far as delight and hope go, but wisdom and success itself (for they are Don Quixote's descendants without his madness or hollow cheeks, and are possessed by anticipation of his island), Genial Contradictions of the Conventional, as exemplified in the Sir Roger de Coverleys, Parson Adamses, and the prince of them all, Uncle Toby. The people in the Vicar of Wakefield are related to them, especially "Moses; but they are for the most part as sophisticate in the comparison, as Goldsmith was conscious and uneasy. Nothing can surpass Addison's treatment of Sir Roger de Coverley; but for the honor of Nature's first fresh impulses, and with the leave of an admirable living writer before mentioned (whom I have the honor to call my friend) let it never be forgotten that Steele invented him. Steele invented all the leading characters in the Spectator, all those in the Tatler and Guardian; and is in fact the great inventive humorist of those works, as well as its most pathetic story-teller; though Addison was the greater worker out of the characters, and far surpassed him in wit and style. One little trait related of Sir Roger on his first appearance-his talking all the way up stairs with the footman,-contains the germ of the best things developed by Addison. As to Parson Adams, and his fist, and his good heart, and his Eschylus which he couldn't see to read, and his rejoicing at being delivered from a ride in the carriage with Mr. Peter Pounce, whom he had erroneously complimented on the smallness of his parochial means, let everybody rejoice that there has been a man in the world called Henry Fielding to think of such a character, and thousands of good people sprinkled about that world to answer for the truth of it; for had there not been, what would have been its value? We are too apt to suspect ill of one another, from the doubt whether others are as honest as ourselves, and will not deceive us; forgetting, in common modesty, that if we ourselves are honest people, so must be thousands more. But what shall I say to thee, thou quintessence of the milk of human kindness, thou reconciler of war (as far as it was once necessary to reconcile it), thou returner to childhood during peace, thou lover of widows, thou master of the best of corporals, thou whistler at excommunications, thou high and only final Christian gentleman, thou pitier of the devil himself, divine Uncle Toby! Why, this I will say, made bold by thy example, and caring nothing for what anybody may think of it who does not in some measure partake of thy nature, that he who created thee was the wisest man since the days of Shakspeare; and that Shakspeare himself, mighty reflector of things as they were, but no anticipator, never arrived at a character like thine. No master of bonhomie was he. No such thing, alas! did he find in the parson at Stratford-upon-Avon, or in the tap-rooms on his way to town, or in those of Eastcheap, or in the courts of Elizabeth and James, or even in the green-rooms of the Globe and Blackfriars, though he knew Decker himself, and probably had heard him speak of such a man as Signor Orlando Friscobaldo. Let him afford to lose the glory of this discovery; let Decker be enriched with it; and let Fielding and Sterne have the renown of finding the main treasure. As long as the character of Toby Shandy finds an echo in the heart of man, the heart of man is noble. It awaits the impress of all good things, and may pre |