Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846

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Various. Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846

THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY

LETTER TO EUSEBIUS

THE STUDENT OF SALAMANCA

HOW THEY MANAGE MATTERS IN "THE MODEL REPUBLIC."

ANTONIO PEREZ

RECOLLECTIONS OF A LOVER OF SOCIETY

THE "OLD PLAYER."

THE CRUSADES.5

THE BURDEN OF SION

RHYMED HEXAMETERS AND PENTAMETERS

THE SURVEYOR'S TALE

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My Dear Eusebius, – I have received yours from the hands of the bearer, and such hands! Why write to consult me about railroads, of all things? I know nothing about them, but that they all seem to tend to some Pandemonium or another; and when I see of a dark night their monster-engines, with eyes of flame and tongues of fire, licking up the blackness under them, and snuffing up, as it were, the airs from Hades, I could almost fancy the stoker a Mercury, conducting his hermetically sealed convicts down those terrible passages that lead direct to the abominable ferry. I said, "I know nothing of them;" but now I verily believe you mean to twit me with my former experiment in railway knowledge, and have no intention to purchase shares in the La Mancha Company (and I doubt if there be any such) to countenance your Quixotic pleasantry. I did speculate once, it is true, in one – London and Falmouth Scheme – with very large promises. I was then living at W – , when one day, just before I was going to sit down to dinner, a chaise stops at my door, out steps a very "smart man," and is ushered into my library. When I went into the room, he was examining, quite in a connoisseur attitude, Eusebius, a picture; he was very fond of pictures, he said; had a small but choice collection of his own, and I won't say that he did not speak of the Correggiosity of Correggio. I was upon the point of interrupting him, with the intimation that I did not mean to purchase any, when, having thus ingratiated himself with me by this reference to my taste, he suddenly turns round upon me with the most business-like air, draws from under his cloak an imposingly official portfolio, takes out his scrip, presenting me with a demand for fifty pounds, the deposit of so many shares, looking positively certain that in a few seconds the money would be in his pocket. People say, Eusebius, that the five minutes before a dinner is the worst time in the world to touch the heart, or to get any thing out of a man's pocket for affection; but I do not know if it be not the best time for an attack, if there be a speculation on foot which promises much to his interest, for at that time he is naturally greedy. Had Belisarius, with his dying boy in his arms, himself appeared at my gate, as seen in the French print, crying, "Date obolum Belsario," I should have pronounced him at once an impostor, and given him nothing, and, indeed, not pronounced wrongly, for the whole story is a fiction. But at this peculiar moment of hunger and of avarice, I confess I was too ready, and gave a check for the amount. I had no sooner, however, satisfied myself with what Homer calls εδητνος ηδε ποτητος, and we moderns, meat and potatoes – than I began to suspect the soundness of the scheme, or the company, who had gone to the expense of a chaise for eight miles merely to collect this subscription of mine; and I was curious the next day to trace the doings of this smart gentleman, when I found he had dined at the inn at B – on turtle, ducks, and green peas, and had recruited the weariness of his day's journey with exhilarating champagne. I knew my fate at once, and from that day to this have heard nothing of the London and Falmouth project. Now, Eusebius, as you publish my letters, if this should catch the eye of any of the directors of that company still possessing any atom of conscience, I beg to remind them that I am still minus fifty pounds; and as all claim seems to be quite out of the question, excepting on their "known and boundless generosity," I beg to wind up this little narrative of the transaction in the usual words of the beggar's petition, "The smallest donation will be thankfully received."

But the bearer, who was to consult me for your benefit – he hadn't a word to say to me on the subject, but that he would call and consult with me to-morrow. I found it in vain to question him, and I suspect it is a hoax. But what a rural monster you have sent me! "Cujum pecus? – an Melibei?" He cannot possibly herd with Eusebius; he had no modest bearing about him. I had just opened your letter, and found you called him a friend of yours, who had many observations to make about poetry – so, as we were just going to tea, he was invited. It was most fortunate I did not offer him a bed, for I should then have been bored with him at this moment, when I am sitting down to write to you some little account of his manners and conversation, which you know very well, or you would not have sent him to me. I only now hope I shall not see him to-morrow; and should I learn that he shall have departed in one of those Plutonian engines to the keeping of Charon himself, I should only regret that I had not put an obol into his hand, lest he should be presented with a return-ticket. What did he say, and what did he not say? He called my daughter "Miss," and said he should like music very well but for the noise of it; and as to his ideas of poetry, that you speak of, he treated it with the utmost contempt, and as a "very round-about-way of getting to matter of fact." What else could I have expected of him? – with his tight-drawn skin over his distended cheeks, from which his nose scarcely protruded, as defying a pinch, with a forehead like Caliban's, as villanously low, with his close-cut hair sticking to it, and his little chin retiring, lest a magnanimous thought should for a moment rest upon it. Such was never the image that Cassandra had in her mind's eye when she cried, "O, Apollo – O, Apollo!" And this was your friend, forsooth, with his novel ideas upon poetry! Yet this vulgar piece of human mechanism is not without a little cunning shrewdness, characteristically marked in his little pig-eye; and I must tell you one piece of criticism of his, and an emendation, not unworthy the great Bentley himself. Yet I know not why I tell you, for you know it well already, I suspect; for he told me he had been talking with you about a letter which you had published, and told him was written by me, and which he had read while waiting in your library till you could see him. He said he thought a little common sense, observation, and plain matter of fact, would often either throw light upon or amend many obscure passages of poets; for that even those of most name either made egregious blunders, or they were made for them. I could not deny that truth, Eusebius, and yet he wasn't a man to grant any thing to, if you could help it; but I saw there was something rich to come, so I encouraged him; and this remark of his, Eusebius, reminded me of a misery occasioned in the mind of a very sensitive and reverend poet, who preached weekly to a very particular congregation, by the printer's devil mistaking an erasure for a hyphen, which gave to his sonnet a most improper expression. It made him miserable then, and will ever give him a twinge lest he should have suffered in reputation. He has so much reason to be happy now, that to remind him of it, should he happen to read this, is only to make his happiness the greater, by somewhat reducing its quality; as the very atmosphere must be tempered for man's use and health, by somewhat of a noxious ingredient. But I must return to your friend. His cheeks seem ready to burst with common sense, and polished with ruddy conceit. "Do you remember," said I, "any particular passage upon which your observations will bear?" "Why," said he, "there was one in that paper which first struck me as utter nonsense; but a little alteration easily sets it to rights. There was a quotation from Milton: I wasn't very well acquainted with his poems, but I have read since, with much trouble to understand it, that whole scene and passage; it is in a play of his called 'Comus;' – and, by the by, all that part of the prose in the letter relating to the seashore and its treasures, is all stuff; all the roads about the country are made and mended with those pebbles – they are worth nothing. What Milton is supposed to have said, when they wrote down for him, that the billows of the Severn "roll ashore" – "the beryl and the golden ore" – never could have been written by any one who knew the Severn. A beryl is a clear crystal, isn't it? and if the billows should roll one ashore in the muddy Severn, I should like to know who could find it! There are no billows but from the Bristol Channel, and that's mud all the way, miles and miles up; – pretty shores for a beryl to be rolled on. Besides, now, what man of common sense would talk of rolling a bit of a thing, not half so big as a nutmeg, and that upon mud, in which it would sink like a bullet? He would have said 'washed ashore;' but I'll tell you what it was: I understand Milton was blind, and his daughters wrote what he dictated: they say, too, he had a good deal of knowledge of things, and, without doubt, knew very well the trade of the Bristol Channel, and from the Severn into the Avon; and certainly meant 'barrel and the golden ore,' and this word suggested the precious ornament which most women like to think of, and as she, his daughter, minced it in her own mouth, a beryl dropped from her pen. Now, only consider what was the great trade in those parts; the West India and the African trade were both at their height, and didn't one bring barrels of sugar, and the other gold dust – what can be clearer? There you see how proper the word rolling is, for you must have often seen them rolling their barrels from their ships upon planks, and so on their quays; and the golden ore speaks for itself, as plain as can be, gold dust; and there you have a reading that agrees with fact. I don't exactly know when Milton wrote; but I dare say it was at the very time of that notorious merchandize; and don't you think, sir, that the next edition of Milton ought to have this alteration? I do. I forgot to say that the gold dust came over in little barrels too; for no man in his senses would have thought of rolling or washing dust ashore, excepting in a keg or barrel, and so it was, I make no doubt."

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Not a word, Eusebius, I know what you are going to say, – no shame at all. You have all your life acquitted Horace; and if he never intended Chloe to have a whipping, you may be quite sure the little turn that I have ventured to give the affair, won't bear that construction; and there will be no occasion to ask the dimensions of the rod, as the ladies at the assize-town did of Judge Buller, requesting of him, with their compliments, to send them the measure of his thumb.

Why should I not attempt this rejected ode? Here goes for the honour of Lydia. "Kiss and be friends" be ever the motto to lovers' quarrels.

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