Читать книгу: «The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 13, No. 362, March 21, 1829», страница 4
SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS
THE VICAR
A SECOND EVERY-DAY CHARACTER
Some years ago, ere time and taste
Had turn'd our parish topsy-turvy,
When Darnel Park was Darnel Waste,
And roads as little known as scurvy,
The man who lost his way between
St. Mary's Hill and Sandy Thicket,
Was always shown across the Green,
And guided to the parson's wicket.
Back flew the bolt of lissom lath;
Fair Margaret, in her tidy kirtle,
Led the lorn traveller up the path,
Through clean clipt rows of box and myrtle.
And Don and Sancho, Tramp and Tray,
Upon the parlour steps collected,
Wagg'd all their tails, and seem'd to say,
"Our master knows you; you're expected."
Uprose the Reverend Dr. Brown,
Uprose the doctor's "winsome marrow;"
The lady laid her knitting down,
Her husband clasp'd his pond'rous Barrow:
What'er the stranger's cast or creed,
Pundit or Papist, saint or sinner,
He found a stable for his steed,
And welcome for himself, and dinner.
If, when he reach'd his journey's end,
And warm'd himself in court or college,
He had not gain'd an honest friend,
And twenty curious scraps of knowledge;—
If he departed as he came,
With no new light on love or liquor,—
Good sooth, the traveller was to blame,
And not the vicarage, nor the vicar.
His talk was like a stream which runs
With rapid change from rocks to roses:
It slipp'd from politics to puns;
It pass'd from Mahomet to Moses:
Beginning with the laws which keep
The planets in their radiant courses,
And ending with some precept deep
For dressing eels, or shoeing horses.
He was a shrewd and sound divine,
Of loud dissent the mortal terror;
And when, by dint of page and line,
He 'stablish'd truth, or startled error,
The Baptist found him far too deep,
The Deist sigh'd with saving sorrow;
And the lean Levite went to sleep,
And dream'd of tasting pork to-morrow.
His sermon never said or show'd
That earth is foul, that heaven is gracious,
Without refreshment on the road
From Jerome, or from Athanasius:
And sure a righteous zeal inspired
The hand and head that penn'd and plann'd them;
For all who understood admired,
And some who did not understand them.
He wrote too, in a quiet way,
Small treatises, and smaller verses;
And sage remarks on chalk and clay.
And hints to noble lords and nurses:
True histories of last year's ghost,
Lines to a ringlet, or a turban;
And trifles for the Morning Post,
And nothings for Sylvanus Urban.
He did not think all mischief fair,
Although he had a knack of joking;
He did not make himself a bear,
Although he had a taste for smoking:
And when religious sects ran mad,
He held, in spite of all his learning,
That if a man's belief is bad,
It will not be improved by burning.
And he was kind, and loved to sit
In the low hut or garnish'd cottage,
And praise the farmer's homely wit,
And share the widow's homelier pottage:
At his approach complaint grew mild;
And when his hand unbarr'd the shutter,
The clammy lips of fever smiled
The welcome, which they could not utter.
He always had a tale for me
Of Julius Caesar, or of Venus;
From him I learn'd the rule of three,
Cat's cradle, leap-frog, and Quae genus:
I used to singe his powder'd wig,
To steal the staff he put such trust in;
And make the puppy dance a jig,
When he began to quote Augustin.
Alack the change! in vain I look
For haunts in which my boyhood trifled;
The level lawn, the trickling brook,
The trees I climb'd, the beds I rifled:
The church is larger than before;
You reach it by a carriage entry;
It holds three hundred people more,
And pews are fitted up for gentry.
Sit in the Vicar's seat: you'll hear
The doctrine of a gentle Johnian,
Whose hand is white, whose tone is clear,
Whose phrase is very Ciceronian.
Where is the old man laid?—look down.
And construe on the slab before you,
Hic jacet
GULIELMUS BROWN,
Vir nulla non donandus lauru.
New Monthly Magazine.
TAILORS
There is nothing upon earth that is of so much utility to men in general as fine clothes. A splendid equipage, a magnificent house, may draw the gaze of idle passers, and excite an occasional inquiry. But who, that has entered taverns and coffeehouses, has not perceived that the ratio of civility and attention from the waiter is regulated by the dress of his various customers? Any stranger, elegantly and fashionably attired, will find little difficulty in obtaining deference, politeness, and even credit, in every shop he enters; whereas the stranger, in more homely, or less modish garb, is really nobody. In truth, the gentleman is distinguished in the crowd only by the cut of his trousers, and he carries his patent of nobility in his coat-lap. And to whom does he owe this index of his identity, but to his despised and much calumniated tailor?
There is not a metamorphosis in all the pages of Ovid so wonderful as that which the great magician of the shears and thimble is capable of effecting. If there be the most unpleasant disproportions in the turn of your limbs—any awkwardness or deformity in your figure, the enchantment of this mighty wizard instantly communicates symmetry and elegance. The incongruous and unseemly furrows of your shape become smooth and harmonized; and the total want of all shape is immediately supplied by the beautiful undulations of the coat, and the graceful fall of the pantaloons. And all this is by the potency of your tailor. His necromantic skill, unlike that of too many practisers of supernatural arts, is exercised only for the benefit of the world: and whilst Circe transformed the companions of Ulysses into brute beasts, the benevolent enchanter of our day transforms brute beasts into handsome and attractive men. Nay, had Olympus been furnished with a tailor, Brotheus would have had no necessity to burn himself to death for the purpose of escaping ridicule from the gods on account of his deformity.
But he who is most indebted to this manufacturer of elegant forms, is the lover; and the base ingratitude of this sort of person is dreadfully enormous. After he has riveted the gaze of his mistress upon his charming figure, drawn forth sighs of admiration for his remarkable elegance, excited the most tender perturbations by the grace of his movements, and finally acquired a complete surrender of her heart by the striking interest of his attitude when kneeling at her feet, he ignorantly and presumptuously ascribes this to his own intrinsic qualities, without ever remembering that the abilities of his tailor are the sole source of all his success. The very being, who has endowed such a man with all his attractions, rests contented with the payment of his bills, (if he be fortunate enough to obtain that;) whilst the other, by the power of fascinations so procured, obtains a lovely wife and twenty thousand pounds. Sic vos non vobis, &c.
Such is the skill of that wonderful being, the tailor, that his transformations are not more extraordinary than sudden. The time which is occupied in thus new-moulding the human frame is really trivial compared with the stupendous change which is literally wrought. It is true, the soul may remain the same, but a new body is actually given to it by the interposition of vestiary talent: and this is what we have always believed to be the genuine meaning of the metempsychosis of Pythagoras.
It is not, therefore, without the most cogent reasons that we assert our opinion, that the distich of Pope, "Worth makes the man," or the title appended by Colley Cibber to one of his dramas, "Love makes the man," ought henceforth to yield, in point of truth, to the irrefragable principle which we here solemnly advance, "that it is the tailor makes the man."—Blackwood's Magazine.
THE ACTOR
Perhaps Fortune does not buffet any set of beings with more industry, and withal less effect, than Actors. There may be something in the habitual mutability of their feelings that evades the blow; they live, in a great measure, out of this dull sphere, "which men call earth;" they assume the dress, the tone, the gait of emperors, kings, nobles; the world slides, and they mark it not. The Actor leaves his home, and forgets every domestic exigence in the temporary government of a state, or overthrow of a tyrant; he is completely out of the real world until the dropping of the curtain. The time likewise not spent on the stage is passed in preparation for the night; and thus the shafts of fate glance from our Actor like swan-shot from an elephant, If struck at all, the barb must pierce the bones, and quiver in the marrow.
Our Actor—mind, we are speaking of players in the mass—is the most joyous, careless, superficial flutterer in existence. He knows every thing, yet has learned nothing; he has played at ducks and drakes over every rivulet of information, yet never plunged inch-deep into any thing beyond a play-book, or Joe Miller's jests. If he venture a scrap of Latin, be sure there is among his luggage a dictionary of quotations; if he speak of history,—why he has played in Richard and Coriolanus. The stage is with him the fixed orb around which the whole world revolves; there is nothing worthy of a moment's devotion one hundred yards from the green-room. It is amusing to perceive how blind, how dead, is our real Actor to the stir and turmoil of politics; he will turn from a Salamanca to admire a Sir John Brute's wig; Waterloo sinks into insignificance before the amber-headed cane of a Sir Peter Teazle. What is St. Stephen's to him—what the memory of Burke and Chatham? To be sure, Sheridan is well remembered; but then Sheridan wrote the Critic.
A mackerel lives longer out of water than does an Actor out of his element: he cannot, for a minute, "look abroad into universality." Keep him to the last edition of a new or old play, the burning of the two theatres, or an anecdote of John Kemble, and our Actor sparkles amazingly. Put to him an unprofessional question, and you strike him dumb; an abstract truth locks his jaws. On the contrary, listen to the stock-joke; lend an attentive ear to the witticism clubbed by the whole green-room—for there is rarely more than one at a time in circulation—and no man talks faster—none with a deeper delight to himself—none more profound, more knowing. The conversation of our Actor is a fine "piece of mosaic." Here Shakspeare is laid under contribution—here Farquhar—here Otway. We have an undigested mass of quotations, dropping without order from him. In words he is absolutely impoverishable. What a lion he stalks in a country town! How he stilts himself upon his jokes over the sleek, unsuspecting heads of his astonished hearers! He tells a story; and, for the remainder of the night, sits embosomed in the ineffable lustre of his humour.—Monthly Mag.
