The Works of Edgar Allan Poe

PHILOSOPHY OF FURNITURE.

In the internal decoration, if not in the external architecture of their
residences, the English are supreme. The Italians have but little
sentiment beyond marbles and colours. In France, meliora probant,
deteriora sequuntur—the people are too much a race of gadabouts
to maintain those household proprieties of which, indeed, they have a
delicate appreciation, or at least the elements of a proper sense. The
Chinese and most of the eastern races have a warm but inappropriate fancy.
The Scotch are poor decorists. The Dutch have, perhaps, an
indeterminate idea that a curtain is not a cabbage. In Spain they are all
curtains—a nation of hangmen. The Russians do not furnish. The
Hottentots and Kickapoos are very well in their way. The Yankees alone are
preposterous.

How this happens, it is not difficult to see. We have no aristocracy of
blood, and having therefore as a natural, and indeed as an inevitable
thing, fashioned for ourselves an aristocracy of dollars, the display
of wealth has here to take the place and perform the office of the
heraldic display in monarchical countries. By a transition readily
understood, and which might have been as readily foreseen, we have been
brought to merge in simple show our notions of taste itself.

To speak less abstractly. In England, for example, no mere parade of
costly appurtenances would be so likely as with us, to create an
impression of the beautiful in respect to the appurtenances themselves—or
of taste as regards the proprietor:—this for the reason, first, that
wealth is not, in England, the loftiest object of ambition as constituting
a nobility; and secondly, that there, the true nobility of blood,
confining itself within the strict limits of legitimate taste, rather
avoids than affects that mere costliness in which a parvenu rivalry
may at any time be successfully attempted.

The people will imitate the nobles, and the result is a thorough
diffusion of the proper feeling. But in America, the coins current being
the sole arms of the aristocracy, their display may be said, in general,
to be the sole means of the aristocratic distinction; and the populace,
looking always upward for models, are insensibly led to confound the two
entirely separate ideas of magnificence and beauty. In short, the cost of
an article of furniture has at length come to be, with us, nearly the sole
test of its merit in a decorative point of view—and this test, once
established, has led the way to many analogous errors, readily traceable
to the one primitive folly.

There could be nothing more directly offensive to the eye of an artist
than the interior of what is termed in the United States—that is to
say, in Appallachia—a well-furnished apartment. Its most usual
defect is a want of keeping. We speak of the keeping of a room as we would
of the keeping of a picture—for both the picture and the room are
amenable to those undeviating principles which regulate all varieties of
art; and very nearly the same laws by which we decide on the higher merits
of a painting, suffice for decision on the adjustment of a chamber.

A want of keeping is observable sometimes in the character of the several
pieces of furniture, but generally in their colours or modes of adaptation
to use Very often the eye is offended by their inartistic
arrangement. Straight lines are too prevalent—too uninterruptedly
continued—or clumsily interrupted at right angles. If curved lines
occur, they are repeated into unpleasant uniformity. By undue precision,
the appearance of many a fine apartment is utterly spoiled.

Curtains are rarely well disposed, or well chosen in respect to other
decorations. With formal furniture, curtains are out of place; and an
extensive volume of drapery of any kind is, under any circumstance,
irreconcilable with good taste—the proper quantum, as well as the
proper adjustment, depending upon the character of the general effect.

Carpets are better understood of late than of ancient days, but we still
very frequently err in their patterns and colours. The soul of the
apartment is the carpet. From it are deduced not only the hues but the
forms of all objects incumbent. A judge at common law may be an ordinary
man; a good judge of a carpet must be a genius. Yet we have heard
discoursing of carpets, with the air “d’un mouton qui reve,” fellows
who should not and who could not be entrusted with the management of their
own moustaches. Every one knows that a large floor may have
a covering of large figures, and that a small one must have a covering of
small—yet this is not all the knowledge in the world. As regards
texture, the Saxony is alone admissible. Brussels is the preterpluperfect
tense of fashion, and Turkey is taste in its dying agonies. Touching
pattern—a carpet should not be bedizzened out like a Riccaree
Indian—all red chalk, yellow ochre, and cock’s feathers. In brief—distinct
grounds, and vivid circular or cycloid figures, of no meaning, are
here Median laws. The abomination of flowers, or representations of
well-known objects of any kind, should not be endured within the limits of
Christendom. Indeed, whether on carpets, or curtains, or tapestry, or
ottoman coverings, all upholstery of this nature should be rigidly
Arabesque. As for those antique floor-cloth & still occasionally seen
in the dwellings of the rabble—cloths of huge, sprawling, and
radiating devises, stripe-interspersed, and glorious with all hues, among
which no ground is intelligible—these are but the wicked invention
of a race of time-servers and money-lovers—children of Baal and
worshippers of Mammon—Benthams, who, to spare thought and economize
fancy, first cruelly invented the Kaleidoscope, and then established
joint-stock companies to twirl it by steam.

Glare is a leading error in the philosophy of American household
decoration—an error easily recognised as deduced from the perversion
of taste just specified. We are violently enamoured of gas and of glass.
The former is totally inadmissible within doors. Its harsh and unsteady
light offends. No one having both brains and eyes will use it. A mild, or
what artists term a cool light, with its consequent warm shadows, will do
wonders for even an ill-furnished apartment. Never was a more lovely
thought than that of the astral lamp. We mean, of course, the astral lamp
proper—the lamp of Argand, with its original plain ground-glass
shade, and its tempered and uniform moonlight rays. The cut-glass shade is
a weak invention of the enemy. The eagerness with which we have adopted
it, partly on account of its flashiness, but principally on account
of its greater rest, is a good commentary on the proposition with
which we began. It is not too much to say, that the deliberate employer of
a cut-glass shade, is either radically deficient in taste, or blindly
subservient to the caprices of fashion. The light proceeding from one of
these gaudy abominations is unequal broken, and painful. It alone is
sufficient to mar a world of good effect in the furniture subjected to its
influence. Female loveliness, in especial, is more than one-half
disenchanted beneath its evil eye.

In the matter of glass, generally, we proceed upon false principles. Its
leading feature is glitter—and in that one word how much of
all that is detestable do we express! Flickering, unquiet lights, are sometimes
pleasing—to children and idiots always so—but in the
embellishment of a room they should be scrupulously avoided. In truth,
even strong steady lights are inadmissible. The huge and unmeaning
glass chandeliers, prism-cut, gas-lighted, and without shade, which dangle
in our most fashionable drawing-rooms, may be cited as the quintessence of
all that is false in taste or preposterous in folly.

The rage for glitter-because its idea has become as we before
observed, confounded with that of magnificence in the abstract—has
led us, also, to the exaggerated employment of mirrors. We line our
dwellings with great British plates, and then imagine we have done a fine
thing. Now the slightest thought will be sufficient to convince any one
who has an eye at all, of the ill effect of numerous looking-glasses, and
especially of large ones. Regarded apart from its reflection, the mirror
presents a continuous, flat, colourless, unrelieved surface,—a thing
always and obviously unpleasant. Considered as a reflector, it is potent
in producing a monstrous and odious uniformity: and the evil is here
aggravated, not in merely direct proportion with the augmentation of its
sources, but in a ratio constantly increasing. In fact, a room with four
or five mirrors arranged at random, is, for all purposes of artistic show,
a room of no shape at all. If we add to this evil, the attendant glitter
upon glitter, we have a perfect farrago of discordant and displeasing
effects. The veriest bumpkin, on entering an apartment so bedizzened,
would be instantly aware of something wrong, although he might be
altogether unable to assign a cause for his dissatisfaction. But let the
same person be led into a room tastefully furnished, and he would be
startled into an exclamation of pleasure and surprise.

It is an evil growing out of our republican institutions, that here a man
of large purse has usually a very little soul which he keeps in it. The
corruption of taste is a portion or a pendant of the dollar-manufacture.
As we grow rich, our ideas grow rusty. It is, therefore, not among our
aristocracy that we must look (if at all, in Appallachia), for the
spirituality of a British boudoir. But we have seen apartments in
the tenure of Americans of moderns [possibly “modest” or “moderate”]
means, which, in negative merit at least, might vie with any of the or-molu’d
cabinets of our friends across the water. Even now, there is
present to our mind’s eye a small and not, ostentatious chamber with whose
decorations no fault can be found. The proprietor lies asleep on a sofa—the
weather is cool—the time is near midnight: we will make a sketch of
the room during his slumber.

It is oblong—some thirty feet in length and twenty-five in breadth—a
shape affording the best(ordinary) opportunities for the adjustment of
furniture. It has but one door—by no means a wide one—which is
at one end of the parallelogram, and but two windows, which are at the
other. These latter are large, reaching down to the floor—have deep
recesses—and open on an Italian veranda. Their panes are of a
crimson-tinted glass, set in rose-wood framings, more massive than usual.
They are curtained within the recess, by a thick silver tissue adapted to
the shape of the window, and hanging loosely in small volumes. Without the
recess are curtains of an exceedingly rich crimson silk, fringed with a
deep network of gold, and lined with silver tissue, which is the material
of the exterior blind. There are no cornices; but the folds of the whole
fabric (which are sharp rather than massive, and have an airy appearance),
issue from beneath a broad entablature of rich giltwork, which encircles
the room at the junction of the ceiling and walls. The drapery is thrown
open also, or closed, by means of a thick rope of gold loosely enveloping
it, and resolving itself readily into a knot; no pins or other such
devices are apparent. The colours of the curtains and their fringe—the
tints of crimson and gold—appear everywhere in profusion, and
determine the character of the room. The carpet—of Saxony
material—is quite half an inch thick, and is of the same crimson
ground, relieved simply by the appearance of a gold cord (like that
festooning the curtains) slightly relieved above the surface of the ground,
and thrown upon it in such a manner as to form a succession of short
irregular curves—one occasionally overlaying the other. The walls
are prepared with a glossy paper of a silver gray tint, spotted with small
Arabesque devices of a fainter hue of the prevalent crimson. Many
paintings relieve the expanse of paper. These are chiefly landscapes of an
imaginative cast—such as the fairy grottoes of Stanfield, or the
lake of the Dismal Swamp of Chapman. There are, nevertheless, three or
four female heads, of an ethereal beauty-portraits in the manner of Sully.
The tone of each picture is warm, but dark. There are no “brilliant
effects.” Repose speaks in all. Not one is of small size.
Diminutive paintings give that spotty look to a room, which is the
blemish of so many a fine work of Art overtouched. The frames are broad
but not deep, and richly carved, without being dulled or filagreed.
They have the whole lustre of burnished gold. They lie flat on the walls,
and do not hang off with cords. The designs themselves are often seen to
better advantage in this latter position, but the general appearance of
the chamber is injured. But one mirror—and this not a very large one—is
visible. In shape it is nearly circular—and it is hung so that a
reflection of the person can be obtained from it in none of the ordinary
sitting-places of the room. Two large low sofas of rosewood and crimson
silk, gold-flowered, form the only seats, with the exception of two light
conversation chairs, also of rose-wood. There is a pianoforte (rose-wood,
also), without cover, and thrown open. An octagonal table, formed
altogether of the richest gold-threaded marble, is placed near one of the
sofas. This is also without cover—the drapery of the curtains has
been thought sufficient. Four large and gorgeous Sevres vases, in which
bloom a profusion of sweet and vivid flowers, occupy the slightly rounded
angles of the room. A tall candelabrum, bearing a small antique lamp with
highly perfumed oil, is standing near the head of my sleeping friend. Some
light and graceful hanging shelves, with golden edges and crimson silk
cords with gold tassels, sustain two or three hundred magnificently bound
books. Beyond these things, there is no furniture, if we except an Argand
lamp, with a plain crimson-tinted ground glass shade, which depends from
He lofty vaulted ceiling by a single slender gold chain, and throws a
tranquil but magical radiance over all.

A TALE OF JERUSALEM

Intensos rigidam in frontem ascendere canos
Passus erat——
                    —Lucan—De Catone

——a bristly bore.
                    Translation.

“Let us hurry to the walls,” said Abel-Phittim to Buzi-Ben-Levi and Simeon
the Pharisee, on the tenth day of the month Thammuz, in the year of the
world three thousand nine hundred and forty-one—“let us hasten to the
ramparts adjoining the gate of Benjamin, which is in the city of David,
and overlooking the camp of the uncircumcised; for it is the last hour of
the fourth watch, being sunrise; and the idolaters, in fulfilment of the
promise of Pompey, should be awaiting us with the lambs for the
sacrifices.”

Simeon, Abel-Phittim, and Duzi-Ben-Levi were the Gizbarim, or
sub-collectors of the offering, in the holy city of Jerusalem.

“Verily,” replied the Pharisee; “let us hasten: for this generosity in the
heathen is unwonted; and fickle-mindedness has ever been an attribute of
the worshippers of Baal.”

“That they are fickle-minded and treacherous is as true as the
Pentateuch,” said Buzi-Ben-Levi, “but that is only toward the people of
Adonai. When was it ever known that the Ammonites proved wanting to their
own interests? Methinks it is no great stretch of generosity to allow us
lambs for the altar of the Lord, receiving in lieu thereof thirty silver
shekels per head!”

“Thou forgettest, however, Ben-Levi,” replied Abel-Phittim, “that the
Roman Pompey, who is now impiously besieging the city of the Most High,
has no assurity that we apply not the lambs thus purchased for the altar,
to the sustenance of the body, rather than of the spirit.”

“Now, by the five corners of my beard!” shouted the Pharisee, who belonged
to the sect called The Dashers (that little knot of saints whose manner of
dashing and lacerating the feet against the pavement was long a
thorn and a reproach to less zealous devotees—a stumbling-block to less
gifted perambulators)—“by the five corners of that beard which, as a
priest, I am forbidden to shave!—have we lived to see the day when a
blaspheming and idolatrous upstart of Rome shall accuse us of
appropriating to the appetites of the flesh the most holy and consecrated
elements? Have we lived to see the day when—”

“Let us not question the motives of the Philistine,” interrupted
Abel-Phittim, “for to-day we profit for the first time by his avarice or
by his generosity; but rather let us hurry to the ramparts, lest offerings
should be wanting for that altar whose fire the rains of heaven can not
extinguish, and whose pillars of smoke no tempest can turn aside.”

That part of the city to which our worthy Gizbarim now hastened, and which
bore the name of its architect, King David, was esteemed the most strongly
fortified district of Jerusalem; being situated upon the steep and lofty
hill of Zion. Here, a broad, deep, circumvallatory trench, hewn from the
solid rock, was defended by a wall of great strength erected upon its
inner edge. This wall was adorned, at regular interspaces, by square
towers of white marble; the lowest sixty, and the highest one hundred and
twenty cubits in height. But, in the vicinity of the gate of Benjamin, the
wall arose by no means from the margin of the fosse. On the contrary,
between the level of the ditch and the basement of the rampart sprang up a
perpendicular cliff of two hundred and fifty cubits, forming part of the
precipitous Mount Moriah. So that when Simeon and his associates arrived
on the summit of the tower called Adoni-Bezek—the loftiest of all the
turrets around about Jerusalem, and the usual place of conference with the
besieging army—they looked down upon the camp of the enemy from an
eminence excelling by many feet that of the Pyramid of Cheops, and, by
several, that of the temple of Belus.

“Verily,” sighed the Pharisee, as he peered dizzily over the precipice,
“the uncircumcised are as the sands by the seashore—as the locusts in the
wilderness! The valley of the King hath become the valley of Adommin.”

“And yet,” added Ben-Levi, “thou canst not point me out a Philistine—no,
not one—from Aleph to Tau—from the wilderness to the battlements—who
seemeth any bigger than the letter Jod!”

“Lower away the basket with the shekels of silver!” here shouted a Roman
soldier in a hoarse, rough voice, which appeared to issue from the regions
of Pluto—“lower away the basket with the accursed coin which it has
broken the jaw of a noble Roman to pronounce! Is it thus you evince your
gratitude to our master Pompeius, who, in his condescension, has thought
fit to listen to your idolatrous importunities? The god Phœbus, who is a
true god, has been charioted for an hour—and were you not to be on the
ramparts by sunrise? Ædepol! do you think that we, the conquerors of the
world, have nothing better to do than stand waiting by the walls of every
kennel, to traffic with the dogs of the earth? Lower away! I say—and
see that your trumpery be bright in color and just in weight!”

“El Elohim!” ejaculated the Pharisee, as the discordant tones of the
centurion rattled up the crags of the precipice, and fainted away against
the temple—“El Elohim!—who is the god Phœbus?—whom doth
the blasphemer invoke? Thou, Buzi-Ben-Levi! who art read in the laws of
the Gentiles, and hast sojourned among them who dabble with the Teraphim!—is
it Nergal of whom the idolater speaketh?—or Ashimah?—or
Nibhaz,—or Tartak?—or Adramalech?—or Anamalech?—or
Succoth-Benith?—or Dagon?—or Belial?—or Baal-Perith?—or
Baal-Peor?—or Baal-Zebub?”

“Verily it is neither—but beware how thou lettest the rope slip too
rapidly through thy fingers; for should the wicker-work chance to hang on
the projection of yonder crag, there will be a woful outpouring of the
holy things of the sanctuary.”

By the assistance of some rudely constructed machinery, the heavily laden
basket was now carefully lowered down among the multitude; and, from the
giddy pinnacle, the Romans were seen gathering confusedly round it; but
owing to the vast height and the prevalence of a fog, no distinct view of
their operations could be obtained.

Half an hour had already elapsed.

“We shall be too late!” sighed the Pharisee, as at the expiration of this
period he looked over into the abyss—“we shall be too late! we shall be
turned out of office by the Katholim.”

“No more,” responded Abel-Phittim—“no more shall we feast upon the
fat of the land—no longer shall our beards be odorous with frankincense—our
loins girded up with fine linen from the Temple.”

“Raca!” swore Ben-Levi, “Raca! do they mean to defraud us of the purchase
money? or, Holy Moses! are they weighing the shekels of the tabernacle?”

“They have given the signal at last!” cried the Pharisee—“they
have given the signal at last! pull away, Abel-Phittim!—and thou,
Buzi-Ben-Levi, pull away!—for verily the Philistines have either
still hold upon the basket, or the Lord hath softened their hearts to
place therein a beast of good weight!” And the Gizbarim pulled away, while
their burden swung heavily upward through the still increasing mist.

“Booshoh he!”—as, at the conclusion of an hour, some object at the
extremity of the rope became indistinctly visible—“Booshoh he!” was
the exclamation which burst from the lips of Ben-Levi.

“Booshoh he!—for shame!—it is a ram from the thickets of
Engedi, and as rugged as the valley of Jehosaphat!”

“It is a firstling of the flock,” said Abel-Phittim, “I know him by the
bleating of his lips, and the innocent folding of his limbs. His eyes are
more beautiful than the jewels of the Pectoral, and his flesh is like the
honey of Hebron.”

“It is a fatted calf from the pastures of Bashan,” said the Pharisee, “the
heathen have dealt wonderfully with us——let us raise up our
voices in a psalm—let us give thanks on the shawm and on the
psaltery—on the harp and on the huggab—on the cythern and on the sackbut!”

It was not until the basket had arrived within a few feet of the Gizbarim
that a low grunt betrayed to their perception a hog of no common size.

“Now El Emanu!” slowly and with upturned eyes ejaculated the trio, as,
letting go their hold, the emancipated porker tumbled headlong among the
Philistines, “El Emanu!—God be with us—it is the unutterable
flesh!”

THE SPHINX

During the dread reign of the cholera in New York, I had accepted the
invitation of a relative to spend a fortnight with him in the retirement
of his cottage ornée on the banks of the Hudson. We had here around
us all the ordinary means of summer amusement; and what with rambling in
the woods, sketching, boating, fishing, bathing, music, and books, we
should have passed the time pleasantly enough, but for the fearful
intelligence which reached us every morning from the populous city. Not a
day elapsed which did not bring us news of the decease of some
acquaintance. Then as the fatality increased, we learned to expect daily
the loss of some friend. At length we trembled at the approach of every
messenger. The very air from the South seemed to us redolent with death.
That palsying thought, indeed, took entire possession of my soul. I could
neither speak, think, nor dream of any thing else. My host was of a less
excitable temperament, and, although greatly depressed in spirits, exerted
himself to sustain my own. His richly philosophical intellect was not at
any time affected by unrealities. To the substances of terror he was
sufficiently alive, but of its shadows he had no apprehension.

His endeavors to arouse me from the condition of abnormal gloom into which
I had fallen, were frustrated, in great measure, by certain volumes which
I had found in his library. These were of a character to force into
germination whatever seeds of hereditary superstition lay latent in my
bosom. I had been reading these books without his knowledge, and thus he
was often at a loss to account for the forcible impressions which had been
made upon my fancy.

A favorite topic with me was the popular belief in omens—a belief
which, at this one epoch of my life, I was almost seriously disposed to
defend. On this subject we had long and animated discussions—he
maintaining the utter groundlessness of faith in such matters,—I
contending that a popular sentiment arising with absolute
spontaneity—that is to say, without apparent traces of
suggestion—had in itself the unmistakable elements of truth, and
was entitled to as much respect as that intuition which is the
idiosyncrasy of the individual man of genius.

The fact is, that soon after my arrival at the cottage there had occurred
to myself an incident so entirely inexplicable, and which had in it so
much of the portentous character, that I might well have been excused for
regarding it as an omen. It appalled, and at the same time so confounded
and bewildered me, that many days elapsed before I could make up my mind
to communicate the circumstances to my friend.

Near the close of exceedingly warm day, I was sitting, book in hand, at an
open window, commanding, through a long vista of the river banks, a view
of a distant hill, the face of which nearest my position had been denuded
by what is termed a land-slide, of the principal portion of its trees. My
thoughts had been long wandering from the volume before me to the gloom
and desolation of the neighboring city. Uplifting my eyes from the page,
they fell upon the naked face of the bill, and upon an object—upon
some living monster of hideous conformation, which very rapidly made its
way from the summit to the bottom, disappearing finally in the dense
forest below. As this creature first came in sight, I doubted my own
sanity—or at least the evidence of my own eyes; and many minutes
passed before I succeeded in convincing myself that I was neither mad nor
in a dream. Yet when I described the monster (which I distinctly saw, and
calmly surveyed through the whole period of its progress), my readers, I
fear, will feel more difficulty in being convinced of these points than
even I did myself.

Estimating the size of the creature by comparison with the diameter of the
large trees near which it passed—the few giants of the forest which
had escaped the fury of the land-slide—I concluded it to be far
larger than any ship of the line in existence. I say ship of the line,
because the shape of the monster suggested the idea—the hull of one
of our seventy-four might convey a very tolerable conception of the
general outline. The mouth of the animal was situated at the extremity of
a proboscis some sixty or seventy feet in length, and about as thick as
the body of an ordinary elephant. Near the root of this trunk was an
immense quantity of black shaggy hair—more than could have been
supplied by the coats of a score of buffaloes; and projecting from this
hair downwardly and laterally, sprang two gleaming tusks not unlike those
of the wild boar, but of infinitely greater dimensions. Extending forward,
parallel with the proboscis, and on each side of it, was a gigantic staff,
thirty or forty feet in length, formed seemingly of pure crystal and in
shape a perfect prism,—it reflected in the most gorgeous manner the
rays of the declining sun. The trunk was fashioned like a wedge with the
apex to the earth. From it there were outspread two pairs of wings—each
wing nearly one hundred yards in length—one pair being placed above
the other, and all thickly covered with metal scales; each scale
apparently some ten or twelve feet in diameter. I observed that the upper
and lower tiers of wings were connected by a strong chain. But the chief
peculiarity of this horrible thing was the representation of a Death’s
Head, which covered nearly the whole surface of its breast, and which was
as accurately traced in glaring white, upon the dark ground of the body,
as if it had been there carefully designed by an artist. While I regarded
the terrific animal, and more especially the appearance on its breast,
with a feeling or horror and awe—with a sentiment of forthcoming
evil, which I found it impossible to quell by any effort of the reason, I
perceived the huge jaws at the extremity of the proboscis suddenly expand
themselves, and from them there proceeded a sound so loud and so
expressive of woe, that it struck upon my nerves like a knell and as the
monster disappeared at the foot of the hill, I fell at once, fainting, to
the floor.

Upon recovering, my first impulse, of course, was to inform my friend of
what I had seen and heard—and I can scarcely explain what feeling of
repugnance it was which, in the end, operated to prevent me.

At length, one evening, some three or four days after the occurrence, we
were sitting together in the room in which I had seen the apparition—I
occupying the same seat at the same window, and he lounging on a sofa near
at hand. The association of the place and time impelled me to give him an
account of the phenomenon. He heard me to the end—at first laughed
heartily—and then lapsed into an excessively grave demeanor, as if
my insanity was a thing beyond suspicion. At this instant I again had a
distinct view of the monster—to which, with a shout of absolute
terror, I now directed his attention. He looked eagerly—but
maintained that he saw nothing—although I designated minutely the
course of the creature, as it made its way down the naked face of the
hill.

I was now immeasurably alarmed, for I considered the vision either as an
omen of my death, or, worse, as the fore-runner of an attack of mania. I
threw myself passionately back in my chair, and for some moments buried my
face in my hands. When I uncovered my eyes, the apparition was no longer
apparent.

My host, however, had in some degree resumed the calmness of his demeanor,
and questioned me very rigorously in respect to the conformation of the
visionary creature. When I had fully satisfied him on this head, he sighed
deeply, as if relieved of some intolerable burden, and went on to talk,
with what I thought a cruel calmness, of various points of speculative
philosophy, which had heretofore formed subject of discussion between us.
I remember his insisting very especially (among other things) upon the
idea that the principle source of error in all human investigations lay in
the liability of the understanding to under-rate or to over-value the
importance of an object, through mere misadmeasurement of its
propinquity. “To estimate properly, for example,” he said, “the influence
to be exercised on mankind at large by the thorough diffusion of
Democracy, the distance of the epoch at which such diffusion may possibly
be accomplished should not fail to form an item in the estimate. Yet can
you tell me one writer on the subject of government who has ever thought
this particular branch of the subject worthy of discussion at all?”

He here paused for a moment, stepped to a book-case, and brought forth one
of the ordinary synopses of Natural History. Requesting me then to
exchange seats with him, that he might the better distinguish the fine
print of the volume, he took my armchair at the window, and, opening the
book, resumed his discourse very much in the same tone as before.

“But for your exceeding minuteness,” he said, “in describing the monster,
I might never have had it in my power to demonstrate to you what it was.
In the first place, let me read to you a schoolboy account of the genus
Sphinx, of the family Crepuscularia of the order Lepidoptera, of the class
of Insecta—or insects. The account runs thus:

“‘Four membranous wings covered with little colored scales of metallic
appearance; mouth forming a rolled proboscis, produced by an elongation of
the jaws, upon the sides of which are found the rudiments of mandibles and
downy palpi; the inferior wings retained to the superior by a stiff hair;
antennæ in the form of an elongated club, prismatic; abdomen pointed. The
Death’s-headed Sphinx has occasioned much terror among the vulgar,
at times, by the melancholy kind of cry which it utters, and the insignia
of death which it wears upon its corslet.’”

He here closed the book and leaned forward in the chair, placing himself
accurately in the position which I had occupied at the moment of beholding
“the monster.”

“Ah, here it is,” he presently exclaimed—“it is reascending the face
of the hill, and a very remarkable looking creature I admit it to be.
Still, it is by no means so large or so distant as you imagined it,—for
the fact is that, as it wriggles its way up this thread, which some spider
has wrought along the window-sash, I find it to be about the sixteenth of
an inch in its extreme length, and also about the sixteenth of an inch
distant from the pupil of my eye.”

HOP-FROG

I never knew anyone so keenly alive to a joke as the king was. He seemed
to live only for joking. To tell a good story of the joke kind, and to
tell it well, was the surest road to his favor. Thus it happened that his
seven ministers were all noted for their accomplishments as jokers. They
all took after the king, too, in being large, corpulent, oily men, as well
as inimitable jokers. Whether people grow fat by joking, or whether there
is something in fat itself which predisposes to a joke, I have never been
quite able to determine; but certain it is that a lean joker is a rara
avis in terris.

About the refinements, or, as he called them, the “ghost” of wit, the king
troubled himself very little. He had an especial admiration for breadth in
a jest, and would often put up with length, for the sake of it.
Over-niceties wearied him. He would have preferred Rabelais’ “Gargantua”
to the “Zadig” of Voltaire: and, upon the whole, practical jokes suited
his taste far better than verbal ones.

At the date of my narrative, professing jesters had not altogether gone
out of fashion at court. Several of the great continental “powers” still
retain their “fools,” who wore motley, with caps and bells, and who were
expected to be always ready with sharp witticisms, at a moment’s notice,
in consideration of the crumbs that fell from the royal table.

Our king, as a matter of course, retained his “fool.” The fact is, he
required something in the way of folly—if only to counterbalance the
heavy wisdom of the seven wise men who were his ministers—not to
mention himself.

His fool, or professional jester, was not only a fool, however. His value
was trebled in the eyes of the king, by the fact of his being also a dwarf
and a cripple. Dwarfs were as common at court, in those days, as fools;
and many monarchs would have found it difficult to get through their days
(days are rather longer at court than elsewhere) without both a jester to
laugh with, and a dwarf to laugh at. But, as I have already observed, your
jesters, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, are fat, round, and
unwieldy—so that it was no small source of self-gratulation with our
king that, in Hop-Frog (this was the fool’s name), he possessed a
triplicate treasure in one person.

I believe the name “Hop-Frog” was not that given to the dwarf by his
sponsors at baptism, but it was conferred upon him, by general consent of
the seven ministers, on account of his inability to walk as other men
do. In fact, Hop-Frog could only get along by a sort of interjectional
gait—something between a leap and a wriggle—a movement that
afforded illimitable amusement, and of course consolation, to the king,
for (notwithstanding the protuberance of his stomach and a constitutional
swelling of the head) the king, by his whole court, was accounted a
capital figure.

But although Hop-Frog, through the distortion of his legs, could move only
with great pain and difficulty along a road or floor, the prodigious
muscular power which nature seemed to have bestowed upon his arms, by way
of compensation for deficiency in the lower limbs, enabled him to perform
many feats of wonderful dexterity, where trees or ropes were in question,
or any thing else to climb. At such exercises he certainly much more
resembled a squirrel, or a small monkey, than a frog.

I am not able to say, with precision, from what country Hop-Frog
originally came. It was from some barbarous region, however, that no
person ever heard of—a vast distance from the court of our king.
Hop-Frog, and a young girl very little less dwarfish than himself
(although of exquisite proportions, and a marvellous dancer), had been
forcibly carried off from their respective homes in adjoining provinces,
and sent as presents to the king, by one of his ever-victorious generals.

Under these circumstances, it is not to be wondered at that a close
intimacy arose between the two little captives. Indeed, they soon became
sworn friends. Hop-Frog, who, although he made a great deal of sport, was
by no means popular, had it not in his power to render Trippetta many
services; but she, on account of her grace and exquisite beauty (although
a dwarf), was universally admired and petted; so she possessed much
influence; and never failed to use it, whenever she could, for the benefit
of Hop-Frog.

On some grand state occasion—I forgot what—the king determined
to have a masquerade, and whenever a masquerade or any thing of that kind,
occurred at our court, then the talents, both of Hop-Frog and Trippetta
were sure to be called into play. Hop-Frog, in especial, was so inventive
in the way of getting up pageants, suggesting novel characters, and
arranging costumes, for masked balls, that nothing could be done, it
seems, without his assistance.

The night appointed for the fete had arrived. A gorgeous hall had been
fitted up, under Trippetta’s eye, with every kind of device which could
possibly give eclat to a masquerade. The whole court was in a fever of
expectation. As for costumes and characters, it might well be supposed
that everybody had come to a decision on such points. Many had made up
their minds (as to what roles they should assume) a week, or even a month,
in advance; and, in fact, there was not a particle of indecision anywhere—except
in the case of the king and his seven minsters. Why they hesitated I never
could tell, unless they did it by way of a joke. More probably, they found
it difficult, on account of being so fat, to make up their minds. At all
events, time flew; and, as a last resort they sent for Trippetta and
Hop-Frog.

When the two little friends obeyed the summons of the king they found him
sitting at his wine with the seven members of his cabinet council; but the
monarch appeared to be in a very ill humor. He knew that Hop-Frog was not
fond of wine, for it excited the poor cripple almost to madness; and
madness is no comfortable feeling. But the king loved his practical jokes,
and took pleasure in forcing Hop-Frog to drink and (as the king called it)
“to be merry.”

“Come here, Hop-Frog,” said he, as the jester and his friend entered the
room; “swallow this bumper to the health of your absent friends, [here
Hop-Frog sighed,] and then let us have the benefit of your invention. We
want characters—characters, man—something novel—out of
the way. We are wearied with this everlasting sameness. Come, drink! the
wine will brighten your wits.”

Hop-Frog endeavored, as usual, to get up a jest in reply to these advances
from the king; but the effort was too much. It happened to be the poor
dwarf’s birthday, and the command to drink to his “absent friends” forced
the tears to his eyes. Many large, bitter drops fell into the goblet as he
took it, humbly, from the hand of the tyrant.

“Ah! ha! ha! ha!” roared the latter, as the dwarf reluctantly
drained the beaker. “See what a glass of good wine can do! Why,
your eyes are shining already!”

Poor fellow! his large eyes gleamed, rather than shone; for the effect of
wine on his excitable brain was not more powerful than instantaneous. He
placed the goblet nervously on the table, and looked round upon the
company with a half-insane stare. They all seemed highly amused at
the success of the king’s ‘joke.’

“And now to business,” said the prime minister, a very fat man.

“Yes,” said the King; “Come, Hop-Frog, lend us your
assistance. Characters, my fine fellow; we stand in need of
characters—all of us—ha! ha! ha!” and as this was
seriously meant for a joke, his laugh was chorused by the seven.

Hop-Frog also laughed, although feebly and somewhat vacantly.

“Come, come,” said the king, impatiently, “have you nothing to suggest?”

“I am endeavoring to think of something novel,” replied the dwarf,
abstractedly, for he was quite bewildered by the wine.

“Endeavoring!” cried the tyrant, fiercely; “what do you
mean by that? Ah, I perceive. You are sulky, and want more wine.
Here, drink this!” and he poured out another goblet full and
offered it to the cripple, who merely gazed at it, gasping for breath.

“Drink, I say!” shouted the monster, “or by the
fiends—”

The dwarf hesitated. The king grew purple with rage. The courtiers
smirked. Trippetta, pale as a corpse, advanced to the monarch’s seat, and,
falling on her knees before him, implored him to spare her friend.

The tyrant regarded her, for some moments, in evident wonder at her
audacity. He seemed quite at a loss what to do or say—how most
becomingly to express his indignation. At last, without uttering a
syllable, he pushed her violently from him, and threw the contents of the
brimming goblet in her face.

The poor girl got up the best she could, and, not daring even to sigh,
resumed her position at the foot of the table.

There was a dead silence for about half a minute, during which the falling
of a leaf, or of a feather, might have been heard. It was interrupted by a
low, but harsh and protracted grating sound which seemed to come at once
from every corner of the room.

“What—what—what are you making that noise for?” demanded the
king, turning furiously to the dwarf.

The latter seemed to have recovered, in great measure, from his
intoxication, and looking fixedly but quietly into the tyrant’s face,
merely ejaculated:

“I—I? How could it have been me?”

“The sound appeared to come from without,” observed one of the courtiers.
“I fancy it was the parrot at the window, whetting his bill upon his
cage-wires.”

“True,” replied the monarch, as if much relieved by the suggestion; “but,
on the honor of a knight, I could have sworn that it was the gritting of
this vagabond’s teeth.”

Hereupon the dwarf laughed (the king was too confirmed a joker to object
to any one’s laughing), and displayed a set of large, powerful, and very
repulsive teeth. Moreover, he avowed his perfect willingness to swallow as
much wine as desired. The monarch was pacified; and having drained another
bumper with no very perceptible ill effect, Hop-Frog entered at once, and
with spirit, into the plans for the masquerade.

“I cannot tell what was the association of idea,” observed he, very
tranquilly, and as if he had never tasted wine in his life, “but just
after your majesty, had struck the girl and thrown the wine in her face—just
after your majesty had done this, and while the parrot was making that odd
noise outside the window, there came into my mind a capital diversion—one
of my own country frolics—often enacted among us, at our
masquerades: but here it will be new altogether. Unfortunately, however,
it requires a company of eight persons and—”

“Here we are!” cried the king, laughing at his acute discovery of the
coincidence; “eight to a fraction—I and my seven ministers. Come!
what is the diversion?”

“We call it,” replied the cripple, “the Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs, and
it really is excellent sport if well enacted.”

“We will enact it,” remarked the king, drawing himself up, and lowering
his eyelids.

“The beauty of the game,” continued Hop-Frog, “lies in the fright it
occasions among the women.”

“Capital!” roared in chorus the monarch and his ministry.

“I will equip you as ourang-outangs,” proceeded the dwarf; “leave all that
to me. The resemblance shall be so striking, that the company of
masqueraders will take you for real beasts—and of course, they will
be as much terrified as astonished.”

“Oh, this is exquisite!” exclaimed the king. “Hop-Frog! I will make a man
of you.”

“The chains are for the purpose of increasing the confusion by their
jangling. You are supposed to have escaped, en masse, from your keepers.
Your majesty cannot conceive the effect produced, at a masquerade, by
eight chained ourang-outangs, imagined to be real ones by most of the
company; and rushing in with savage cries, among the crowd of delicately
and gorgeously habited men and women. The contrast is inimitable.”

“It must be,” said the king: and the council arose hurriedly (as it was
growing late), to put in execution the scheme of Hop-Frog.

His mode of equipping the party as ourang-outangs was very simple, but
effective enough for his purposes. The animals in question had, at the
epoch of my story, very rarely been seen in any part of the civilized
world; and as the imitations made by the dwarf were sufficiently
beast-like and more than sufficiently hideous, their truthfulness to
nature was thus thought to be secured.

The king and his ministers were first encased in tight-fitting stockinet
shirts and drawers. They were then saturated with tar. At this stage of
the process, some one of the party suggested feathers; but the suggestion
was at once overruled by the dwarf, who soon convinced the eight, by
ocular demonstration, that the hair of such a brute as the ourang-outang
was much more efficiently represented by flax. A thick coating of
the latter was accordingly plastered upon the coating of tar. A long
chain was now procured. First, it was passed about the waist of the king,
and tied; then about another of the party, and also tied; then
about all successively, in the same manner. When this chaining
arrangement was complete, and the party stood as far apart from each
other as possible, they formed a circle; and to make all things appear
natural, Hop-Frog passed the residue of the chain in two diameters, at
right angles, across the circle, after the fashion adopted, at the
present day, by those who capture chimpanzees, or other large apes, in
Borneo.

The grand saloon in which the masquerade was to take place, was a circular
room, very lofty, and receiving the light of the sun only through a single
window at top. At night (the season for which the apartment was especially
designed) it was illuminated principally by a large chandelier, depending
by a chain from the centre of the sky-light, and lowered, or elevated, by
means of a counter-balance as usual; but (in order not to look unsightly)
this latter passed outside the cupola and over the roof.

The arrangements of the room had been left to Trippetta’s superintendence;
but, in some particulars, it seems, she had been guided by the calmer
judgment of her friend the dwarf. At his suggestion it was that, on this
occasion, the chandelier was removed. Its waxen drippings (which, in
weather so warm, it was quite impossible to prevent) would have been
seriously detrimental to the rich dresses of the guests, who, on account
of the crowded state of the saloon, could not all be expected to keep from
out its centre; that is to say, from under the chandelier. Additional
sconces were set in various parts of the hall, out of the war, and a
flambeau, emitting sweet odor, was placed in the right hand of each of the
Caryaides [Caryatides] that stood against the wall—some fifty or
sixty altogether.

The eight ourang-outangs, taking Hop-Frog’s advice, waited patiently until
midnight (when the room was thoroughly filled with masqueraders) before
making their appearance. No sooner had the clock ceased striking, however,
than they rushed, or rather rolled in, all together—for the
impediments of their chains caused most of the party to fall, and all to
stumble as they entered.

The excitement among the masqueraders was prodigious, and filled the heart
of the king with glee. As had been anticipated, there were not a few of
the guests who supposed the ferocious-looking creatures to be beasts of
some kind in reality, if not precisely ourang-outangs. Many of the women
swooned with affright; and had not the king taken the precaution to
exclude all weapons from the saloon, his party might soon have expiated
their frolic in their blood. As it was, a general rush was made for the
doors; but the king had ordered them to be locked immediately upon his
entrance; and, at the dwarf’s suggestion, the keys had been deposited with
him.

While the tumult was at its height, and each masquerader attentive only to
his own safety (for, in fact, there was much real danger from the pressure
of the excited crowd), the chain by which the chandelier ordinarily hung,
and which had been drawn up on its removal, might have been seen very
gradually to descend, until its hooked extremity came within three feet of
the floor.

Soon after this, the king and his seven friends having reeled about the
hall in all directions, found themselves, at length, in its centre, and,
of course, in immediate contact with the chain. While they were thus
situated, the dwarf, who had followed noiselessly at their heels, inciting
them to keep up the commotion, took hold of their own chain at the
intersection of the two portions which crossed the circle diametrically
and at right angles. Here, with the rapidity of thought, he inserted the
hook from which the chandelier had been wont to depend; and, in an
instant, by some unseen agency, the chandelier-chain was drawn so far
upward as to take the hook out of reach, and, as an inevitable
consequence, to drag the ourang-outangs together in close connection, and
face to face.

The masqueraders, by this time, had recovered, in some measure, from their
alarm; and, beginning to regard the whole matter as a well-contrived
pleasantry, set up a loud shout of laughter at the predicament of the
apes.

“Leave them to me!” now screamed Hop-Frog, his shrill voice making itself
easily heard through all the din. “Leave them to me. I fancy I know them.
If I can only get a good look at them, I can soon tell who they are.”

Here, scrambling over the heads of the crowd, he managed to get to the
wall; when, seizing a flambeau from one of the Caryatides, he returned,
as he went, to the centre of the room—leaped, with the agility of a
monkey, upon the kings head, and thence clambered a few feet up the
chain; holding down the torch to examine the group of ourang-outangs, and
still screaming: “I shall soon find out who they are!”

And now, while the whole assembly (the apes included) were convulsed with
laughter, the jester suddenly uttered a shrill whistle; when the chain
flew violently up for about thirty feet—dragging with it the
dismayed and struggling ourang-outangs, and leaving them suspended in
mid-air between the sky-light and the floor. Hop-Frog, clinging to the
chain as it rose, still maintained his relative position in respect to the
eight maskers, and still (as if nothing were the matter) continued to
thrust his torch down toward them, as though endeavoring to discover who
they were.

So thoroughly astonished was the whole company at this ascent, that a dead
silence, of about a minute’s duration, ensued. It was broken by just such
a low, harsh, grating sound, as had before attracted the attention of the
king and his councillors when the former threw the wine in the face of
Trippetta. But, on the present occasion, there could be no question as to
whence the sound issued. It came from the fang-like teeth of the
dwarf, who ground them and gnashed them as he foamed at the mouth, and
glared, with an expression of maniacal rage, into the upturned
countenances of the king and his seven companions.

“Ah, ha!” said at length the infuriated jester. “Ah, ha! I begin to see
who these people are now!” Here, pretending to scrutinize the king more
closely, he held the flambeau to the flaxen coat which enveloped him, and
which instantly burst into a sheet of vivid flame. In less than half a
minute the whole eight ourang-outangs were blazing fiercely, amid the
shrieks of the multitude who gazed at them from below, horror-stricken,
and without the power to render them the slightest assistance.

At length the flames, suddenly increasing in virulence, forced the jester
to climb higher up the chain, to be out of their reach; and, as he made
this movement, the crowd again sank, for a brief instant, into silence.
The dwarf seized his opportunity, and once more spoke:

“I now see distinctly,” he said, “what manner of people these maskers are.
They are a great king and his seven privy-councillors,—a king who
does not scruple to strike a defenceless girl and his seven councillors
who abet him in the outrage. As for myself, I am simply Hop-Frog, the
jester—and this is my last jest.”

Owing to the high combustibility of both the flax and the tar to which it
adhered, the dwarf had scarcely made an end of his brief speech before the
work of vengeance was complete. The eight corpses swung in their chains, a
fetid, blackened, hideous, and indistinguishable mass. The cripple hurled
his torch at them, clambered leisurely to the ceiling, and disappeared
through the sky-light.

It is supposed that Trippetta, stationed on the roof of the saloon, had
been the accomplice of her friend in his fiery revenge, and that,
together, they effected their escape to their own country; for neither was
seen again.

THE MAN OF THE CROWD.

Ce grand malheur, de ne pouvoir être seul.—La Bruyère.

It was well said of a certain German book that “er lasst sich nicht
lesen”—it does not permit itself to be read. There are some
secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. Men die nightly in
their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors and looking them
piteously in the eyes—die with despair of heart and convulsion of
throat, on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer
themselves to be revealed. Now and then, alas, the conscience of man takes
up a burthen so heavy in horror that it can be thrown down only into the
grave. And thus the essence of all crime is undivulged.

Not long ago, about the closing in of an evening in autumn, I sat at the
large bow window of the D—— Coffee-House in London. For some
months I had been ill in health, but was now convalescent, and, with
returning strength, found myself in one of those happy moods which are so
precisely the converse of ennui—moods of the keenest
appetency, when the film from the mental vision departs—the
αχλυξ η πριυ
επῆευ—and the intellect, electrified,
surpasses as greatly its every-day condition, as does the vivid yet
candid reason of Leibnitz, the mad and flimsy rhetoric of Gorgias. Merely
to breathe was enjoyment; and I derived positive pleasure even from many
of the legitimate sources of pain. I felt a calm but inquisitive interest
in every thing. With a cigar in my mouth and a newspaper in my lap, I had
been amusing myself for the greater part of the afternoon, now in poring
over advertisements, now in observing the promiscuous company in the
room, and now in peering through the smoky panes into the street.

This latter is one of the principal thoroughfares of the city, and had
been very much crowded during the whole day. But, as the darkness came on,
the throng momently increased; and, by the time the lamps were well
lighted, two dense and continuous tides of population were rushing past
the door. At this particular period of the evening I had never before been
in a similar situation, and the tumultuous sea of human heads filled me,
therefore, with a delicious novelty of emotion. I gave up, at length, all
care of things within the hotel, and became absorbed in contemplation of
the scene without.

At first my observations took an abstract and generalizing turn. I looked
at the passengers in masses, and thought of them in their aggregate
relations. Soon, however, I descended to details, and regarded with minute
interest the innumerable varieties of figure, dress, air, gait, visage,
and expression of countenance.

By far the greater number of those who went by had a satisfied
business-like demeanor, and seemed to be thinking only of making their way
through the press. Their brows were knit, and their eyes rolled quickly;
when pushed against by fellow-wayfarers they evinced no symptom of
impatience, but adjusted their clothes and hurried on. Others, still a
numerous class, were restless in their movements, had flushed faces, and
talked and gesticulated to themselves, as if feeling in solitude on
account of the very denseness of the company around. When impeded in their
progress, these people suddenly ceased muttering, but re-doubled their
gesticulations, and awaited, with an absent and overdone smile upon the
lips, the course of the persons impeding them. If jostled, they bowed
profusely to the jostlers, and appeared overwhelmed with confusion.—There
was nothing very distinctive about these two large classes beyond what I
have noted. Their habiliments belonged to that order which is pointedly
termed the decent. They were undoubtedly noblemen, merchants, attorneys,
tradesmen, stock-jobbers—the Eupatrids and the common-places of
society—men of leisure and men actively engaged in affairs of their
own—conducting business upon their own responsibility. They did not
greatly excite my attention.

The tribe of clerks was an obvious one and here I discerned two remarkable
divisions. There were the junior clerks of flash houses—young
gentlemen with tight coats, bright boots, well-oiled hair, and
supercilious lips. Setting aside a certain dapperness of carriage, which
may be termed deskism for want of a better word, the manner of these
persons seemed to me an exact fac-simile of what had been the perfection
of bon ton about twelve or eighteen months before. They wore the cast-off
graces of the gentry;—and this, I believe, involves the best
definition of the class.

The division of the upper clerks of staunch firms, or of the “steady old
fellows,” it was not possible to mistake. These were known by their coats
and pantaloons of black or brown, made to sit comfortably, with white
cravats and waistcoats, broad solid-looking shoes, and thick hose or
gaiters. They had all slightly bald heads, from which the right
ears, long used to pen-holding, had an odd habit of standing off on end. I
observed that they always removed or settled their hats with both hands,
and wore watches, with short gold chains of a substantial and ancient
pattern. Theirs was the affectation of respectability—if indeed
there be an affectation so honorable.

There were many individuals of dashing appearance, whom I easily
understood as belonging to the race of swell pick-pockets with which all
great cities are infested. I watched these gentry with much
inquisitiveness, and found it difficult to imagine how they should ever be
mistaken for gentlemen by gentlemen themselves. Their voluminousness of
wristband, with an air of excessive frankness, should betray them at once.

The gamblers, of whom I descried not a few, were still more easily
recognisable. They wore every variety of dress, from that of the
desperate thimble-rig bully, with velvet waistcoat, fancy neckerchief,
gilt chains, and filagreed buttons, to that of the scrupulously inornate
clergyman, than which nothing could be less liable to suspicion. Still
all were distinguished by a certain sodden swarthiness of complexion, a
filmy dimness of eye, and pallor and compression of lip. There were two
other traits, moreover, by which I could always detect them: a guarded
lowness of tone in conversation, and a more than ordinary extension of
the thumb in a direction at right angles with the fingers. Very often, in
company with these sharpers, I observed an order of men somewhat
different in habits, but still birds of a kindred feather. They may be
defined as the gentlemen who live by their wits. They seem to prey upon
the public in two battalions—that of the dandies and that of the
military men. Of the first grade the leading features are long locks and
smiles; of the second, frogged coats and frowns.

Descending in the scale of what is termed gentility, I found darker and
deeper themes for speculation. I saw Jew pedlars, with hawk eyes flashing
from countenances whose every other feature wore only an expression of
abject humility; sturdy professional street beggars scowling upon
mendicants of a better stamp, whom despair alone had driven forth into the
night for charity; feeble and ghastly invalids, upon whom death had placed
a sure hand, and who sidled and tottered through the mob, looking every
one beseechingly in the face, as if in search of some chance consolation,
some lost hope; modest young girls returning from long and late labor to a
cheerless home, and shrinking more tearfully than indignantly from the
glances of ruffians, whose direct contact, even, could not be avoided;
women of the town of all kinds and of all ages—the unequivocal
beauty in the prime of her womanhood, putting one in mind of the statue in
Lucian, with the surface of Parian marble, and the interior filled with
filth—the loathsome and utterly lost leper in rags—the
wrinkled, bejewelled and paint-begrimed beldame, making a last effort at
youth—the mere child of immature form, yet, from long association,
an adept in the dreadful coquetries of her trade, and burning with a rabid
ambition to be ranked the equal of her elders in vice; drunkards
innumerable and indescribable—some in shreds and patches, reeling,
inarticulate, with bruised visage and lack-lustre eyes—some in whole
although filthy garments, with a slightly unsteady swagger, thick sensual
lips, and hearty-looking rubicund faces—others clothed in materials
which had once been good, and which even now were scrupulously well
brushed—men who walked with a more than naturally firm and springy
step, but whose countenances were fearfully pale, whose eyes hideously
wild and red, and who clutched with quivering fingers, as they strode
through the crowd, at every object which came within their reach; beside
these, pie-men, porters, coal-heavers, sweeps; organ-grinders,
monkey-exhibitors, and ballad mongers, those who vended with those who
sang; ragged artizans and exhausted laborers of every description, and all
full of a noisy and inordinate vivacity which jarred discordantly upon the
ear, and gave an aching sensation to the eye.

As the night deepened, so deepened to me the interest of the scene; for
not only did the general character of the crowd materially alter (its
gentler features retiring in the gradual withdrawal of the more orderly
portion of the people, and its harsher ones coming out into bolder relief,
as the late hour brought forth every species of infamy from its den,) but
the rays of the gas-lamps, feeble at first in their struggle with the
dying day, had now at length gained ascendancy, and threw over every thing
a fitful and garish lustre. All was dark yet splendid—as that ebony
to which has been likened the style of Tertullian.

The wild effects of the light enchained me to an examination of individual
faces; and although the rapidity with which the world of light flitted
before the window, prevented me from casting more than a glance upon each
visage, still it seemed that, in my then peculiar mental state, I could
frequently read, even in that brief interval of a glance, the history of
long years.

With my brow to the glass, I was thus occupied in scrutinizing the mob,
when suddenly there came into view a countenance (that of a decrepid old
man, some sixty-five or seventy years of age,)—a countenance which
at once arrested and absorbed my whole attention, on account of the
absolute idiosyncrasy of its expression. Any thing even remotely
resembling that expression I had never seen before. I well remember that
my first thought, upon beholding it, was that Retzch, had he viewed it,
would have greatly preferred it to his own pictural incarnations of the
fiend. As I endeavored, during the brief minute of my original survey, to
form some analysis of the meaning conveyed, there arose confusedly and
paradoxically within my mind, the ideas of vast mental power, of caution,
of penuriousness, of avarice, of coolness, of malice, of blood
thirstiness, of triumph, of merriment, of excessive terror, of intense—of
supreme despair. I felt singularly aroused, startled, fascinated. “How
wild a history,” I said to myself, “is written within that bosom!” Then
came a craving desire to keep the man in view—to know more of him.
Hurriedly putting on an overcoat, and seizing my hat and cane, I made my
way into the street, and pushed through the crowd in the direction which I
had seen him take; for he had already disappeared. With some little
difficulty I at length came within sight of him, approached, and followed
him closely, yet cautiously, so as not to attract his attention.

I had now a good opportunity of examining his person. He was short in
stature, very thin, and apparently very feeble. His clothes, generally,
were filthy and ragged; but as he came, now and then, within the strong
glare of a lamp, I perceived that his linen, although dirty, was of
beautiful texture; and my vision deceived me, or, through a rent in a
closely-buttoned and evidently second-handed roquelaire which enveloped
him, I caught a glimpse both of a diamond and of a dagger. These
observations heightened my curiosity, and I resolved to follow the
stranger whithersoever he should go.

It was now fully night-fall, and a thick humid fog hung over the city,
soon ending in a settled and heavy rain. This change of weather had an odd
effect upon the crowd, the whole of which was at once put into new
commotion, and overshadowed by a world of umbrellas. The waver, the
jostle, and the hum increased in a tenfold degree. For my own part I did
not much regard the rain—the lurking of an old fever in my system
rendering the moisture somewhat too dangerously pleasant. Tying a
handkerchief about my mouth, I kept on. For half an hour the old man held
his way with difficulty along the great thoroughfare; and I here walked
close at his elbow through fear of losing sight of him. Never once turning
his head to look back, he did not observe me. By and by he passed into a
cross street, which, although densely filled with people, was not quite so
much thronged as the main one he had quitted. Here a change in his
demeanor became evident. He walked more slowly and with less object than
before—more hesitatingly. He crossed and re-crossed the way
repeatedly without apparent aim; and the press was still so thick that, at
every such movement, I was obliged to follow him closely. The street was a
narrow and long one, and his course lay within it for nearly an hour,
during which the passengers had gradually diminished to about that number
which is ordinarily seen at noon in Broadway near the park—so vast a
difference is there between a London populace and that of the most
frequented American city. A second turn brought us into a square,
brilliantly lighted, and overflowing with life. The old manner of the
stranger re-appeared. His chin fell upon his breast, while his eyes rolled
wildly from under his knit brows, in every direction, upon those who
hemmed him in. He urged his way steadily and perseveringly. I was
surprised, however, to find, upon his having made the circuit of the
square, that he turned and retraced his steps. Still more was I astonished
to see him repeat the same walk several times—once nearly detecting
me as he came round with a sudden movement.

In this exercise he spent another hour, at the end of which we met with
far less interruption from passengers than at first. The rain fell fast;
the air grew cool; and the people were retiring to their homes. With a
gesture of impatience, the wanderer passed into a by-street comparatively
deserted. Down this, some quarter of a mile long, he rushed with an
activity I could not have dreamed of seeing in one so aged, and which put
me to much trouble in pursuit. A few minutes brought us to a large and
busy bazaar, with the localities of which the stranger appeared well
acquainted, and where his original demeanor again became apparent, as he
forced his way to and fro, without aim, among the host of buyers and
sellers.

During the hour and a half, or thereabouts, which we passed in this place,
it required much caution on my part to keep him within reach without
attracting his observation. Luckily I wore a pair of caoutchouc
over-shoes, and could move about in perfect silence. At no moment did he
see that I watched him. He entered shop after shop, priced nothing, spoke
no word, and looked at all objects with a wild and vacant stare. I was now
utterly amazed at his behavior, and firmly resolved that we should not
part until I had satisfied myself in some measure respecting him.

A loud-toned clock struck eleven, and the company were fast deserting the
bazaar. A shop-keeper, in putting up a shutter, jostled the old man, and
at the instant I saw a strong shudder come over his frame. He hurried into
the street, looked anxiously around him for an instant, and then ran with
incredible swiftness through many crooked and people-less lanes, until we
emerged once more upon the great thoroughfare whence we had started—the
street of the D—— Hotel. It no longer wore, however, the same
aspect. It was still brilliant with gas; but the rain fell fiercely, and
there were few persons to be seen. The stranger grew pale. He walked
moodily some paces up the once populous avenue, then, with a heavy sigh,
turned in the direction of the river, and, plunging through a great
variety of devious ways, came out, at length, in view of one of the
principal theatres. It was about being closed, and the audience were
thronging from the doors. I saw the old man gasp as if for breath while he
threw himself amid the crowd; but I thought that the intense agony of his
countenance had, in some measure, abated. His head again fell upon his
breast; he appeared as I had seen him at first. I observed that he now
took the course in which had gone the greater number of the audience—but,
upon the whole, I was at a loss to comprehend the waywardness of his
actions.

As he proceeded, the company grew more scattered, and his old uneasiness
and vacillation were resumed. For some time he followed closely a party of
some ten or twelve roisterers; but from this number one by one dropped
off, until three only remained together, in a narrow and gloomy lane
little frequented. The stranger paused, and, for a moment, seemed lost in
thought; then, with every mark of agitation, pursued rapidly a route which
brought us to the verge of the city, amid regions very different from
those we had hitherto traversed. It was the most noisome quarter of
London, where every thing wore the worst impress of the most deplorable
poverty, and of the most desperate crime. By the dim light of an
accidental lamp, tall, antique, worm-eaten, wooden tenements were seen
tottering to their fall, in directions so many and capricious that scarce
the semblance of a passage was discernible between them. The paving-stones
lay at random, displaced from their beds by the rankly-growing grass.
Horrible filth festered in the dammed-up gutters. The whole atmosphere
teemed with desolation. Yet, as we proceeded, the sounds of human life
revived by sure degrees, and at length large bands of the most abandoned
of a London populace were seen reeling to and fro. The spirits of the old
man again flickered up, as a lamp which is near its death hour. Once more
he strode onward with elastic tread. Suddenly a corner was turned, a blaze
of light burst upon our sight, and we stood before one of the huge
suburban temples of Intemperance—one of the palaces of the fiend,
Gin.

It was now nearly day-break; but a number of wretched inebriates still
pressed in and out of the flaunting entrance. With a half shriek of joy
the old man forced a passage within, resumed at once his original
bearing, and stalked backward and forward, without apparent object, among
the throng. He had not been thus long occupied, however, before a rush to
the doors gave token that the host was closing them for the night. It was
something even more intense than despair that I then observed upon the
countenance of the singular being whom I had watched so pertinaciously.
Yet he did not hesitate in his career, but, with a mad energy, retraced
his steps at once, to the heart of the mighty London. Long and swiftly he
fled, while I followed him in the wildest amazement, resolute not to
abandon a scrutiny in which I now felt an interest all-absorbing. The sun
arose while we proceeded, and, when we had once again reached that most
thronged mart of the populous town, the street of the D——
Hotel, it presented an appearance of human bustle and activity scarcely
inferior to what I had seen on the evening before. And here, long, amid
the momently increasing confusion, did I persist in my pursuit of the
stranger. But, as usual, he walked to and fro, and during the day did not
pass from out the turmoil of that street. And, as the shades of the
second evening came on, I grew wearied unto death, and, stopping fully in
front of the wanderer, gazed at him steadfastly in the face. He noticed
me not, but resumed his solemn walk, while I, ceasing to follow, remained
absorbed in contemplation. “This old man,” I said at length,
“is the type and the genius of deep crime. He refuses to be alone.
He is the man of the crowd. It will be in vain to follow; for I
shall learn no more of him, nor of his deeds. The worst heart of the
world is a grosser book than the ‘Hortulus Animæ,’ {*1} and
perhaps it is but one of the great mercies of God that ‘er lasst
sich nicht lesen.’”

{*1} The “Hortulus Animæ cum Oratiunculis Aliquibus Superadditis”
of Grünninger.

NEVER BET THE DEVIL YOUR HEAD

A Tale With a Moral.

“Con tal que las costumbres de un autor,” says Don Thomas de las
Torres, in the preface to his “Amatory Poems” “sean puras y castas,
importo muy poco que no sean igualmente severas sus obras”—meaning,
in plain English, that, provided the morals of an author are pure
personally, it signifies nothing what are the morals of his books. We
presume that Don Thomas is now in Purgatory for the assertion. It would be
a clever thing, too, in the way of poetical justice, to keep him there
until his “Amatory Poems” get out of print, or are laid definitely upon
the shelf through lack of readers. Every fiction should have a moral; and,
what is more to the purpose, the critics have discovered that every
fiction has. Philip Melanchthon, some time ago, wrote a commentary upon
the “Batrachomyomachia,” and proved that the poet’s object was to excite a
distaste for sedition. Pierre la Seine, going a step farther, shows that
the intention was to recommend to young men temperance in eating and
drinking. Just so, too, Jacobus Hugo has satisfied himself that, by
Euenis, Homer meant to insinuate John Calvin; by Antinous, Martin Luther;
by the Lotophagi, Protestants in general; and, by the Harpies, the Dutch.
Our more modern Scholiasts are equally acute. These fellows demonstrate a
hidden meaning in “The Antediluvians,” a parable in Powhatan, “new views
in Cock Robin,” and transcendentalism in “Hop O’ My Thumb.” In short, it
has been shown that no man can sit down to write without a very profound
design. Thus to authors in general much trouble is spared. A novelist, for
example, need have no care of his moral. It is there—that is to say,
it is somewhere—and the moral and the critics can take care of
themselves. When the proper time arrives, all that the gentleman intended,
and all that he did not intend, will be brought to light, in the “Dial,”
or the “Down-Easter,” together with all that he ought to have intended,
and the rest that he clearly meant to intend:—so that it will all
come very straight in the end.

There is no just ground, therefore, for the charge brought against me by
certain ignoramuses—that I have never written a moral tale, or, in
more precise words, a tale with a moral. They are not the critics
predestined to bring me out, and develop my morals:—that is the
secret. By and by the “North American Quarterly Humdrum” will make them
ashamed of their stupidity. In the meantime, by way of staying execution—by
way of mitigating the accusations against me—I offer the sad history
appended,—a history about whose obvious moral there can be no
question whatever, since he who runs may read it in the large capitals
which form the title of the tale. I should have credit for this
arrangement—a far wiser one than that of La Fontaine and others, who
reserve the impression to be conveyed until the last moment, and thus
sneak it in at the fag end of their fables.

Defuncti injuriâ ne afficiantur was a law of the twelve tables, and De
mortuis nil nisi bonum is an excellent injunction—even if the dead
in question be nothing but dead small beer. It is not my design,
therefore, to vituperate my deceased friend, Toby Dammit. He was a sad
dog, it is true, and a dog’s death it was that he died; but he himself was
not to blame for his vices. They grew out of a personal defect in his
mother. She did her best in the way of flogging him while an infant—for
duties to her well-regulated mind were always pleasures, and babies,
like tough steaks, or the modern Greek olive trees, are invariably the
better for beating—but, poor woman! she had the misfortune to be
left-handed, and a child flogged left-handedly had better be left
unflogged. The world revolves from right to left. It will not do to whip a
baby from left to right. If each blow in the proper direction drives an
evil propensity out, it follows that every thump in an opposite one knocks
its quota of wickedness in. I was often present at Toby’s chastisements,
and, even by the way in which he kicked, I could perceive that he was
getting worse and worse every day. At last I saw, through the tears in my
eyes, that there was no hope of the villain at all, and one day when he
had been cuffed until he grew so black in the face that one might have
mistaken him for a little African, and no effect had been produced beyond
that of making him wriggle himself into a fit, I could stand it no longer,
but went down upon my knees forthwith, and, uplifting my voice, made
prophecy of his ruin.

The fact is that his precocity in vice was awful. At five months of age he
used to get into such passions that he was unable to articulate. At six
months, I caught him gnawing a pack of cards. At seven months he was in
the constant habit of catching and kissing the female babies. At eight
months he peremptorily refused to put his signature to the Temperance
pledge. Thus he went on increasing in iniquity, month after month, until,
at the close of the first year, he not only insisted upon wearing
moustaches, but had contracted a propensity for cursing and swearing, and
for backing his assertions by bets.

Through this latter most ungentlemanly practice, the ruin which I had
predicted to Toby Dammit overtook him at last. The fashion had “grown with
his growth and strengthened with his strength,” so that, when he came to
be a man, he could scarcely utter a sentence without interlarding it with
a proposition to gamble. Not that he actually laid wagers—no. I will
do my friend the justice to say that he would as soon have laid eggs. With
him the thing was a mere formula—nothing more. His expressions on
this head had no meaning attached to them whatever. They were simple if
not altogether innocent expletives—imaginative phrases wherewith to
round off a sentence. When he said “I’ll bet you so and so,” nobody ever
thought of taking him up; but still I could not help thinking it my duty
to put him down. The habit was an immoral one, and so I told him. It was a
vulgar one—this I begged him to believe. It was discountenanced by
society—here I said nothing but the truth. It was forbidden by act
of Congress—here I had not the slightest intention of telling a lie.
I remonstrated—but to no purpose. I demonstrated—in vain. I
entreated—he smiled. I implored—he laughed. I preached—he
sneered. I threatened—he swore. I kicked him—he called for the
police. I pulled his nose—he blew it, and offered to bet the Devil
his head that I would not venture to try that experiment again.

Poverty was another vice which the peculiar physical deficiency of
Dammit’s mother had entailed upon her son. He was detestably poor, and
this was the reason, no doubt, that his expletive expressions about
betting, seldom took a pecuniary turn. I will not be bound to say that I
ever heard him make use of such a figure of speech as “I’ll bet you a
dollar.” It was usually “I’ll bet you what you please,” or “I’ll bet you
what you dare,” or “I’ll bet you a trifle,” or else, more significantly
still, “I’ll bet the Devil my head.”

This latter form seemed to please him best;—perhaps because it
involved the least risk; for Dammit had become excessively parsimonious.
Had any one taken him up, his head was small, and thus his loss would have
been small too. But these are my own reflections and I am by no means sure
that I am right in attributing them to him. At all events the phrase in
question grew daily in favor, notwithstanding the gross impropriety of a
man betting his brains like bank-notes—but this was a point which
my friend’s perversity of disposition would not permit him to comprehend.
In the end, he abandoned all other forms of wager, and gave himself up to
“I’ll bet the Devil my head,” with a pertinacity and exclusiveness of
devotion that displeased not less than it surprised me. I am always
displeased by circumstances for which I cannot account. Mysteries force a
man to think, and so injure his health. The truth is, there was something
in the air with which Mr. Dammit was wont to give utterance to his
offensive expression—something in his manner of enunciation—which
at first interested, and afterwards made me very uneasy—something
which, for want of a more definite term at present, I must be permitted to
call queer; but which Mr. Coleridge would have called mystical, Mr. Kant
pantheistical, Mr. Carlyle twistical, and Mr. Emerson hyperquizzitistical.
I began not to like it at all. Mr. Dammits soul was in a perilous state. I
resolved to bring all my eloquence into play to save it. I vowed to serve
him as St. Patrick, in the Irish chronicle, is said to have served the
toad,—that is to say, “awaken him to a sense of his situation.” I
addressed myself to the task forthwith. Once more I betook myself to
remonstrance. Again I collected my energies for a final attempt at
expostulation.

When I had made an end of my lecture, Mr. Dammit indulged himself in some
very equivocal behavior. For some moments he remained silent, merely
looking me inquisitively in the face. But presently he threw his head to
one side, and elevated his eyebrows to a great extent. Then he spread out
the palms of his hands and shrugged up his shoulders. Then he winked with
the right eye. Then he repeated the operation with the left. Then he shut
them both up very tight. Then he opened them both so very wide that I became
seriously alarmed for the consequences. Then, applying his thumb to his
nose, he thought proper to make an indescribable movement with the rest of
his fingers. Finally, setting his arms a-kimbo, he condescended to reply.

I can call to mind only the heads of his discourse. He would be obliged to
me if I would hold my tongue. He wished none of my advice. He despised all
my insinuations. He was old enough to take care of himself. Did I still
think him baby Dammit? Did I mean to say any thing against his character?
Did I intend to insult him? Was I a fool? Was my maternal parent aware, in
a word, of my absence from the domiciliary residence? He would put this
latter question to me as to a man of veracity, and he would bind himself
to abide by my reply. Once more he would demand explicitly if my mother
knew that I was out. My confusion, he said, betrayed me, and he would be
willing to bet the Devil his head that she did not.

Mr. Dammit did not pause for my rejoinder. Turning upon his heel, he left
my presence with undignified precipitation. It was well for him that he
did so. My feelings had been wounded. Even my anger had been aroused. For
once I would have taken him up upon his insulting wager. I would have won
for the Arch-Enemy Mr. Dammit’s little head—for the fact is, my
mamma was very well aware of my merely temporary absence from home.

But Khoda shefa midêhed—Heaven gives relief—as the Mussulmans
say when you tread upon their toes. It was in pursuance of my duty that I
had been insulted, and I bore the insult like a man. It now seemed to me,
however, that I had done all that could be required of me, in the case of
this miserable individual, and I resolved to trouble him no longer with my
counsel, but to leave him to his conscience and himself. But although I
forebore to intrude with my advice, I could not bring myself to give up
his society altogether. I even went so far as to humor some of his less
reprehensible propensities; and there were times when I found myself
lauding his wicked jokes, as epicures do mustard, with tears in my eyes:—so
profoundly did it grieve me to hear his evil talk.

One fine day, having strolled out together, arm in arm, our route led us
in the direction of a river. There was a bridge, and we resolved to cross
it. It was roofed over, by way of protection from the weather, and the
archway, having but few windows, was thus very uncomfortably dark. As we
entered the passage, the contrast between the external glare and the
interior gloom struck heavily upon my spirits. Not so upon those of the
unhappy Dammit, who offered to bet the Devil his head that I was hipped.
He seemed to be in an unusual good humor. He was excessively lively—so
much so that I entertained I know not what of uneasy suspicion. It is not
impossible that he was affected with the transcendentals. I am not well
enough versed, however, in the diagnosis of this disease to speak with
decision upon the point; and unhappily there were none of my friends of
the “Dial” present. I suggest the idea, nevertheless, because of a certain
species of austere Merry-Andrewism which seemed to beset my poor friend,
and caused him to make quite a Tom-Fool of himself. Nothing would serve
him but wriggling and skipping about under and over every thing that came
in his way; now shouting out, and now lisping out, all manner of odd
little and big words, yet preserving the gravest face in the world all the
time. I really could not make up my mind whether to kick or to pity him.
At length, having passed nearly across the bridge, we approached the
termination of the footway, when our progress was impeded by a turnstile
of some height. Through this I made my way quietly, pushing it around as
usual. But this turn would not serve the turn of Mr. Dammit. He insisted
upon leaping the stile, and said he could cut a pigeon-wing over it in the
air. Now this, conscientiously speaking, I did not think he could do. The
best pigeon-winger over all kinds of style was my friend Mr. Carlyle, and
as I knew he could not do it, I would not believe that it could be done by
Toby Dammit. I therefore told him, in so many words, that he was a
braggadocio, and could not do what he said. For this I had reason to be
sorry afterward;—for he straightway offered to bet the Devil his
head that he could.

I was about to reply, notwithstanding my previous resolutions, with some
remonstrance against his impiety, when I heard, close at my elbow, a
slight cough, which sounded very much like the ejaculation “ahem!” I
started, and looked about me in surprise. My glance at length fell into a
nook of the frame—work of the bridge, and upon the figure of a
little lame old gentleman of venerable aspect. Nothing could be more
reverend than his whole appearance; for he not only had on a full suit of
black, but his shirt was perfectly clean and the collar turned very neatly
down over a white cravat, while his hair was parted in front like a
girl’s. His hands were clasped pensively together over his stomach, and
his two eyes were carefully rolled up into the top of his head.

Upon observing him more closely, I perceived that he wore a black silk
apron over his small-clothes; and this was a thing which I thought very
odd. Before I had time to make any remark, however, upon so singular a
circumstance, he interrupted me with a second “ahem!”

To this observation I was not immediately prepared to reply. The fact is,
remarks of this laconic nature are nearly unanswerable. I have known a
Quarterly Review non-plussed by the word “Fudge!” I am not ashamed to say,
therefore, that I turned to Mr. Dammit for assistance.

“Dammit,” said I, “what are you about? don’t you hear?—the gentleman
says ‘ahem!’” I looked sternly at my friend while I thus addressed him;
for, to say the truth, I felt particularly puzzled, and when a man is
particularly puzzled he must knit his brows and look savage, or else he is
pretty sure to look like a fool.

“Dammit,” observed I—although this sounded very much like an oath,
than which nothing was further from my thoughts—“Dammit,” I
suggested—“the gentleman says ‘ahem!’”

I do not attempt to defend my remark on the score of profundity; I did not
think it profound myself; but I have noticed that the effect of our
speeches is not always proportionate with their importance in our own
eyes; and if I had shot Mr. D. through and through with a Paixhan bomb, or
knocked him in the head with the “Poets and Poetry of America,” he could
hardly have been more discomfited than when I addressed him with those
simple words: “Dammit, what are you about?—don’t you hear?—the
gentleman says ‘ahem!’”

“You don’t say so?” gasped he at length, after turning more colors than a
pirate runs up, one after the other, when chased by a man-of-war. “Are you
quite sure he said that? Well, at all events I am in for it now, and may
as well put a bold face upon the matter. Here goes, then—ahem!”

At this the little old gentleman seemed pleased—God only knows why.
He left his station at the nook of the bridge, limped forward with a
gracious air, took Dammit by the hand and shook it cordially, looking all
the while straight up in his face with an air of the most unadulterated
benignity which it is possible for the mind of man to imagine.

“I am quite sure you will win it, Dammit,” said he, with the frankest of
all smiles, “but we are obliged to have a trial, you know, for the sake of
mere form.”

“Ahem!” replied my friend, taking off his coat, with a deep sigh, tying a
pocket-handkerchief around his waist, and producing an unaccountable
alteration in his countenance by twisting up his eyes and bringing down
the corners of his mouth—“ahem!” And “ahem!” said he again, after a
pause; and not another word more than “ahem!” did I ever know him to say
after that. “Aha!” thought I, without expressing myself aloud—“this
is quite a remarkable silence on the part of Toby Dammit, and is no doubt
a consequence of his verbosity upon a previous occasion. One extreme
induces another. I wonder if he has forgotten the many unanswerable
questions which he propounded to me so fluently on the day when I gave him
my last lecture? At all events, he is cured of the transcendentals.”

“Ahem!” here replied Toby, just as if he had been reading my thoughts, and
looking like a very old sheep in a revery.

The old gentleman now took him by the arm, and led him more into the shade
of the bridge—a few paces back from the turnstile. “My good fellow,”
said he, “I make it a point of conscience to allow you this much run. Wait
here, till I take my place by the stile, so that I may see whether you go
over it handsomely, and transcendentally, and don’t omit any flourishes of
the pigeon-wing. A mere form, you know. I will say ‘one, two, three, and
away.’ Mind you, start at the word ‘away.’” Here he took his position by
the stile, paused a moment as if in profound reflection, then looked up
and, I thought, smiled very slightly, then tightened the strings of his
apron, then took a long look at Dammit, and finally gave the word as
agreed upon—

One—two—three—and—away!

Punctually at the word “away,” my poor friend set off in a strong gallop.
The stile was not very high, like Mr. Lord’s—nor yet very low, like
that of Mr. Lord’s reviewers, but upon the whole I made sure that he would
clear it. And then what if he did not?—ah, that was the question—what
if he did not? “What right,” said I, “had the old gentleman to make any
other gentleman jump? The little old dot-and-carry-one! who is he? If he
asks me to jump, I won’t do it, that’s flat, and I don’t care who the
devil he is.” The bridge, as I say, was arched and covered in, in a very
ridiculous manner, and there was a most uncomfortable echo about it at all
times—an echo which I never before so particularly observed as when
I uttered the four last words of my remark.

But what I said, or what I thought, or what I heard, occupied only an
instant. In less than five seconds from his starting, my poor Toby had
taken the leap. I saw him run nimbly, and spring grandly from the floor of
the bridge, cutting the most awful flourishes with his legs as he went up.
I saw him high in the air, pigeon-winging it to admiration just over the
top of the stile; and of course I thought it an unusually singular thing
that he did not continue to go over. But the whole leap was the affair of
a moment, and, before I had a chance to make any profound reflections,
down came Mr. Dammit on the flat of his back, on the same side of the
stile from which he had started. At the same instant I saw the old
gentleman limping off at the top of his speed, having caught and wrapt up
in his apron something that fell heavily into it from the darkness of the
arch just over the turnstile. At all this I was much astonished; but I had
no leisure to think, for Dammit lay particularly still, and I concluded
that his feelings had been hurt, and that he stood in need of my
assistance. I hurried up to him and found that he had received what might
be termed a serious injury. The truth is, he had been deprived of his
head, which after a close search I could not find anywhere; so I
determined to take him home and send for the homœopathists. In the
meantime a thought struck me, and I threw open an adjacent window of the
bridge, when the sad truth flashed upon me at once. About five feet just
above the top of the turnstile, and crossing the arch of the foot-path so
as to constitute a brace, there extended a flat iron bar, lying with its
breadth horizontally, and forming one of a series that served to
strengthen the structure throughout its extent. With the edge of this
brace it appeared evident that the neck of my unfortunate friend had come
precisely in contact.

He did not long survive his terrible loss. The homœopathists did not give
him little enough physic, and what little they did give him he hesitated
to take. So in the end he grew worse, and at length died, a lesson to all
riotous livers. I bedewed his grave with my tears, worked a bar sinister
on his family escutcheon, and, for the general expenses of his funeral,
sent in my very moderate bill to the transcendentalists. The scoundrels
refused to pay it, so I had Mr. Dammit dug up at once, and sold him for
dog’s meat.

THOU ART THE MAN

I will now play the Oedipus to the Rattleborough enigma. I will expound to
you—as I alone can—the secret of the enginery that effected
the Rattleborough miracle—the one, the true, the admitted, the
undisputed, the indisputable miracle, which put a definite end to
infidelity among the Rattleburghers and converted to the orthodoxy of the
grandames all the carnal-minded who had ventured to be sceptical before.

This event—which I should be sorry to discuss in a tone of
unsuitable levity—occurred in the summer of 18—. Mr. Barnabas
Shuttleworthy—one of the wealthiest and most respectable citizens of
the borough—had been missing for several days under circumstances
which gave rise to suspicion of foul play. Mr. Shuttleworthy had set out
from Rattleborough very early one Saturday morning, on horseback, with the
avowed intention of proceeding to the city of ——, about fifteen miles
distant, and of returning the night of the same day. Two hours after his
departure, however, his horse returned without him, and without the
saddle-bags which had been strapped on his back at starting. The animal
was wounded, too, and covered with mud. These circumstances naturally gave
rise to much alarm among the friends of the missing man; and when it was
found, on Sunday morning, that he had not yet made his appearance, the
whole borough arose en masse to go and look for his body.

The foremost and most energetic in instituting this search was the bosom
friend of Mr. Shuttleworthy—a Mr. Charles Goodfellow, or, as he was
universally called, “Charley Goodfellow,” or “Old Charley Goodfellow.”
Now, whether it is a marvellous coincidence, or whether it is that the
name itself has an imperceptible effect upon the character, I have never
yet been able to ascertain; but the fact is unquestionable, that there
never yet was any person named Charles who was not an open, manly, honest,
good-natured, and frank-hearted fellow, with a rich, clear voice, that did
you good to hear it, and an eye that looked you always straight in the
face, as much as to say: “I have a clear conscience myself, am afraid of
no man, and am altogether above doing a mean action.” And thus all the
hearty, careless, “walking gentlemen” of the stage are very certain to be
called Charles.

Now, “Old Charley Goodfellow,” although he had been in Rattleborough not
longer than six months or thereabouts, and although nobody knew any thing
about him before he came to settle in the neighborhood, had experienced no
difficulty in the world in making the acquaintance of all the respectable
people in the borough. Not a man of them but would have taken his bare
word for a thousand at any moment; and as for the women, there is no
saying what they would not have done to oblige him. And all this came of
his having been christened Charles, and of his possessing, in consequence,
that ingenuous face which is proverbially the very “best letter of
recommendation.”

I have already said that Mr. Shuttleworthy was one of the most respectable
and, undoubtedly, he was the most wealthy man in Rattleborough, while “Old
Charley Goodfellow” was upon as intimate terms with him as if he had been
his own brother. The two old gentlemen were next-door neighbours, and,
although Mr. Shuttleworthy seldom, if ever, visited “Old Charley,” and
never was known to take a meal in his house, still this did not prevent
the two friends from being exceedingly intimate, as I have just observed;
for “Old Charley” never let a day pass without stepping in three or four
times to see how his neighbour came on, and very often he would stay to
breakfast or tea, and almost always to dinner, and then the amount of wine
that was made way with by the two cronies at a sitting, it would really be
a difficult thing to ascertain. “Old Charleys” favorite beverage was
Chateau-Margaux, and it appeared to do Mr. Shuttleworthy’s heart good to
see the old fellow swallow it, as he did, quart after quart; so that, one
day, when the wine was in and the wit as a natural consequence, somewhat
out, he said to his crony, as he slapped him upon the back—“I tell
you what it is, ‘Old Charley,’ you are, by all odds, the heartiest old
fellow I ever came across in all my born days; and, since you love to
guzzle the wine at that fashion, I’ll be darned if I don’t have to make
thee a present of a big box of the Chateau-Margaux. Od rot me,”—(Mr.
Shuttleworthy had a sad habit of swearing, although he seldom went beyond
“Od rot me,” or “By gosh,” or “By the jolly golly,”)—“Od rot me,”
says he, “if I don’t send an order to town this very afternoon for a
double box of the best that can be got, and I’ll make ye a present of it,
I will!—ye needn’t say a word now—I will, I tell ye, and
there’s an end of it; so look out for it—it will come to hand some
of these fine days, precisely when ye are looking for it the least!” I
mention this little bit of liberality on the part of Mr. Shuttleworthy,
just by way of showing you how very intimate an understanding existed
between the two friends.

Well, on the Sunday morning in question, when it came to be fairly
understood that Mr. Shuttleworthy had met with foul play, I never saw any
one so profoundly affected as “Old Charley Goodfellow.” When he first
heard that the horse had come home without his master, and without his
master’s saddle-bags, and all bloody from a pistol-shot, that had gone
clean through and through the poor animal’s chest without quite killing
him; when he heard all this, he turned as pale as if the missing man had
been his own dear brother or father, and shivered and shook all over as if
he had had a fit of the ague.

At first he was too much overpowered with grief to be able to do any thing
at all, or to concert upon any plan of action; so that for a long time he
endeavored to dissuade Mr. Shuttleworthy’s other friends from making a
stir about the matter, thinking it best to wait awhile—say for a
week or two, or a month, or two—to see if something wouldn’t turn
up, or if Mr. Shuttleworthy wouldn’t come in the natural way, and explain
his reasons for sending his horse on before. I dare say you have often
observed this disposition to temporize, or to procrastinate, in people who
are labouring under any very poignant sorrow. Their powers of mind seem to
be rendered torpid, so that they have a horror of any thing like action,
and like nothing in the world so well as to lie quietly in bed and “nurse
their grief,” as the old ladies express it—that is to say, ruminate
over the trouble.

The people of Rattleborough had, indeed, so high an opinion of the wisdom
and discretion of “Old Charley,” that the greater part of them felt
disposed to agree with him, and not make a stir in the business “until
something should turn up,” as the honest old gentleman worded it; and I
believe that, after all this would have been the general determination,
but for the very suspicious interference of Mr. Shuttleworthy’s nephew, a
young man of very dissipated habits, and otherwise of rather bad
character. This nephew, whose name was Pennifeather, would listen to
nothing like reason in the matter of “lying quiet,” but insisted upon
making immediate search for the “corpse of the murdered man.” This
was the expression he employed; and Mr. Goodfellow acutely remarked at the
time, that it was “a singular expression, to say no more.” This remark of
“Old Charley’s,” too, had great effect upon the crowd; and one of the
party was heard to ask, very impressively, “how it happened that young Mr.
Pennifeather was so intimately cognizant of all the circumstances
connected with his wealthy uncle’s disappearance, as to feel authorized to
assert, distinctly and unequivocally, that his uncle was ‘a murdered
man.’” Hereupon some little squibbing and bickering occurred among various
members of the crowd, and especially between “Old Charley” and Mr.
Pennifeather—although this latter occurrence was, indeed, by no
means a novelty, for little good-will had subsisted between the parties for
the last three or four months; and matters had even gone so far that Mr.
Pennifeather had actually knocked down his uncle’s friend for some alleged
excess of liberty that the latter had taken in the uncle’s house, of which
the nephew was an inmate. Upon this occasion “Old Charley” is said to have
behaved with exemplary moderation and Christian charity. He arose from the
blow, adjusted his clothes, and made no attempt at retaliation at all—merely
muttering a few words about “taking summary vengeance at the first
convenient opportunity,”—a natural and very justifiable ebullition
of anger, which meant nothing, however, and, beyond doubt, was no sooner
given vent to than forgotten.

However these matters may be (which have no reference to the point now at
issue), it is quite certain that the people of Rattleborough, principally
through the persuasion of Mr. Pennifeather, came at length to the
determination of dispersion over the adjacent country in search of the
missing Mr. Shuttleworthy. I say they came to this determination in the
first instance. After it had been fully resolved that a search should be
made, it was considered almost a matter of course that the seekers should
disperse—that is to say, distribute themselves in parties—for
the more thorough examination of the region round about. I forget,
however, by what ingenious train of reasoning it was that “Old Charley”
finally convinced the assembly that this was the most injudicious plan
that could be pursued. Convince them, however, he did—all except Mr.
Pennifeather, and, in the end, it was arranged that a search should be
instituted, carefully and very thoroughly, by the burghers en masse, “Old
Charley” himself leading the way.

As for the matter of that, there could have been no better pioneer than
“Old Charley,” whom everybody knew to have the eye of a lynx; but,
although he led them into all manner of out-of-the-way holes and corners,
by routes that nobody had ever suspected of existing in the neighbourhood,
and although the search was incessantly kept up day and night for nearly a
week, still no trace of Mr. Shuttleworthy could be discovered. When I say
no trace, however, I must not be understood to speak literally; for trace,
to some extent, there certainly was. The poor gentleman had been tracked,
by his horse’s shoes (which were peculiar), to a spot about three miles to
the east of the borough, on the main road leading to the city. Here the
track made off into a by-path through a piece of woodland—the path
coming out again into the main road, and cutting off about half a mile of
the regular distance. Following the shoe-marks down this lane, the party
came at length to a pool of stagnant water, half hidden by the brambles,
to the right of the lane, and opposite this pool all vestige of the track
was lost sight of. It appeared, however, that a struggle of some nature
had here taken place, and it seemed as if some large and heavy body, much
larger and heavier than a man, had been drawn from the by-path to the
pool. This latter was carefully dragged twice, but nothing was found; and
the party was upon the point of going away, in despair of coming to any
result, when Providence suggested to Mr. Goodfellow the expediency of
draining the water off altogether. This project was received with cheers,
and many high compliments to “Old Charley” upon his sagacity and
consideration. As many of the burghers had brought spades with them,
supposing that they might possibly be called upon to disinter a corpse,
the drain was easily and speedily effected; and no sooner was the bottom
visible, than right in the middle of the mud that remained was discovered
a black silk velvet waistcoat, which nearly every one present immediately
recognized as the property of Mr. Pennifeather. This waistcoat was much
torn and stained with blood, and there were several persons among the
party who had a distinct remembrance of its having been worn by its owner
on the very morning of Mr. Shuttleworthy’s departure for the city; while
there were others, again, ready to testify upon oath, if required, that
Mr. P. did not wear the garment in question at any period during the
remainder of that memorable day, nor could any one be found to say that he
had seen it upon Mr. P.’s person at any period at all subsequent to Mr.
Shuttleworthy’s disappearance.

Matters now wore a very serious aspect for Mr. Pennifeather, and it was
observed, as an indubitable confirmation of the suspicions which were
excited against him, that he grew exceedingly pale, and when asked what he
had to say for himself, was utterly incapable of saying a word. Hereupon,
the few friends his riotous mode of living had left him deserted him at
once to a man, and were even more clamorous than his ancient and avowed
enemies for his instantaneous arrest. But, on the other hand, the
magnanimity of Mr. Goodfellow shone forth with only the more brilliant
lustre through contrast. He made a warm and intensely eloquent defence of
Mr. Pennifeather, in which he alluded more than once to his own sincere
forgiveness of that wild young gentleman—“the heir of the worthy Mr.
Shuttleworthy,”—for the insult which he (the young gentleman) had,
no doubt in the heat of passion, thought proper to put upon him (Mr.
Goodfellow). “He forgave him for it,” he said, “from the very bottom of
his heart; and for himself (Mr. Goodfellow), so far from pushing the
suspicious circumstances to extremity, which he was sorry to say, really
had arisen against Mr. Pennifeather, he (Mr. Goodfellow) would make every
exertion in his power, would employ all the little eloquence in his
possession to—to—to—soften down, as much as he could
conscientiously do so, the worst features of this really exceedingly
perplexing piece of business.”

Mr. Goodfellow went on for some half hour longer in this strain, very much
to the credit both of his head and of his heart; but your warm-hearted
people are seldom apposite in their observations—they run into all
sorts of blunders, contre-temps and mal apropos-isms, in the
hot-headedness of their zeal to serve a friend—thus, often with the
kindest intentions in the world, doing infinitely more to prejudice his
cause than to advance it.

So, in the present instance, it turned out with all the eloquence of “Old
Charley”; for, although he laboured earnestly in behalf of the suspected,
yet it so happened, somehow or other, that every syllable he uttered of
which the direct but unwitting tendency was not to exalt the speaker in
the good opinion of his audience, had the effect to deepen the suspicion
already attached to the individual whose cause he pleaded, and to arouse
against him the fury of the mob.

One of the most unaccountable errors committed by the orator was his
allusion to the suspected as “the heir of the worthy old gentleman Mr.
Shuttleworthy.” The people had really never thought of this before. They
had only remembered certain threats of disinheritance uttered a year or
two previously by the uncle (who had no living relative except the
nephew), and they had, therefore, always looked upon this disinheritance
as a matter that was settled—so single-minded a race of beings were
the Rattleburghers; but the remark of “Old Charley” brought them at once
to a consideration of this point, and thus gave them to see the
possibility of the threats having been nothing more than a threat. And
straightway hereupon, arose the natural question of cui bono?—a
question that tended even more than the waistcoat to fasten the terrible
crime upon the young man. And here, lest I may be misunderstood, permit me
to digress for one moment merely to observe that the exceedingly brief and
simple Latin phrase which I have employed, is invariably mistranslated and
misconceived. “Cui bono?” in all the crack novels and elsewhere,—in
those of Mrs. Gore, for example, (the author of “Cecil,”) a lady who
quotes all tongues from the Chaldaean to Chickasaw, and is helped to her
learning, “as needed,” upon a systematic plan, by Mr. Beckford,—in
all the crack novels, I say, from those of Bulwer and Dickens to those of
Bulwer and Dickens to those of Turnapenny and Ainsworth, the two little
Latin words cui bono are rendered “to what purpose?” or, (as if quo bono,)
“to what good.” Their true meaning, nevertheless, is “for whose
advantage.” Cui, to whom; bono, is it for a benefit. It is a purely legal
phrase, and applicable precisely in cases such as we have now under
consideration, where the probability of the doer of a deed hinges upon the
probability of the benefit accruing to this individual or to that from the
deed’s accomplishment. Now in the present instance, the question cui bono?
very pointedly implicated Mr. Pennifeather. His uncle had threatened him,
after making a will in his favour, with disinheritance. But the threat had
not been actually kept; the original will, it appeared, had not been
altered. Had it been altered, the only supposable motive for murder on the
part of the suspected would have been the ordinary one of revenge; and
even this would have been counteracted by the hope of reinstation into the
good graces of the uncle. But the will being unaltered, while the threat
to alter remained suspended over the nephew’s head, there appears at once
the very strongest possible inducement for the atrocity, and so concluded,
very sagaciously, the worthy citizens of the borough of Rattle.

Mr. Pennifeather was, accordingly, arrested upon the spot, and the crowd,
after some further search, proceeded homeward, having him in custody. On
the route, however, another circumstance occurred tending to confirm the
suspicion entertained. Mr. Goodfellow, whose zeal led him to be always a
little in advance of the party, was seen suddenly to run forward a few
paces, stoop, and then apparently to pick up some small object from the
grass. Having quickly examined it he was observed, too, to make a sort of
half attempt at concealing it in his coat pocket; but this action was
noticed, as I say, and consequently prevented, when the object picked up
was found to be a Spanish knife which a dozen persons at once recognized
as belonging to Mr. Pennifeather. Moreover, his initials were engraved
upon the handle. The blade of this knife was open and bloody.

No doubt now remained of the guilt of the nephew, and immediately upon
reaching Rattleborough he was taken before a magistrate for examination.

Here matters again took a most unfavourable turn. The prisoner, being
questioned as to his whereabouts on the morning of Mr. Shuttleworthy’s
disappearance, had absolutely the audacity to acknowledge that on that
very morning he had been out with his rifle deer-stalking, in the
immediate neighbourhood of the pool where the blood-stained waistcoat had
been discovered through the sagacity of Mr. Goodfellow.

This latter now came forward, and, with tears in his eyes, asked
permission to be examined. He said that a stern sense of the duty he owed
his Maker, not less than his fellow-men, would permit him no longer to
remain silent. Hitherto, the sincerest affection for the young man
(notwithstanding the latter’s ill-treatment of himself, Mr. Goodfellow)
had induced him to make every hypothesis which imagination could suggest,
by way of endeavoring to account for what appeared suspicious in the
circumstances that told so seriously against Mr. Pennifeather, but these
circumstances were now altogether too convincing—too damning; he
would hesitate no longer—he would tell all he knew, although his
heart (Mr. Goodfellow’s) should absolutely burst asunder in the effort. He
then went on to state that, on the afternoon of the day previous to Mr.
Shuttleworthy’s departure for the city, that worthy old gentleman had
mentioned to his nephew, in his hearing (Mr. Goodfellow’s), that his
object in going to town on the morrow was to make a deposit of an
unusually large sum of money in the “Farmers’ and Mechanics’ Bank,” and
that, then and there, the said Mr. Shuttleworthy had distinctly avowed to
the said nephew his irrevocable determination of rescinding the will
originally made, and of cutting him off with a shilling. He (the witness)
now solemnly called upon the accused to state whether what he (the
witness) had just stated was or was not the truth in every substantial
particular. Much to the astonishment of every one present, Mr.
Pennifeather frankly admitted that it was.

The magistrate now considered it his duty to send a couple of constables
to search the chamber of the accused in the house of his uncle. From this
search they almost immediately returned with the well-known steel-bound,
russet leather pocket-book which the old gentleman had been in the habit
of carrying for years. Its valuable contents, however, had been
abstracted, and the magistrate in vain endeavored to extort from the
prisoner the use which had been made of them, or the place of their
concealment. Indeed, he obstinately denied all knowledge of the matter.
The constables, also, discovered, between the bed and sacking of the
unhappy man, a shirt and neck-handkerchief both marked with the initials
of his name, and both hideously besmeared with the blood of the victim.

At this juncture, it was announced that the horse of the murdered man had
just expired in the stable from the effects of the wound he had received,
and it was proposed by Mr. Goodfellow that a post mortem examination of
the beast should be immediately made, with the view, if possible, of
discovering the ball. This was accordingly done; and, as if to demonstrate
beyond a question the guilt of the accused, Mr. Goodfellow, after
considerable searching in the cavity of the chest was enabled to detect
and to pull forth a bullet of very extraordinary size, which, upon trial,
was found to be exactly adapted to the bore of Mr. Pennifeather’s rifle,
while it was far too large for that of any other person in the borough or
its vicinity. To render the matter even surer yet, however, this bullet
was discovered to have a flaw or seam at right angles to the usual suture,
and upon examination, this seam corresponded precisely with an accidental
ridge or elevation in a pair of moulds acknowledged by the accused himself
to be his own property. Upon finding of this bullet, the examining
magistrate refused to listen to any farther testimony, and immediately
committed the prisoner for trial—declining resolutely to take any bail in
the case, although against this severity Mr. Goodfellow very warmly
remonstrated, and offered to become surety in whatever amount might be
required. This generosity on the part of “Old Charley” was only in
accordance with the whole tenor of his amiable and chivalrous conduct
during the entire period of his sojourn in the borough of Rattle. In the
present instance the worthy man was so entirely carried away by the
excessive warmth of his sympathy, that he seemed to have quite forgotten,
when he offered to go bail for his young friend, that he himself (Mr.
Goodfellow) did not possess a single dollar’s worth of property upon the
face of the earth.

The result of the committal may be readily foreseen. Mr. Pennifeather,
amid the loud execrations of all Rattleborough, was brought to trial at
the next criminal sessions, when the chain of circumstantial evidence
(strengthened as it was by some additional damning facts, which Mr.
Goodfellow’s sensitive conscientiousness forbade him to withhold from the
court) was considered so unbroken and so thoroughly conclusive, that the
jury, without leaving their seats, returned an immediate verdict of
“Guilty of murder in the first degree.” Soon afterward the unhappy wretch
received sentence of death, and was remanded to the county jail to await
the inexorable vengeance of the law.

In the meantime, the noble behavior of “Old Charley Goodfellow,” had
doubly endeared him to the honest citizens of the borough. He became ten
times a greater favorite than ever, and, as a natural result of the
hospitality with which he was treated, he relaxed, as it were, perforce,
the extremely parsimonious habits which his poverty had hitherto impelled
him to observe, and very frequently had little reunions at his own house,
when wit and jollity reigned supreme—dampened a little, of course, by the
occasional remembrance of the untoward and melancholy fate which impended
over the nephew of the late lamented bosom friend of the generous host.

One fine day, this magnanimous old gentleman was agreeably surprised at
the receipt of the following letter:

Charles Goodfellow, Esq., Rattleborough
From H.F.B. & Co.
Chat. Mar. A—No. 1.—6 doz. bottles (1/2 Gross)

“Charles Goodfellow, Esquire.
    “Dear Sir—In conformity with an order transmitted to our firm
about two months since, by our esteemed correspondent, Mr. Barnabus
Shuttleworthy, we have the honor of forwarding this morning, to your address, a
double box of Chateau-Margaux of the antelope brand, violet seal. Box numbered
and marked as per margin.

“We remain, sir,        
“Your most ob’nt ser’ts,    
“HOGGS, FROGS, BOGS, & CO.

“City of—, June 21, 18—.
“P.S.—The box will reach you by wagon, on the day after your
receipt of this letter. Our respects to Mr. Shuttleworthy.

“H., F., B., & CO.”

The fact is, that Mr. Goodfellow had, since the death of Mr.
Shuttleworthy, given over all expectation of ever receiving the promised
Chateau-Margaux; and he, therefore, looked upon it now as a sort of
especial dispensation of Providence in his behalf. He was highly
delighted, of course, and in the exuberance of his joy invited a large
party of friends to a petit souper on the morrow, for the purpose of
broaching the good old Mr. Shuttleworthy’s present. Not that he said any
thing about “the good old Mr. Shuttleworthy” when he issued the
invitations. The fact is, he thought much and concluded to say nothing at
all. He did not mention to any one—if I remember aright—that
he had received a present of Chateau-Margaux. He merely asked his friends
to come and help him drink some, of a remarkable fine quality and rich
flavour, that he had ordered up from the city a couple of months ago, and
of which he would be in the receipt upon the morrow. I have often puzzled
myself to imagine why it was that “Old Charley” came to the conclusion to
say nothing about having received the wine from his old friend, but I
could never precisely understand his reason for the silence, although he
had some excellent and very magnanimous reason, no doubt.

The morrow at length arrived, and with it a very large and highly
respectable company at Mr. Goodfellow’s house. Indeed, half the borough
was there,—I myself among the number,—but, much to the
vexation of the host, the Chateau-Margaux did not arrive until a late
hour, and when the sumptuous supper supplied by “Old Charley” had been
done very ample justice by the guests. It came at length, however,—a
monstrously big box of it there was, too—and as the whole party were
in excessively good humor, it was decided, nem. con., that it should be
lifted upon the table and its contents disembowelled forthwith.

No sooner said than done. I lent a helping hand; and, in a trice we had
the box upon the table, in the midst of all the bottles and glasses, not a
few of which were demolished in the scuffle. “Old Charley,” who was pretty
much intoxicated, and excessively red in the face, now took a seat, with
an air of mock dignity, at the head of the board, and thumped furiously
upon it with a decanter, calling upon the company to keep order “during
the ceremony of disinterring the treasure.”

After some vociferation, quiet was at length fully restored, and, as very
often happens in similar cases, a profound and remarkable silence ensued.
Being then requested to force open the lid, I complied, of course, “with
an infinite deal of pleasure.” I inserted a chisel, and giving it a few
slight taps with a hammer, the top of the box flew suddenly off, and at
the same instant, there sprang up into a sitting position, directly facing
the host, the bruised, bloody, and nearly putrid corpse of the murdered
Mr. Shuttleworthy himself. It gazed for a few seconds, fixedly and
sorrowfully, with its decaying and lack-lustre eyes, full into the
countenance of Mr. Goodfellow; uttered slowly, but clearly and
impressively, the words—“Thou art the man!” and then, falling over
the side of the chest as if thoroughly satisfied, stretched out its limbs
quiveringly upon the table.

The scene that ensued is altogether beyond description. The rush for the
doors and windows was terrific, and many of the most robust men in the
room fainted outright through sheer horror. But after the first wild,
shrieking burst of affright, all eyes were directed to Mr. Goodfellow. If
I live a thousand years, I can never forget the more than mortal agony
which was depicted in that ghastly face of his, so lately rubicund with
triumph and wine. For several minutes he sat rigidly as a statue of
marble; his eyes seeming, in the intense vacancy of their gaze, to be
turned inward and absorbed in the contemplation of his own miserable,
murderous soul. At length their expression appeared to flash suddenly out
into the external world, when, with a quick leap, he sprang from his
chair, and falling heavily with his head and shoulders upon the table, and
in contact with the corpse, poured out rapidly and vehemently a detailed
confession of the hideous crime for which Mr. Pennifeather was then
imprisoned and doomed to die.

What he recounted was in substance this:—He followed his victim to
the vicinity of the pool; there shot his horse with a pistol; despatched
its rider with the butt end; possessed himself of the pocket-book; and,
supposing the horse dead, dragged it with great labour to the brambles by
the pond. Upon his own beast he slung the corpse of Mr. Shuttleworthy, and
thus bore it to a secure place of concealment a long distance off through
the woods.

The waistcoat, the knife, the pocket-book, and bullet, had been placed by
himself where found, with the view of avenging himself upon Mr.
Pennifeather. He had also contrived the discovery of the stained
handkerchief and shirt.

Toward the end of the blood-chilling recital the words of the guilty
wretch faltered and grew hollow. When the record was finally exhausted, he
arose, staggered backward from the table, and fell—dead.

The means by which this happily-timed confession was extorted, although
efficient, were simple indeed. Mr. Goodfellow’s excess of frankness had
disgusted me, and excited my suspicions from the first. I was present when
Mr. Pennifeather had struck him, and the fiendish expression which then
arose upon his countenance, although momentary, assured me that his threat
of vengeance would, if possible, be rigidly fulfilled. I was thus prepared
to view the manoeuvering of “Old Charley” in a very different light from
that in which it was regarded by the good citizens of Rattleborough. I saw
at once that all the criminating discoveries arose, either directly or
indirectly, from himself. But the fact which clearly opened my eyes to the
true state of the case, was the affair of the bullet, found by Mr. G. in
the carcass of the horse. I had not forgotten, although the Rattleburghers
had, that there was a hole where the ball had entered the horse, and
another where it went out. If it were found in the animal then, after
having made its exit, I saw clearly that it must have been deposited by
the person who found it. The bloody shirt and handkerchief confirmed the
idea suggested by the bullet; for the blood on examination proved to be
capital claret, and no more. When I came to think of these things, and
also of the late increase of liberality and expenditure on the part of Mr.
Goodfellow, I entertained a suspicion which was none the less strong
because I kept it altogether to myself.

In the meantime, I instituted a rigorous private search for the corpse of
Mr. Shuttleworthy, and, for good reasons, searched in quarters as
divergent as possible from those to which Mr. Goodfellow conducted his
party. The result was that, after some days, I came across an old dry
well, the mouth of which was nearly hidden by brambles; and here, at the
bottom, I discovered what I sought.

Now it so happened that I had overheard the colloquy between the two
cronies, when Mr. Goodfellow had contrived to cajole his host into the
promise of a box of Chateaux-Margaux. Upon this hint I acted. I procured a
stiff piece of whalebone, thrust it down the throat of the corpse, and
deposited the latter in an old wine box—taking care so to double the body
up as to double the whalebone with it. In this manner I had to press
forcibly upon the lid to keep it down while I secured it with nails; and I
anticipated, of course, that as soon as these latter were removed, the top
would fly off and the body up.

Having thus arranged the box, I marked, numbered, and addressed it as
already told; and then writing a letter in the name of the wine merchants
with whom Mr. Shuttleworthy dealt, I gave instructions to my servant to
wheel the box to Mr. Goodfellow’s door, in a barrow, at a given signal
from myself. For the words which I intended the corpse to speak, I
confidently depended upon my ventriloquial abilities; for their effect, I
counted upon the conscience of the murderous wretch.

I believe there is nothing more to be explained. Mr. Pennifeather was
released upon the spot, inherited the fortune of his uncle, profited by
the lessons of experience, turned over a new leaf, and led happily ever
afterward a new life.

WHY THE LITTLE FRENCHMAN WEARS HIS HAND IN A SLING

It’s on my visiting cards sure enough (and it’s them that’s all o’ pink
satin paper) that inny gintleman that plases may behould the intheristhin’
words, “Sir Pathrick O’Grandison, Barronitt, 39 Southampton Row, Russell
Square, Parrish o’ Bloomsbury.” And shud ye be wantin’ to diskiver who is
the pink of purliteness quite, and the laider of the hot tun in the houl
city o’ Lonon—why it’s jist mesilf. And fait that same is no wonder
at all at all (so be plased to stop curlin’ your nose), for every inch o’
the six wakes that I’ve been a gintleman, and left aff wid the
bog-throthing to take up wid the Barronissy, it’s Pathrick that’s been
living like a houly imperor, and gitting the iddication and the graces.
Och! and wouldn’t it be a blessed thing for your spirrits if ye cud lay
your two peepers jist, upon Sir Pathrick O’Grandison, Barronitt, when he
is all riddy drissed for the hopperer, or stipping into the Brisky for the
drive into the Hyde Park. But it’s the illigant big figgur that I ’ave, for
the rason o’ which all the ladies fall in love wid me. Isn’t it my own
swate silf now that’ll missure the six fut, and the three inches more nor
that, in me stockins, and that am excadingly will proportioned all over to
match? And it is ralelly more than three fut and a bit that there is, inny
how, of the little ould furrener Frinchman that lives jist over the way,
and that’s a-oggling and a-goggling the houl day, (and bad luck to him,)
at the purty widdy Misthress Tracle that’s my own nixt-door neighbor, (God
bliss her!) and a most particuller frind and acquaintance? You percave the
little spalpeen is summat down in the mouth, and wears his lift hand in a
sling, and it’s for that same thing, by yur lave, that I’m going to give
you the good rason.

The truth of the houl matter is jist simple enough; for the very first day
that I com’d from Connaught, and showd my swate little silf in the strait
to the widdy, who was looking through the windy, it was a gone case
althegither with the heart o’ the purty Misthress Tracle. I percaved it,
ye see, all at once, and no mistake, and that’s God’s truth. First of all
it was up wid the windy in a jiffy, and thin she threw open her two
peepers to the itmost, and thin it was a little gould spy-glass that she
clapped tight to one o’ them and divil may burn me if it didn’t spake to
me as plain as a peeper cud spake, and says it, through the spy-glass:
“Och! the tip o’ the mornin’ to ye, Sir Pathrick O’Grandison, Barronitt,
mavourneen; and it’s a nate gintleman that ye are, sure enough, and it’s
mesilf and me forten jist that’ll be at yur sarvice, dear, inny time o’
day at all at all for the asking.” And it’s not mesilf ye wud have to be
bate in the purliteness; so I made her a bow that wud ha’ broken yur heart
altegither to behould, and thin I pulled aff me hat with a flourish, and
thin I winked at her hard wid both eyes, as much as to say, “True for you,
yer a swate little crature, Mrs. Tracle, me darlint, and I wish I may be
drownthed dead in a bog, if it’s not mesilf, Sir Pathrick O’Grandison,
Barronitt, that’ll make a houl bushel o’ love to yur leddyship, in the
twinkling o’ the eye of a Londonderry purraty.”

And it was the nixt mornin’, sure, jist as I was making up me mind whither
it wouldn’t be the purlite thing to sind a bit o’ writin’ to the widdy by
way of a love-litter, when up com’d the delivery servant wid an illigant
card, and he tould me that the name on it (for I niver could rade the
copperplate printin’ on account of being lift handed) was all about
Mounseer, the Count, A Goose, Look-aisy, Maiter-di-dauns, and that
the houl of the divilish lingo was the spalpeeny long name of the little
ould furrener Frinchman as lived over the way.

And jist wid that in cum’d the little willian himself, and then he made me
a broth of a bow, and thin he said he had ounly taken the liberty of doing
me the honor of the giving me a call, and thin he went on to palaver at a
great rate, and divil the bit did I comprehind what he wud be afther the
tilling me at all at all, excipting and saving that he said “pully wou,
woolly wou,” and tould me, among a bushel o’ lies, bad luck to him, that
he was mad for the love o’ my widdy Misthress Tracle, and that my widdy
Mrs. Tracle had a puncheon for him.

At the hearin’ of this, ye may swear, though, I was as mad as a
grasshopper, but I remimbered that I was Sir Pathrick O’Grandison,
Barronitt, and that it wasn’t althegither gentaal to lit the anger git the
upper hand o’ the purliteness, so I made light o’ the matter and kipt
dark, and got quite sociable wid the little chap, and afther a while what
did he do but ask me to go wid him to the widdy’s, saying he wud give me
the feshionable inthroduction to her leddyship.

“Is it there ye are?” said I thin to mesilf, “and it’s thrue for you,
Pathrick, that ye’re the fortunittest mortal in life. We’ll soon see now
whither it’s your swate silf, or whither it’s little Mounseer
Maiter-di-dauns, that Misthress Tracle is head and ears in the love wid.”

Wid that we wint aff to the widdy’s, next door, and ye may well say it was
an illigant place; so it was. There was a carpet all over the floor, and
in one corner there was a forty-pinny and a Jew’s harp and the divil knows
what ilse, and in another corner was a sofy, the beautifullest thing in
all natur, and sitting on the sofy, sure enough, there was the swate
little angel, Misthress Tracle.

“The tip o’ the mornin’ to ye,” says I, “Mrs. Tracle,” and thin I made
sich an illigant obaysance that it wud ha quite althegither bewildered the
brain o’ ye.

“Wully woo, pully woo, plump in the mud,” says the little furrenner
Frinchman, “and sure Mrs. Tracle,” says he, that he did, “isn’t this
gintleman here jist his reverence Sir Pathrick O’Grandison, Barronitt, and
isn’t he althegither and entirely the most particular frind and
acquaintance that I have in the houl world?”

And wid that the widdy, she gits up from the sofy, and makes the swatest
curthchy nor iver was seen; and thin down she sits like an angel; and
thin, by the powers, it was that little spalpeen Mounseer Maiter-di-dauns
that plumped his silf right down by the right side of her. Och hon! I
ixpicted the two eyes o’ me wud ha cum’d out of my head on the spot, I was
so dispirate mad! Howiver, “Bait who!” says I, after awhile. “Is it there
ye are, Mounseer Maiter-di-dauns?” and so down I plumped on the lift side
of her leddyship, to be aven with the willain. Botheration! it wud ha done
your heart good to percave the illigant double wink that I gived her jist
thin right in the face with both eyes.

But the little ould Frinchman he niver beginned to suspict me at all at
all, and disperate hard it was he made the love to her leddyship. “Woully
wou,” says he, “Pully wou,” says he, “Plump in the mud,” says he.

“That’s all to no use, Mounseer Frog, mavourneen,” thinks I; and I talked
as hard and as fast as I could all the while, and throth it was mesilf
jist that divarted her leddyship complately and intirely, by rason of the
illigant conversation that I kipt up wid her all about the dear bogs of
Connaught. And by and by she gived me such a swate smile, from one ind of
her mouth to the ither, that it made me as bould as a pig, and I jist took
hould of the ind of her little finger in the most dilikittest manner in
natur, looking at her all the while out o’ the whites of my eyes.

And then ounly percave the cuteness of the swate angel, for no sooner did
she obsarve that I was afther the squazing of her flipper, than she up wid
it in a jiffy, and put it away behind her back, jist as much as to say,
“Now thin, Sir Pathrick O’Grandison, there’s a bitther chance for ye,
mavourneen, for it’s not altogether the gentaal thing to be afther the
squazing of my flipper right full in the sight of that little furrenner
Frinchman, Mounseer Maiter-di-dauns.”

Wid that I giv’d her a big wink jist to say, “lit Sir Pathrick alone for
the likes o’ them thricks,” and thin I wint aisy to work, and you’d have
died wid the divarsion to behould how cliverly I slipped my right arm
betwane the back o’ the sofy, and the back of her leddyship, and there,
sure enough, I found a swate little flipper all a waiting to say, “the tip
o’ the mornin’ to ye, Sir Pathrick O’Grandison, Barronitt.” And wasn’t it
mesilf, sure, that jist giv’d it the laste little bit of a squaze in the
world, all in the way of a commincement, and not to be too rough wid her
leddyship? and och, botheration, wasn’t it the gentaalest and dilikittest
of all the little squazes that I got in return? “Blood and thunder, Sir
Pathrick, mavourneen,” thinks I to mesilf, “fait it’s jist the mother’s
son of you, and nobody else at all at all, that’s the handsomest and the
fortunittest young bog-throtter that ever cum’d out of Connaught!” And
with that I givd the flipper a big squaze, and a big squaze it was, by the
powers, that her leddyship giv’d to me back. But it would ha split the
seven sides of you wid the laffin’ to behould, jist then all at once, the
consated behavior of Mounseer Maiter-di-dauns. The likes o’ sich a
jabbering, and a smirking, and a parley-wouing as he begin’d wid her
leddyship, niver was known before upon arth; and divil may burn me if it
wasn’t me own very two peepers that cotch’d him tipping her the wink out
of one eye. Och, hon! if it wasn’t mesilf thin that was mad as a Kilkenny
cat I shud like to be tould who it was!

“Let me infarm you, Mounseer Maiter-di-dauns,” said I, as purlite as iver
ye seed, “that it’s not the gintaal thing at all at all, and not for the
likes o’ you inny how, to be afther the oggling and a-goggling at her
leddyship in that fashion,” and jist wid that such another squaze as it
was I giv’d her flipper, all as much as to say, “isn’t it Sir Pathrick
now, my jewel, that’ll be able to the protectin’ o’ you, my darlint?” and
then there cum’d another squaze back, all by way of the answer. “Thrue for
you, Sir Pathrick,” it said as plain as iver a squaze said in the world,
“Thrue for you, Sir Pathrick, mavourneen, and it’s a proper nate gintleman
ye are—that’s God’s truth,” and with that she opened her two
beautiful peepers till I belaved they wud ha’ cum’d out of her hid
althegither and intirely, and she looked first as mad as a cat at Mounseer
Frog, and thin as smiling as all out o’ doors at mesilf.

“Thin,” says he, the willian, “Och hon! and a wolly-wou, pully-wou,” and
then wid that he shoved up his two shoulders till the divil the bit of his
hid was to be diskivered, and then he let down the two corners of his
purraty-trap, and thin not a haporth more of the satisfaction could I git
out o’ the spalpeen.

Belave me, my jewel, it was Sir Pathrick that was unreasonable mad thin,
and the more by token that the Frinchman kipt an wid his winking at the
widdy; and the widdy she kept an wid the squazing of my flipper, as much
as to say, “At him again, Sir Pathrick O’Grandison, mavourneen:” so I just
ripped out wid a big oath, and says I:

“Ye little spalpeeny frog of a bog-throtting son of a bloody noun!”—and
jist thin what d’ye think it was that her leddyship did? Troth she jumped
up from the sofy as if she was bit, and made off through the door, while I
turned my head round afther her, in a complate bewilderment and
botheration, and followed her wid me two peepers. You percave I had a
reason of my own for knowing that she couldn’t git down the stares
althegither and intirely; for I knew very well that I had hould of her
hand, for the divil the bit had I iver lit it go. And says I:

“Isn’t it the laste little bit of a mistake in the world that
ye’ve been afther the making, yer leddyship? Come back now,
that’s a darlint, and I’ll give ye yur flipper.” But
aff she wint down the stairs like a shot, and thin I turned round to the
little Frinch furrenner. Och hon! if it wasn’t his spalpeeny little
paw that I had hould of in my own—why thin—thin it
wasn’t—that’s all.

And maybe it wasn’t mesilf that jist died then outright wid the laffin’,
to behold the little chap when he found out that it wasn’t the widdy at
all at all that he had had hould of all the time, but only Sir Pathrick
O’Grandison. The ould divil himself niver behild sich a long face as he
pet an! As for Sir Pathrick O’Grandison, Barronitt, it wasn’t for the
likes of his riverence to be afther the minding of a thrifle of a mistake.
Ye may jist say, though (for it’s God’s thruth), that afore I left hould
of the flipper of the spalpeen (which was not till afther her leddyship’s
futman had kicked us both down the stairs), I giv’d it such a nate little
broth of a squaze as made it all up into raspberry jam.

“Woully wou,” says he, “pully wou,” says he—“Cot tam!”

And that’s jist the thruth of the rason why he wears his lift hand in a
sling.

BON-BON.

Quand un bon vin meuble mon estomac,
Je suis plus savant que Balzac—
Plus sage que Pibrac;
Mon bras seul faisant l’attaque
De la nation Cossaque,
La mettroit au sac;
De Charon je passerois le lac,
En dormant dans son bac;
J’irois au fier Eac,
Sans que mon coeur fit tic ni tac,
Présenter du tabac.
                    —French Vaudeville

That Pierre Bon-Bon was a restaurateur of uncommon qualifications,
no man who, during the reign of——, frequented the little Câfé
in the cul-de-sac Le Febre at Rouen, will, I imagine, feel himself at
liberty to dispute. That Pierre Bon-Bon was, in an equal degree, skilled
in the philosophy of that period is, I presume, still more especially
undeniable. His patés à la fois were beyond doubt immaculate; but
what pen can do justice to his essays sur la Nature—his
thoughts sur l’Ame—his observations sur l’Esprit? If
his omelettes—if his fricandeaux were inestimable,
what littérateur of that day would not have given twice as much for
an “Idée de Bon-Bon” as for all the trash of “Idées” of all
the rest of the savants? Bon-Bon had ransacked libraries which no
other man had ransacked—had more than any other would have
entertained a notion of reading—had understood more than any other
would have conceived the possibility of understanding; and although, while
he flourished, there were not wanting some authors at Rouen to assert
“that his dicta evinced neither the purity of the Academy, nor the
depth of the Lyceum”—although, mark me, his doctrines were by no
means very generally comprehended, still it did not follow that they were
difficult of comprehension. It was, I think, on account of their
self-evidency that many persons were led to consider them abstruse. It is
to Bon-Bon—but let this go no farther—it is to Bon-Bon that
Kant himself is mainly indebted for his metaphysics. The former was indeed
not a Platonist, nor strictly speaking an Aristotelian—nor did he,
like the modern Leibnitz, waste those precious hours which might be
employed in the invention of a fricasée or, facili gradú,
the analysis of a sensation, in frivolous attempts at reconciling the
obstinate oils and waters of ethical discussion. Not at all. Bon-Bon was
Ionic—Bon-Bon was equally Italic. He reasoned à priori—He
reasoned also à posteriori. His ideas were innate—or
otherwise. He believed in George of Trebizonde—He believed in
Bossarion [Bessarion]. Bon-Bon was emphatically a—Bon-Bonist.

I have spoken of the philosopher in his capacity of restaurateur. I
would not, however, have any friend of mine imagine that, in fulfilling
his hereditary duties in that line, our hero wanted a proper estimation of
their dignity and importance. Far from it. It was impossible to say in
which branch of his profession he took the greater pride. In his opinion
the powers of the intellect held intimate connection with the capabilities
of the stomach. I am not sure, indeed, that he greatly disagreed with the
Chinese, who held that the soul lies in the abdomen. The Greeks at all
events were right, he thought, who employed the same words for the mind
and the diaphragm. (*1) By this I do not mean to insinuate a charge of
gluttony, or indeed any other serious charge to the prejudice of the
metaphysician. If Pierre Bon-Bon had his failings—and what great man
has not a thousand?—if Pierre Bon-Bon, I say, had his failings, they
were failings of very little importance—faults indeed which, in
other tempers, have often been looked upon rather in the light of virtues.
As regards one of these foibles, I should not even have mentioned it in
this history but for the remarkable prominency—the extreme alto
relievo—in which it jutted out from the plane of his general
disposition. He could never let slip an opportunity of making a bargain.

Not that he was avaricious—no. It was by no means necessary to the
satisfaction of the philosopher, that the bargain should be to his own
proper advantage. Provided a trade could be effected—a trade of any
kind, upon any terms, or under any circumstances—a triumphant smile
was seen for many days thereafter to enlighten his countenance, and a
knowing wink of the eye to give evidence of his sagacity.

At any epoch it would not be very wonderful if a humor so peculiar as the
one I have just mentioned, should elicit attention and remark. At the
epoch of our narrative, had this peculiarity not attracted observation,
there would have been room for wonder indeed. It was soon reported that,
upon all occasions of the kind, the smile of Bon-Bon was wont to differ
widely from the downright grin with which he would laugh at his own jokes,
or welcome an acquaintance. Hints were thrown out of an exciting nature;
stories were told of perilous bargains made in a hurry and repented of at
leisure; and instances were adduced of unaccountable capacities, vague
longings, and unnatural inclinations implanted by the author of all evil
for wise purposes of his own.

The philosopher had other weaknesses—but they are scarcely worthy
our serious examination. For example, there are few men of extraordinary
profundity who are found wanting in an inclination for the bottle. Whether
this inclination be an exciting cause, or rather a valid proof of such
profundity, it is a nice thing to say. Bon-Bon, as far as I can learn, did
not think the subject adapted to minute investigation;—nor do I. Yet
in the indulgence of a propensity so truly classical, it is not to be
supposed that the restaurateur would lose sight of that intuitive
discrimination which was wont to characterize, at one and the same time,
his essais and his omelettes. In his seclusions the Vin de Bourgogne had
its allotted hour, and there were appropriate moments for the Cotes du
Rhone. With him Sauterne was to Medoc what Catullus was to Homer. He would
sport with a syllogism in sipping St. Peray, but unravel an argument over
Clos de Vougeot, and upset a theory in a torrent of Chambertin. Well had
it been if the same quick sense of propriety had attended him in the
peddling propensity to which I have formerly alluded—but this was by
no means the case. Indeed to say the truth, that trait of mind in the
philosophic Bon-Bon did begin at length to assume a character of strange
intensity and mysticism, and appeared deeply tinctured with the diablerie
of his favorite German studies.

To enter the little café in the cul-de-sac Le Febre was, at the period of
our tale, to enter the sanctum of a man of genius. Bon-Bon was a man of
genius. There was not a sous-cusinier in Rouen, who could not have told
you that Bon-Bon was a man of genius. His very cat knew it, and forebore
to whisk her tail in the presence of the man of genius. His large
water-dog was acquainted with the fact, and upon the approach of his
master, betrayed his sense of inferiority by a sanctity of deportment, a
debasement of the ears, and a dropping of the lower jaw not altogether
unworthy of a dog. It is, however, true that much of this habitual respect
might have been attributed to the personal appearance of the
metaphysician. A distinguished exterior will, I am constrained to say,
have its way even with a beast; and I am willing to allow much in the
outward man of the restaurateur calculated to impress the imagination of
the quadruped. There is a peculiar majesty about the atmosphere of the
little great—if I may be permitted so equivocal an expression—which
mere physical bulk alone will be found at all times inefficient in
creating. If, however, Bon-Bon was barely three feet in height, and if his
head was diminutively small, still it was impossible to behold the
rotundity of his stomach without a sense of magnificence nearly bordering
upon the sublime. In its size both dogs and men must have seen a type of
his acquirements—in its immensity a fitting habitation for his
immortal soul.

I might here—if it so pleased me—dilate upon the matter of
habiliment, and other mere circumstances of the external metaphysician. I
might hint that the hair of our hero was worn short, combed smoothly over
his forehead, and surmounted by a conical-shaped white flannel cap and
tassels—that his pea-green jerkin was not after the fashion of those
worn by the common class of restaurateurs at that day—that the
sleeves were something fuller than the reigning costume permitted—that
the cuffs were turned up, not as usual in that barbarous period, with
cloth of the same quality and color as the garment, but faced in a more
fanciful manner with the particolored velvet of Genoa—that his
slippers were of a bright purple, curiously filigreed, and might have been
manufactured in Japan, but for the exquisite pointing of the toes, and the
brilliant tints of the binding and embroidery—that his breeches were
of the yellow satin-like material called aimable—that his sky-blue
cloak, resembling in form a dressing-wrapper, and richly bestudded all
over with crimson devices, floated cavalierly upon his shoulders like a
mist of the morning—and that his tout ensemble gave rise to the
remarkable words of Benevenuta, the Improvisatrice of Florence, “that it
was difficult to say whether Pierre Bon-Bon was indeed a bird of Paradise,
or rather a very Paradise of perfection.” I might, I say, expatiate upon
all these points if I pleased,—but I forbear, merely personal
details may be left to historical novelists,—they are beneath the
moral dignity of matter-of-fact.

I have said that “to enter the café in the cul-de-sac Le Febre was to
enter the sanctum of a man of genius”—but then it was only the man
of genius who could duly estimate the merits of the sanctum. A sign,
consisting of a vast folio, swung before the entrance. On one side of the
volume was painted a bottle; on the reverse a paté. On the back were
visible in large letters Œuvres de Bon-Bon. Thus was delicately shadowed
forth the two-fold occupation of the proprietor.

Upon stepping over the threshold, the whole interior of the building
presented itself to view. A long, low-pitched room, of antique
construction, was indeed all the accommodation afforded by the café. In a
corner of the apartment stood the bed of the metaphysician. An army of
curtains, together with a canopy à la Grècque, gave it an air at once
classic and comfortable. In the corner diagonary opposite, appeared, in
direct family communion, the properties of the kitchen and the
bibliotheque. A dish of polemics stood peacefully upon the dresser. Here
lay an ovenful of the latest ethics—there a kettle of dudecimo
mélanges. Volumes of German morality were hand and glove with the gridiron—a
toasting-fork might be discovered by the side of Eusebius—Plato
reclined at his ease in the frying-pan—and contemporary manuscripts
were filed away upon the spit.

In other respects the Café de Bon-Bon might be said to differ little from
the usual restaurants of the period. A fireplace yawned opposite the door.
On the right of the fireplace an open cupboard displayed a formidable
array of labelled bottles.

It was here, about twelve o’clock one night during the severe
winter of ——, that Pierre Bon-Bon, after having listened to
the comments of his neighbours upon his singular propensity—that
Pierre Bon-Bon, I say, having turned them all out of his house, locked
the door upon them with an oath, and betook himself in no very pacific
mood to the comforts of a leather-bottomed arm-chair, and a fire of
blazing fagots.

It was one of those terrific nights which are only met with once or twice
during a century. It snowed fiercely, and the house tottered to its centre
with the floods of wind that, rushing through the crannies in the wall,
and pouring impetuously down the chimney, shook awfully the curtains of
the philosopher’s bed, and disorganized the economy of his pate-pans and
papers. The huge folio sign that swung without, exposed to the fury of the
tempest, creaked ominously, and gave out a moaning sound from its
stanchions of solid oak.

It was in no placid temper, I say, that the metaphysician drew up his
chair to its customary station by the hearth. Many circumstances of a
perplexing nature had occurred during the day, to disturb the serenity of
his meditations. In attempting des oeufs à la Princesse, he had
unfortunately perpetrated an omelette à la Reine; the discovery of a
principle in ethics had been frustrated by the overturning of a stew; and
last, not least, he had been thwarted in one of those admirable bargains
which he at all times took such especial delight in bringing to a
successful termination. But in the chafing of his mind at these
unaccountable vicissitudes, there did not fail to be mingled some degree
of that nervous anxiety which the fury of a boisterous night is so well
calculated to produce. Whistling to his more immediate vicinity the large
black water-dog we have spoken of before, and settling himself uneasily in
his chair, he could not help casting a wary and unquiet eye toward those
distant recesses of the apartment whose inexorable shadows not even the
red firelight itself could more than partially succeed in overcoming.
Having completed a scrutiny whose exact purpose was perhaps unintelligible
to himself, he drew close to his seat a small table covered with books and
papers, and soon became absorbed in the task of retouching a voluminous
manuscript, intended for publication on the morrow.

He had been thus occupied for some minutes when “I am in no hurry,
Monsieur Bon-Bon,” suddenly whispered a whining voice in the apartment.

“The devil!” ejaculated our hero, starting to his feet, overturning the
table at his side, and staring around him in astonishment.

“Very true,” calmly replied the voice.

“Very true!—what is very true?—how came you here?” vociferated
the metaphysician, as his eye fell upon something which lay stretched at
full length upon the bed.

“I was saying,” said the intruder, without attending to the
interrogatives,—“I was saying that I am not at all pushed for time—that
the business upon which I took the liberty of calling, is of no pressing
importance—in short, that I can very well wait until you have
finished your Exposition.”

“My Exposition!—there now!—how do you know?—how came you
to understand that I was writing an Exposition?—good God!”

“Hush!” replied the figure, in a shrill undertone; and, arising quickly
from the bed, he made a single step toward our hero, while an iron lamp
that depended over-head swung convulsively back from his approach.

The philosopher’s amazement did not prevent a narrow scrutiny of the
stranger’s dress and appearance. The outlines of his figure, exceedingly
lean, but much above the common height, were rendered minutely distinct,
by means of a faded suit of black cloth which fitted tight to the skin,
but was otherwise cut very much in the style of a century ago. These
garments had evidently been intended for a much shorter person than their
present owner. His ankles and wrists were left naked for several inches.
In his shoes, however, a pair of very brilliant buckles gave the lie to
the extreme poverty implied by the other portions of his dress. His head
was bare, and entirely bald, with the exception of a hinder part, from
which depended a queue of considerable length. A pair of green spectacles,
with side glasses, protected his eyes from the influence of the light, and
at the same time prevented our hero from ascertaining either their color
or their conformation. About the entire person there was no evidence of a
shirt, but a white cravat, of filthy appearance, was tied with extreme
precision around the throat and the ends hanging down formally side by
side gave (although I dare say unintentionally) the idea of an
ecclesiastic. Indeed, many other points both in his appearance and
demeanor might have very well sustained a conception of that nature. Over
his left ear, he carried, after the fashion of a modern clerk, an
instrument resembling the stylus of the ancients. In a breast-pocket of
his coat appeared conspicuously a small black volume fastened with clasps
of steel. This book, whether accidentally or not, was so turned outwardly
from the person as to discover the words “Rituel Catholique” in white
letters upon the back. His entire physiognomy was interestingly saturnine—even
cadaverously pale. The forehead was lofty, and deeply furrowed with the
ridges of contemplation. The corners of the mouth were drawn down into an
expression of the most submissive humility. There was also a clasping of
the hands, as he stepped toward our hero—a deep sigh—and
altogether a look of such utter sanctity as could not have failed to be
unequivocally preposessing. Every shadow of anger faded from the
countenance of the metaphysician, as, having completed a satisfactory
survey of his visitor’s person, he shook him cordially by the hand, and
conducted him to a seat.

There would however be a radical error in attributing this instantaneous
transition of feeling in the philosopher, to any one of those causes which
might naturally be supposed to have had an influence. Indeed, Pierre
Bon-Bon, from what I have been able to understand of his disposition, was
of all men the least likely to be imposed upon by any speciousness of
exterior deportment. It was impossible that so accurate an observer of men
and things should have failed to discover, upon the moment, the real
character of the personage who had thus intruded upon his hospitality. To
say no more, the conformation of his visitor’s feet was sufficiently
remarkable—he maintained lightly upon his head an inordinately tall
hat—there was a tremulous swelling about the hinder part of his
breeches—and the vibration of his coat tail was a palpable fact.
Judge, then, with what feelings of satisfaction our hero found himself
thrown thus at once into the society of a person for whom he had at all
times entertained the most unqualified respect. He was, however, too much
of the diplomatist to let escape him any intimation of his suspicions in
regard to the true state of affairs. It was not his cue to appear at all
conscious of the high honor he thus unexpectedly enjoyed; but, by leading
his guest into the conversation, to elicit some important ethical ideas,
which might, in obtaining a place in his contemplated publication,
enlighten the human race, and at the same time immortalize himself—ideas
which, I should have added, his visitor’s great age, and well-known
proficiency in the science of morals, might very well have enabled him to
afford.

Actuated by these enlightened views, our hero bade the gentleman sit down,
while he himself took occasion to throw some fagots upon the fire, and
place upon the now re-established table some bottles of Mousseux. Having
quickly completed these operations, he drew his chair vis-à-vis to his
companion’s, and waited until the latter should open the conversation. But
plans even the most skilfully matured are often thwarted in the outset of
their application—and the restaurateur found himself nonplussed by
the very first words of his visitor’s speech.

“I see you know me, Bon-Bon,” said he; “ha! ha! ha!—he! he! he!—hi!
hi! hi!—ho! ho! ho!—hu! hu! hu!”—and the devil, dropping
at once the sanctity of his demeanor, opened to its fullest extent a mouth
from ear to ear, so as to display a set of jagged and fang-like teeth,
and, throwing back his head, laughed long, loudly, wickedly, and
uproariously, while the black dog, crouching down upon his haunches,
joined lustily in the chorus, and the tabby cat, flying off at a tangent,
stood up on end, and shrieked in the farthest corner of the apartment.

Not so the philosopher; he was too much a man of the world either to laugh
like the dog, or by shrieks to betray the indecorous trepidation of the
cat. It must be confessed, he felt a little astonishment to see the white
letters which formed the words “Rituel Catholique” on the book in his
guest’s pocket, momently changing both their color and their import, and
in a few seconds, in place of the original title the words Régitre des
Condamnes blazed forth in characters of red. This startling circumstance,
when Bon-Bon replied to his visitor’s remark, imparted to his manner an
air of embarrassment which probably might, not otherwise have been
observed.

“Why sir,” said the philosopher, “why sir, to speak
sincerely—I believe you are—upon my word—the
d——dest—that is to say, I think—I imagine—I
have some faint—some very faint idea—of the
remarkable honor—”

“Oh!—ah!—yes!—very well!” interrupted his Majesty; “say
no more—I see how it is.” And hereupon, taking off his green
spectacles, he wiped the glasses carefully with the sleeve of his coat,
and deposited them in his pocket.

If Bon-Bon had been astonished at the incident of the book, his amazement
was now much increased by the spectacle which here presented itself to
view. In raising his eyes, with a strong feeling of curiosity to ascertain
the color of his guest’s, he found them by no means black, as he had
anticipated—nor gray, as might have been imagined—nor yet
hazel nor blue—nor indeed yellow nor red—nor purple—nor
white—nor green—nor any other color in the heavens above, or
in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth. In short, Pierre
Bon-Bon not only saw plainly that his Majesty had no eyes whatsoever, but
could discover no indications of their having existed at any previous
period—for the space where eyes should naturally have been was, I am
constrained to say, simply a dead level of flesh.

It was not in the nature of the metaphysician to forbear making some
inquiry into the sources of so strange a phenomenon, and the reply of his
Majesty was at once prompt, dignified, and satisfactory.

“Eyes! my dear Bon-Bon—eyes! did you say?—oh!—ah!—I
perceive! The ridiculous prints, eh, which are in, circulation, have given
you a false idea of my personal appearance? Eyes!—true. Eyes, Pierre
Bon-Bon, are very well in their proper place—that, you would say, is
the head?—right—the head of a worm. To you, likewise, these
optics are indispensable—yet I will convince you that my vision is
more penetrating than your own. There is a cat I see in the corner—a
pretty cat—look at her—observe her well. Now, Bon-Bon, do you
behold the thoughts—the thoughts, I say,—the ideas—the
reflections—which are being engendered in her pericranium? There it
is, now—you do not! She is thinking we admire the length of her tail
and the profundity of her mind. She has just concluded that I am the most
distinguished of ecclesiastics, and that you are the most superficial of
metaphysicians. Thus you see I am not altogether blind; but to one of my
profession, the eyes you speak of would be merely an incumbrance, liable
at any time to be put out by a toasting-iron, or a pitchfork. To you, I
allow, these optical affairs are indispensable. Endeavor, Bon-Bon, to use
them well;—my vision is the soul.”

Hereupon the guest helped himself to the wine upon the table, and pouring
out a bumper for Bon-Bon, requested him to drink it without scruple, and
make himself perfectly at home.

“A clever book that of yours, Pierre,” resumed his Majesty, tapping our
friend knowingly upon the shoulder, as the latter put down his glass after
a thorough compliance with his visitor’s injunction. “A clever book that
of yours, upon my honor. It’s a work after my own heart. Your arrangement
of the matter, I think, however, might be improved, and many of your
notions remind me of Aristotle. That philosopher was one of my most
intimate acquaintances. I liked him as much for his terrible ill temper,
as for his happy knack at making a blunder. There is only one solid truth
in all that he has written, and for that I gave him the hint out of pure
compassion for his absurdity. I suppose, Pierre Bon-Bon, you very well
know to what divine moral truth I am alluding?”

“Cannot say that I—”

“Indeed!—why it was I who told Aristotle that by sneezing, men
expelled superfluous ideas through the proboscis.”

“Which is—hiccup!—undoubtedly the case,” said the
metaphysician, while he poured out for himself another bumper of Mousseux,
and offered his snuff-box to the fingers of his visitor.

“There was Plato, too,” continued his Majesty, modestly
declining the snuff-box and the compliment it implied—“there
was Plato, too, for whom I, at one time, felt all the affection of a
friend. You knew Plato, Bon-Bon?—ah, no, I beg a thousand pardons.
He met me at Athens, one day, in the Parthenon, and told me he was
distressed for an idea. I bade him write, down that δ
υοῦς εστιν
αυλος. He said that he would do so, and went
home, while I stepped over to the pyramids. But my conscience smote me
for having uttered a truth, even to aid a friend, and hastening back to
Athens, I arrived behind the philosopher’s chair as he was inditing
the ‘αυλος.’

“Giving the lambda a fillip with my finger, I turned it upside down. So
the sentence now read ‘δ
υοῦς εστιν
αυγος’, and is, you perceive, the
fundamental doctrines in his metaphysics.”

“Were you ever at Rome?” asked the restaurateur, as he finished his second
bottle of Mousseux, and drew from the closet a larger supply of
Chambertin.

“But once, Monsieur Bon-Bon, but once. There was a time,” said the devil,
as if reciting some passage from a book—“there was a time when
occurred an anarchy of five years, during which the republic, bereft of
all its officers, had no magistracy besides the tribunes of the people,
and these were not legally vested with any degree of executive power—at
that time, Monsieur Bon-Bon—at that time only I was in Rome, and I
have no earthly acquaintance, consequently, with any of its philosophy.”
(*2)

“What do you think of—what do you think of—hiccup!—Epicurus?”

“What do I think of whom?” said the devil, in astonishment, “you cannot
surely mean to find any fault with Epicurus! What do I think of Epicurus!
Do you mean me, sir?—I am Epicurus! I am the same philosopher who
wrote each of the three hundred treatises commemorated by Diogenes
Laertes.”

“That’s a lie!” said the metaphysician, for the wine had gotten a little
into his head.

“Very well!—very well, sir!—very well, indeed, sir!” said his
Majesty, apparently much flattered.

“That’s a lie!” repeated the restaurateur, dogmatically; “that’s a—hiccup!—a
lie!”

“Well, well, have it your own way!” said the devil, pacifically, and
Bon-Bon, having beaten his Majesty at argument, thought it his duty to
conclude a second bottle of Chambertin.

“As I was saying,” resumed the visitor—“as I was observing a little
while ago, there are some very outré notions in that book of yours
Monsieur Bon-Bon. What, for instance, do you mean by all that humbug about
the soul? Pray, sir, what is the soul?”

“The—hiccup!—soul,” replied the metaphysician, referring to
his MS., “is undoubtedly—”

“No, sir!”

“Indubitably—”

“No, sir!”

“Indisputably—”

“No, sir!”

“Evidently—”

“No, sir!”

“Incontrovertibly—”

“No, sir!”

“Hiccup!—”

“No, sir!”

“And beyond all question, a—”

“No sir, the soul is no such thing!” (Here the philosopher, looking
daggers, took occasion to make an end, upon the spot, of his third bottle
of Chambertin.)

“Then—hic-cup!—pray, sir—what—what is it?”

“That is neither here nor there, Monsieur Bon-Bon,” replied his Majesty,
musingly. “I have tasted—that is to say, I have known some very bad
souls, and some too—pretty good ones.” Here he smacked his lips,
and, having unconsciously let fall his hand upon the volume in his pocket,
was seized with a violent fit of sneezing.

He continued.

“There was the soul of Cratinus—passable: Aristophanes—racy:
Plato—exquisite—not your Plato, but Plato the comic poet; your
Plato would have turned the stomach of Cerberus—faugh! Then let me
see! there were Naevius, and Andronicus, and Plautus, and Terentius. Then
there were Lucilius, and Catullus, and Naso, and Quintus Flaccus,—dear
Quinty! as I called him when he sung a seculare for my amusement, while I
toasted him, in pure good humor, on a fork. But they want flavor, these
Romans. One fat Greek is worth a dozen of them, and besides will keep,
which cannot be said of a Quirite. Let us taste your Sauterne.”

Bon-Bon had by this time made up his mind to the nil admirari and endeavored
to hand down the bottles in question. He was, however, conscious of a
strange sound in the room like the wagging of a tail. Of this, although
extremely indecent in his Majesty, the philosopher took no notice:—simply
kicking the dog, and requesting him to be quiet. The visitor continued:

“I found that Horace tasted very much like Aristotle;—you know I am
fond of variety. Terentius I could not have told from Menander. Naso, to
my astonishment, was Nicander in disguise. Virgilius had a strong twang of
Theocritus. Martial put me much in mind of Archilochus—and Titus
Livius was positively Polybius and none other.”

“Hic-cup!” here replied Bon-Bon, and his majesty proceeded:

“But if I have a penchant, Monsieur Bon-Bon—if I have a penchant, it
is for a philosopher. Yet, let me tell you, sir, it is not every dev—I
mean it is not every gentleman who knows how to choose a philosopher. Long
ones are not good; and the best, if not carefully shelled, are apt to be a
little rancid on account of the gall!”

“Shelled!”

“I mean taken out of the carcass.”

“What do you think of a—hic-cup!—physician?”

“Don’t mention them!—ugh! ugh! ugh!” (Here his Majesty retched
violently.) “I never tasted but one—that rascal Hippocrates!—smelt
of asafoetida—ugh! ugh! ugh!—caught a wretched cold washing
him in the Styx—and after all he gave me the cholera morbus.”

“The—hiccup!—wretch!” ejaculated Bon-Bon, “the—hic-cup!—abortion
of a pill-box!”—and the philosopher dropped a tear.

“After all,” continued the visitor, “after all, if a dev—if a
gentleman wishes to live, he must have more talents than one or two; and
with us a fat face is an evidence of diplomacy.”

“How so?”

“Why, we are sometimes exceedingly pushed for provisions. You must know
that, in a climate so sultry as mine, it is frequently impossible to keep
a spirit alive for more than two or three hours; and after death, unless
pickled immediately (and a pickled spirit is not good), they will—smell—you
understand, eh? Putrefaction is always to be apprehended when the souls
are consigned to us in the usual way.”

“Hiccup!—hiccup!—good God! how do you manage?”

Here the iron lamp commenced swinging with redoubled violence, and the
devil half started from his seat;—however, with a slight sigh, he
recovered his composure, merely saying to our hero in a low tone: “I tell
you what, Pierre Bon-Bon, we must have no more swearing.”

The host swallowed another bumper, by way of denoting thorough
comprehension and acquiescence, and the visitor continued.

“Why, there are several ways of managing. The most of us starve: some put
up with the pickle: for my part I purchase my spirits vivente corpore, in
which case I find they keep very well.”

“But the body!—hiccup!—the body!”

“The body, the body—well, what of the body?—oh! ah! I
perceive. Why, sir, the body is not at all affected by the transaction. I
have made innumerable purchases of the kind in my day, and the parties
never experienced any inconvenience. There were Cain and Nimrod, and
Nero, and Caligula, and Dionysius, and Pisistratus, and—and a
thousand others, who never knew what it was to have a soul during the
latter part of their lives; yet, sir, these men adorned society. Why
isn’t there A——, now, who you know as well as I? Is
he not in possession of his faculties, mental and corporeal? Who
writes a keener epigram? Who reasons more wittily? Who—but stay! I
have his agreement in my pocket-book.”

Thus saying, he produced a red leather wallet, and took from it a number
of papers. Upon some of these Bon-Bon caught a glimpse of the letters
Machi—Maza—Robesp—with the words Caligula, George,
Elizabeth. His Majesty selected a narrow slip of parchment, and from it
read aloud the following words:

“In consideration of certain mental endowments which it is unnecessary to
specify, and in further consideration of one thousand louis d’or, I being
aged one year and one month, do hereby make over to the bearer of this
agreement all my right, title, and appurtenance in the shadow called my
soul. (Signed) A….” {*4} (Here His Majesty repeated a name which I did
not feel justified in indicating more unequivocally.)

{*4} Quere-Arouet?

“A clever fellow that,” resumed he; “but like you, Monsieur Bon-Bon, he
was mistaken about the soul. The soul a shadow, truly! The soul a shadow;
Ha! ha! ha!—he! he! he!—hu! hu! hu! Only think of a fricasseed
shadow!”

“Only think—hiccup!—of a fricasséed shadow!” exclaimed our
hero, whose faculties were becoming much illuminated by the profundity of
his Majesty’s discourse.

“Only think of a hiccup!—fricasséed shadow!! Now, damme!—hiccup!—humph!
If I would have been such a—hiccup!—nincompoop! My soul, Mr.—humph!”

“Your soul, Monsieur Bon-Bon?”

“Yes, sir—hiccup!—my soul is—”

“What, sir?”

“No shadow, damme!”

“Did you mean to say—”

“Yes, sir, my soul is—hiccup!—humph!—yes, sir.”

“Did you not intend to assert—”

“My soul is—hiccup!—peculiarly qualified for—hiccup!—a—”

“What, sir?”

“Stew.”

“Ha!”

“Soufflee.”

“Eh!”

“Fricassee.”

“Indeed!”

“Ragout and fricandeau—and see here, my good fellow! I’ll let you
have it—hiccup!—a bargain.” Here the philosopher slapped his
Majesty upon the back.

“Couldn’t think of such a thing,” said the latter calmly, at the same time
rising from his seat. The metaphysician stared.

“Am supplied at present,” said his Majesty.

“Hiccup!—e-h?” said the philosopher.

“Have no funds on hand.”

“What?”

“Besides, very unhandsome in me—”

“Sir!”

“To take advantage of—”

“Hiccup!”

“Your present disgusting and ungentlemanly situation.”

Here the visitor bowed and withdrew—in what manner could not
precisely be ascertained—but in a well-concerted effort to discharge
a bottle at “the villain,” the slender chain was severed that depended
from the ceiling, and the metaphysician prostrated by the downfall of the
lamp.

SOME WORDS WITH A MUMMY.

The symposium of the preceding evening had been a little too much
for my nerves. I had a wretched headache, and was desperately drowsy.
Instead of going out therefore to spend the evening as I had proposed, it
occurred to me that I could not do a wiser thing than just eat a mouthful
of supper and go immediately to bed.

A light supper of course. I am exceedingly fond of Welsh rabbit. More than
a pound at once, however, may not at all times be advisable. Still, there
can be no material objection to two. And really between two and three,
there is merely a single unit of difference. I ventured, perhaps, upon
four. My wife will have it five;—but, clearly, she has confounded
two very distinct affairs. The abstract number, five, I am willing to
admit; but, concretely, it has reference to bottles of Brown Stout,
without which, in the way of condiment, Welsh rabbit is to be eschewed.

Having thus concluded a frugal meal, and donned my night-cap, with the
serene hope of enjoying it till noon the next day, I placed my head upon
the pillow, and, through the aid of a capital conscience, fell into a
profound slumber forthwith.

But when were the hopes of humanity fulfilled? I could not have completed
my third snore when there came a furious ringing at the street-door bell,
and then an impatient thumping at the knocker, which awakened me at once.
In a minute afterward, and while I was still rubbing my eyes, my wife
thrust in my face a note, from my old friend, Doctor Ponnonner. It ran
thus:

“Come to me, by all means, my dear good friend, as soon as you receive
this. Come and help us to rejoice. At last, by long persevering diplomacy, I
have gained the assent of the Directors of the City Museum, to my examination
of the Mummy—you know the one I mean. I have permission to unswathe it
and open it, if desirable. A few friends only will be present—you, of
course. The Mummy is now at my house, and we shall begin to unroll it at eleven
to-night.

“Yours, ever,
PONNONNER.

By the time I had reached the “Ponnonner,” it struck me that I was as wide
awake as a man need be. I leaped out of bed in an ecstacy, overthrowing
all in my way; dressed myself with a rapidity truly marvellous; and set
off, at the top of my speed, for the doctor’s.

There I found a very eager company assembled. They had been awaiting me
with much impatience; the Mummy was extended upon the dining-table; and
the moment I entered its examination was commenced.

It was one of a pair brought, several years previously, by Captain Arthur
Sabretash, a cousin of Ponnonner’s from a tomb near Eleithias, in
the Lybian mountains, a considerable distance above Thebes on the Nile.
The grottoes at this point, although less magnificent than the Theban
sepulchres, are of higher interest, on account of affording more numerous
illustrations of the private life of the Egyptians. The chamber from
which our specimen was taken, was said to be very rich in such
illustrations—the walls being completely covered with fresco
paintings and bas-reliefs, while statues, vases, and Mosaic work of rich
patterns, indicated the vast wealth of the deceased.

The treasure had been deposited in the Museum precisely in the same
condition in which Captain Sabretash had found it—that is to say,
the coffin had not been disturbed. For eight years it had thus stood,
subject only externally to public inspection. We had now, therefore, the
complete Mummy at our disposal; and to those who are aware how very rarely
the unransacked antique reaches our shores, it will be evident, at once
that we had great reason to congratulate ourselves upon our good fortune.

Approaching the table, I saw on it a large box, or case, nearly seven feet
long, and perhaps three feet wide, by two feet and a half deep. It was
oblong—not coffin-shaped. The material was at first supposed to be
the wood of the sycamore (platanus), but, upon cutting into it, we
found it to be pasteboard, or, more properly, papier mache,
composed of papyrus. It was thickly ornamented with paintings,
representing funeral scenes, and other mournful subjects—interspersed
among which, in every variety of position, were certain series of
hieroglyphical characters, intended, no doubt, for the name of the
departed. By good luck, Mr. Gliddon formed one of our party; and he had no
difficulty in translating the letters, which were simply phonetic, and
represented the word Allamistakeo.

We had some difficulty in getting this case open without injury; but
having at length accomplished the task, we came to a second,
coffin-shaped, and very considerably less in size than the exterior one,
but resembling it precisely in every other respect. The interval between
the two was filled with resin, which had, in some degree, defaced the
colors of the interior box.

Upon opening this latter (which we did quite easily), we arrived at a
third case, also coffin-shaped, and varying from the second one in no
particular, except in that of its material, which was cedar, and still
emitted the peculiar and highly aromatic odor of that wood. Between the
second and the third case there was no interval—the one fitting
accurately within the other.

Removing the third case, we discovered and took out the body itself. We
had expected to find it, as usual, enveloped in frequent rolls, or
bandages, of linen; but, in place of these, we found a sort of sheath,
made of papyrus, and coated with a layer of plaster, thickly gilt and
painted. The paintings represented subjects connected with the various
supposed duties of the soul, and its presentation to different divinities,
with numerous identical human figures, intended, very probably, as
portraits of the persons embalmed. Extending from head to foot was a
columnar, or perpendicular, inscription, in phonetic hieroglyphics, giving
again his name and titles, and the names and titles of his relations.

Around the neck thus ensheathed, was a collar of cylindrical glass beads,
diverse in color, and so arranged as to form images of deities, of the
scarabaeus, etc., with the winged globe. Around the small of the waist
was a similar collar or belt.

Stripping off the papyrus, we found the flesh in excellent preservation,
with no perceptible odor. The color was reddish. The skin was hard,
smooth, and glossy. The teeth and hair were in good condition. The eyes
(it seemed) had been removed, and glass ones substituted, which were very
beautiful and wonderfully life-like, with the exception of somewhat too
determined a stare. The fingers and the nails were brilliantly gilded.

Mr. Gliddon was of opinion, from the redness of the epidermis, that the
embalmment had been effected altogether by asphaltum; but, on scraping the
surface with a steel instrument, and throwing into the fire some of the
powder thus obtained, the flavor of camphor and other sweet-scented gums
became apparent.

We searched the corpse very carefully for the usual openings through which
the entrails are extracted, but, to our surprise, we could discover none.
No member of the party was at that period aware that entire or unopened
mummies are not infrequently met. The brain it was customary to withdraw
through the nose; the intestines through an incision in the side; the body
was then shaved, washed, and salted; then laid aside for several weeks,
when the operation of embalming, properly so called, began.

As no trace of an opening could be found, Doctor Ponnonner was preparing
his instruments for dissection, when I observed that it was then past two
o’clock. Hereupon it was agreed to postpone the internal examination until
the next evening; and we were about to separate for the present, when some
one suggested an experiment or two with the Voltaic pile.

The application of electricity to a mummy three or four thousand years old
at the least, was an idea, if not very sage, still sufficiently original,
and we all caught it at once. About one-tenth in earnest and nine-tenths
in jest, we arranged a battery in the Doctor’s study, and conveyed thither
the Egyptian.

It was only after much trouble that we succeeded in laying bare some
portions of the temporal muscle which appeared of less stony rigidity than
other parts of the frame, but which, as we had anticipated, of course,
gave no indication of galvanic susceptibility when brought in contact with
the wire. This, the first trial, indeed, seemed decisive, and, with a
hearty laugh at our own absurdity, we were bidding each other good night,
when my eyes, happening to fall upon those of the Mummy, were there
immediately riveted in amazement. My brief glance, in fact, had sufficed
to assure me that the orbs which we had all supposed to be glass, and
which were originally noticeable for a certain wild stare, were now so far
covered by the lids, that only a small portion of the tunica albuginea
remained visible.

With a shout I called attention to the fact, and it became immediately
obvious to all.

I cannot say that I was alarmed at the phenomenon, because “alarmed” is,
in my case, not exactly the word. It is possible, however, that, but for
the Brown Stout, I might have been a little nervous. As for the rest of
the company, they really made no attempt at concealing the downright
fright which possessed them. Doctor Ponnonner was a man to be pitied. Mr.
Gliddon, by some peculiar process, rendered himself invisible. Mr. Silk
Buckingham, I fancy, will scarcely be so bold as to deny that he made his
way, upon all fours, under the table.

After the first shock of astonishment, however, we resolved, as a matter
of course, upon further experiment forthwith. Our operations were now
directed against the great toe of the right foot. We made an incision over
the outside of the exterior os sesamoideum pollicis pedis, and thus
got at the root of the abductor muscle. Readjusting the battery, we now
applied the fluid to the bisected nerves—when, with a movement of
exceeding life-likeness, the Mummy first drew up its right knee so as to
bring it nearly in contact with the abdomen, and then, straightening the
limb with inconceivable force, bestowed a kick upon Doctor Ponnonner,
which had the effect of discharging that gentleman, like an arrow from a
catapult, through a window into the street below.

We rushed out en masse to bring in the mangled remains of the
victim, but had the happiness to meet him upon the staircase, coming up in
an unaccountable hurry, brimful of the most ardent philosophy, and more
than ever impressed with the necessity of prosecuting our experiment with
vigor and with zeal.

It was by his advice, accordingly, that we made, upon the spot, a profound
incision into the tip of the subject’s nose, while the Doctor himself,
laying violent hands upon it, pulled it into vehement contact with the
wire.

Morally and physically—figuratively and literally—was the
effect electric. In the first place, the corpse opened its eyes and winked
very rapidly for several minutes, as does Mr. Barnes in the pantomime; in
the second place, it sneezed; in the third, it sat upon end; in the
fourth, it shook its fist in Doctor Ponnonner’s face; in the fifth,
turning to Messieurs Gliddon and Buckingham, it addressed them, in very
capital Egyptian, thus:

“I must say, gentlemen, that I am as much surprised as I am mortified at
your behavior. Of Doctor Ponnonner nothing better was to be expected. He
is a poor little fat fool who knows no better. I pity and forgive him. But
you, Mr. Gliddon—and you, Silk—who have travelled and resided
in Egypt until one might imagine you to the manor born—you, I say
who have been so much among us that you speak Egyptian fully as well, I
think, as you write your mother tongue—you, whom I have always been
led to regard as the firm friend of the mummies—I really did
anticipate more gentlemanly conduct from you. What am I to think of your
standing quietly by and seeing me thus unhandsomely used? What am I to
suppose by your permitting Tom, Dick, and Harry to strip me of my coffins,
and my clothes, in this wretchedly cold climate? In what light (to come to
the point) am I to regard your aiding and abetting that miserable little
villain, Doctor Ponnonner, in pulling me by the nose?”

It will be taken for granted, no doubt, that upon hearing this speech
under the circumstances, we all either made for the door, or fell into
violent hysterics, or went off in a general swoon. One of these three
things was, I say, to be expected. Indeed each and all of these lines of
conduct might have been very plausibly pursued. And, upon my word, I am at
a loss to know how or why it was that we pursued neither the one nor the
other. But, perhaps, the true reason is to be sought in the spirit of the
age, which proceeds by the rule of contraries altogether, and is now
usually admitted as the solution of every thing in the way of paradox and
impossibility. Or, perhaps, after all, it was only the Mummy’s exceedingly
natural and matter-of-course air that divested his words of the terrible.
However this may be, the facts are clear, and no member of our party
betrayed any very particular trepidation, or seemed to consider that any
thing had gone very especially wrong.

For my part I was convinced it was all right, and merely stepped aside,
out of the range of the Egyptian’s fist. Doctor Ponnonner thrust his hands
into his breeches’ pockets, looked hard at the Mummy, and grew excessively
red in the face. Mr. Glidden stroked his whiskers and drew up the collar
of his shirt. Mr. Buckingham hung down his head, and put his right thumb
into the left corner of his mouth.

The Egyptian regarded him with a severe countenance for some minutes and
at length, with a sneer, said:

“Why don’t you speak, Mr. Buckingham? Did you hear what I asked you, or
not? Do take your thumb out of your mouth!”

Mr. Buckingham, hereupon, gave a slight start, took his right thumb out of
the left corner of his mouth, and, by way of indemnification inserted his
left thumb in the right corner of the aperture above-mentioned.

Not being able to get an answer from Mr. B., the figure turned peevishly
to Mr. Gliddon, and, in a peremptory tone, demanded in general terms what
we all meant.

Mr. Gliddon replied at great length, in phonetics; and but for the
deficiency of American printing-offices in hieroglyphical type, it would
afford me much pleasure to record here, in the original, the whole of his
very excellent speech.

I may as well take this occasion to remark, that all the subsequent
conversation in which the Mummy took a part, was carried on in primitive
Egyptian, through the medium (so far as concerned myself and other
untravelled members of the company)—through the medium, I say, of
Messieurs Gliddon and Buckingham, as interpreters. These gentlemen spoke
the mother tongue of the Mummy with inimitable fluency and grace; but I
could not help observing that (owing, no doubt, to the introduction of
images entirely modern, and, of course, entirely novel to the stranger)
the two travellers were reduced, occasionally, to the employment of
sensible forms for the purpose of conveying a particular meaning. Mr.
Gliddon, at one period, for example, could not make the Egyptian
comprehend the term “politics,” until he sketched upon the wall, with a
bit of charcoal a little carbuncle-nosed gentleman, out at elbows,
standing upon a stump, with his left leg drawn back, right arm thrown
forward, with his fist shut, the eyes rolled up toward Heaven, and the
mouth open at an angle of ninety degrees. Just in the same way Mr.
Buckingham failed to convey the absolutely modern idea “wig,” until (at
Doctor Ponnonner’s suggestion) he grew very pale in the face, and
consented to take off his own.

It will be readily understood that Mr. Gliddon’s discourse turned chiefly
upon the vast benefits accruing to science from the unrolling and
disembowelling of mummies; apologizing, upon this score, for any
disturbance that might have been occasioned him, in particular, the
individual Mummy called Allamistakeo; and concluding with a mere hint (for
it could scarcely be considered more) that, as these little matters were
now explained, it might be as well to proceed with the investigation
intended. Here Doctor Ponnonner made ready his instruments.

In regard to the latter suggestions of the orator, it appears that
Allamistakeo had certain scruples of conscience, the nature of which I did
not distinctly learn; but he expressed himself satisfied with the
apologies tendered, and, getting down from the table, shook hands with the
company all round.

When this ceremony was at an end, we immediately busied ourselves in
repairing the damages which our subject had sustained from the scalpel. We
sewed up the wound in his temple, bandaged his foot, and applied a square
inch of black plaster to the tip of his nose.

It was now observed that the Count (this was the title, it seems, of
Allamistakeo) had a slight fit of shivering—no doubt from the cold.
The Doctor immediately repaired to his wardrobe, and soon returned with a
black dress coat, made in Jennings’ best manner, a pair of sky-blue plaid
pantaloons with straps, a pink gingham chemise, a flapped vest of brocade,
a white sack overcoat, a walking cane with a hook, a hat with no brim,
patent-leather boots, straw-colored kid gloves, an eye-glass, a pair of
whiskers, and a waterfall cravat. Owing to the disparity of size between
the Count and the doctor (the proportion being as two to one), there was
some little difficulty in adjusting these habiliments upon the person of
the Egyptian; but when all was arranged, he might have been said to be
dressed. Mr. Gliddon, therefore, gave him his arm, and led him to a
comfortable chair by the fire, while the Doctor rang the bell upon the
spot and ordered a supply of cigars and wine.

The conversation soon grew animated. Much curiosity was, of course,
expressed in regard to the somewhat remarkable fact of Allamistakeo’s
still remaining alive.

“I should have thought,” observed Mr. Buckingham, “that it is high time
you were dead.”

“Why,” replied the Count, very much astonished, “I am little more than
seven hundred years old! My father lived a thousand, and was by no means
in his dotage when he died.”

Here ensued a brisk series of questions and computations, by means of
which it became evident that the antiquity of the Mummy had been grossly
misjudged. It had been five thousand and fifty years and some months since
he had been consigned to the catacombs at Eleithias.

“But my remark,” resumed Mr. Buckingham, “had no reference to your age at
the period of interment (I am willing to grant, in fact, that you are
still a young man), and my illusion was to the immensity of time during
which, by your own showing, you must have been done up in asphaltum.”

“In what?” said the Count.

“In asphaltum,” persisted Mr. B.

“Ah, yes; I have some faint notion of what you mean; it might be made to
answer, no doubt—but in my time we employed scarcely any thing else
than the Bichloride of Mercury.”

“But what we are especially at a loss to understand,” said Doctor
Ponnonner, “is how it happens that, having been dead and buried in Egypt
five thousand years ago, you are here to-day all alive and looking so
delightfully well.”

“Had I been, as you say, dead,” replied the Count, “it is more than
probable that dead, I should still be; for I perceive you are yet in the
infancy of Galvanism, and cannot accomplish with it what was a common
thing among us in the old days. But the fact is, I fell into catalepsy,
and it was considered by my best friends that I was either dead or should
be; they accordingly embalmed me at once—I presume you are aware of
the chief principle of the embalming process?”

“Why, not altogether.”

“Ah, I perceive—a deplorable condition of ignorance! Well I cannot
enter into details just now: but it is necessary to explain that to embalm
(properly speaking), in Egypt, was to arrest indefinitely all the animal
functions subjected to the process. I use the word ‘animal’ in its widest
sense, as including the physical not more than the moral and vital being.
I repeat that the leading principle of embalmment consisted, with us, in
the immediately arresting, and holding in perpetual abeyance, all the
animal functions subjected to the process. To be brief, in whatever
condition the individual was, at the period of embalmment, in that
condition he remained. Now, as it is my good fortune to be of the blood of
the Scarabaeus, I was embalmed alive, as you see me at present.”

“The blood of the Scarabaeus!” exclaimed Doctor Ponnonner.

“Yes. The Scarabaeus was the insignium or the ‘arms,’ of a very
distinguished and very rare patrician family. To be ‘of the blood of the
Scarabaeus,’ is merely to be one of that family of which the Scarabaeus is
the insignium. I speak figuratively.”

“But what has this to do with you being alive?”

“Why, it is the general custom in Egypt to deprive a corpse, before
embalmment, of its bowels and brains; the race of the Scarabaei alone did
not coincide with the custom. Had I not been a Scarabeus, therefore, I
should have been without bowels and brains; and without either it is
inconvenient to live.”

“I perceive that,” said Mr. Buckingham, “and I presume that all the entire
mummies that come to hand are of the race of Scarabaei.”

“Beyond doubt.”

“I thought,” said Mr. Gliddon, very meekly, “that the Scarabaeus was one
of the Egyptian gods.”

“One of the Egyptian what?” exclaimed the Mummy, starting to its
feet.

“Gods!” repeated the traveller.

“Mr. Gliddon, I really am astonished to hear you talk in this style,” said
the Count, resuming his chair. “No nation upon the face of the earth has
ever acknowledged more than one god. The Scarabaeus, the Ibis, etc., were
with us (as similar creatures have been with others) the symbols, or
media, through which we offered worship to the Creator too august to be
more directly approached.”

There was here a pause. At length the colloquy was renewed by Doctor
Ponnonner.

“It is not improbable, then, from what you have explained,” said he, “that
among the catacombs near the Nile there may exist other mummies of the
Scarabaeus tribe, in a condition of vitality?”

“There can be no question of it,” replied the Count; “all the Scarabaei
embalmed accidentally while alive, are alive now. Even some of those
purposely so embalmed, may have been overlooked by their executors, and
still remain in the tomb.”

“Will you be kind enough to explain,” I said, “what you mean by ‘purposely
so embalmed’?”

“With great pleasure!” answered the Mummy, after surveying me leisurely
through his eye-glass—for it was the first time I had ventured to
address him a direct question.

“With great pleasure,” he said. “The usual duration of man’s life, in my
time, was about eight hundred years. Few men died, unless by most
extraordinary accident, before the age of six hundred; few lived longer
than a decade of centuries; but eight were considered the natural term.
After the discovery of the embalming principle, as I have already
described it to you, it occurred to our philosophers that a laudable
curiosity might be gratified, and, at the same time, the interests of
science much advanced, by living this natural term in installments. In the
case of history, indeed, experience demonstrated that something of this
kind was indispensable. An historian, for example, having attained the age
of five hundred, would write a book with great labor and then get himself
carefully embalmed; leaving instructions to his executors pro tem., that
they should cause him to be revivified after the lapse of a certain period—say
five or six hundred years. Resuming existence at the expiration of this
time, he would invariably find his great work converted into a species of
hap-hazard note-book—that is to say, into a kind of literary arena
for the conflicting guesses, riddles, and personal squabbles of whole
herds of exasperated commentators. These guesses, etc., which passed under
the name of annotations, or emendations, were found so completely to have
enveloped, distorted, and overwhelmed the text, that the author had to go
about with a lantern to discover his own book. When discovered, it was
never worth the trouble of the search. After re-writing it throughout, it
was regarded as the bounden duty of the historian to set himself to work
immediately in correcting, from his own private knowledge and experience,
the traditions of the day concerning the epoch at which he had originally
lived. Now this process of re-scription and personal rectification,
pursued by various individual sages from time to time, had the effect of
preventing our history from degenerating into absolute fable.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Doctor Ponnonner at this point, laying his hand
gently upon the arm of the Egyptian—“I beg your pardon, sir, but may
I presume to interrupt you for one moment?”

“By all means, sir,” replied the Count, drawing up.

“I merely wished to ask you a question,” said the Doctor. “You mentioned
the historian’s personal correction of traditions respecting his own
epoch. Pray, sir, upon an average what proportion of these Kabbala were
usually found to be right?”

“The Kabbala, as you properly term them, sir, were generally discovered to
be precisely on a par with the facts recorded in the un-re-written
histories themselves;—that is to say, not one individual iota of
either was ever known, under any circumstances, to be not totally and
radically wrong.”

“But since it is quite clear,” resumed the Doctor, “that at least five
thousand years have elapsed since your entombment, I take it for granted
that your histories at that period, if not your traditions were
sufficiently explicit on that one topic of universal interest, the
Creation, which took place, as I presume you are aware, only about ten
centuries before.”

“Sir!” said the Count Allamistakeo.

The Doctor repeated his remarks, but it was only after much additional
explanation that the foreigner could be made to comprehend them. The
latter at length said, hesitatingly:

“The ideas you have suggested are to me, I confess, utterly novel. During
my time I never knew any one to entertain so singular a fancy as that the
universe (or this world if you will have it so) ever had a beginning at
all. I remember once, and once only, hearing something remotely hinted, by
a man of many speculations, concerning the origin of the human race;
and by this individual, the very word Adam (or Red Earth), which
you make use of, was employed. He employed it, however, in a generical
sense, with reference to the spontaneous germination from rank soil (just
as a thousand of the lower genera of creatures are germinated)—the
spontaneous germination, I say, of five vast hordes of men, simultaneously
upspringing in five distinct and nearly equal divisions of the globe.”

Here, in general, the company shrugged their shoulders, and one or two of
us touched our foreheads with a very significant air. Mr. Silk Buckingham,
first glancing slightly at the occiput and then at the sinciput of
Allamistakeo, spoke as follows:

“The long duration of human life in your time, together with the
occasional practice of passing it, as you have explained, in installments,
must have had, indeed, a strong tendency to the general development and
conglomeration of knowledge. I presume, therefore, that we are to
attribute the marked inferiority of the old Egyptians in all particulars
of science, when compared with the moderns, and more especially with the
Yankees, altogether to the superior solidity of the Egyptian skull.”

“I confess again,” replied the Count, with much suavity, “that I am
somewhat at a loss to comprehend you; pray, to what particulars of science
do you allude?”

Here our whole party, joining voices, detailed, at great length, the
assumptions of phrenology and the marvels of animal magnetism.

Having heard us to an end, the Count proceeded to relate a few anecdotes,
which rendered it evident that prototypes of Gall and Spurzheim had
flourished and faded in Egypt so long ago as to have been nearly
forgotten, and that the manoeuvres of Mesmer were really very contemptible
tricks when put in collation with the positive miracles of the Theban
savans, who created lice and a great many other similar things.

I here asked the Count if his people were able to calculate eclipses. He
smiled rather contemptuously, and said they were.

This put me a little out, but I began to make other inquiries in regard to
his astronomical knowledge, when a member of the company, who had never as
yet opened his mouth, whispered in my ear, that for information on this
head, I had better consult Ptolemy (whoever Ptolemy is), as well as one
Plutarch de facie lunae.

I then questioned the Mummy about burning-glasses and lenses, and, in
general, about the manufacture of glass; but I had not made an end of my
queries before the silent member again touched me quietly on the elbow,
and begged me for God’s sake to take a peep at Diodorus Siculus. As for
the Count, he merely asked me, in the way of reply, if we moderns
possessed any such microscopes as would enable us to cut cameos in the
style of the Egyptians. While I was thinking how I should answer this
question, little Doctor Ponnonner committed himself in a very
extraordinary way.

“Look at our architecture!” he exclaimed, greatly to the indignation of
both the travellers, who pinched him black and blue to no purpose.

“Look,” he cried with enthusiasm, “at the Bowling-Green Fountain in New
York! or if this be too vast a contemplation, regard for a moment the
Capitol at Washington, D. C.!”—and the good little medical man went
on to detail very minutely, the proportions of the fabric to which he
referred. He explained that the portico alone was adorned with no less
than four and twenty columns, five feet in diameter, and ten feet apart.

The Count said that he regretted not being able to remember, just at that
moment, the precise dimensions of any one of the principal buildings of
the city of Aznac, whose foundations were laid in the night of Time, but
the ruins of which were still standing, at the epoch of his entombment, in
a vast plain of sand to the westward of Thebes. He recollected, however,
(talking of the porticoes,) that one affixed to an inferior palace in a
kind of suburb called Carnac, consisted of a hundred and forty-four
columns, thirty-seven feet in circumference, and twenty-five feet apart.
The approach to this portico, from the Nile, was through an avenue two
miles long, composed of sphynxes, statues, and obelisks, twenty, sixty,
and a hundred feet in height. The palace itself (as well as he could
remember) was, in one direction, two miles long, and might have been
altogether about seven in circuit. Its walls were richly painted all over,
within and without, with hieroglyphics. He would not pretend to assert
that even fifty or sixty of the Doctor’s Capitols might have been built
within these walls, but he was by no means sure that two or three hundred
of them might not have been squeezed in with some trouble. That palace at
Carnac was an insignificant little building after all. He (the Count),
however, could not conscientiously refuse to admit the ingenuity,
magnificence, and superiority of the Fountain at the Bowling Green, as
described by the Doctor. Nothing like it, he was forced to allow, had ever
been seen in Egypt or elsewhere.

I here asked the Count what he had to say to our railroads.

“Nothing,” he replied, “in particular.” They were rather slight, rather
ill-conceived, and clumsily put together. They could not be compared, of
course, with the vast, level, direct, iron-grooved causeways upon which
the Egyptians conveyed entire temples and solid obelisks of a hundred and
fifty feet in altitude.

I spoke of our gigantic mechanical forces.

He agreed that we knew something in that way, but inquired how I should
have gone to work in getting up the imposts on the lintels of even the
little palace at Carnac.

This question I concluded not to hear, and demanded if he had any idea of
Artesian wells; but he simply raised his eyebrows; while Mr. Gliddon
winked at me very hard and said, in a low tone, that one had been recently
discovered by the engineers employed to bore for water in the Great Oasis.

I then mentioned our steel; but the foreigner elevated his nose, and asked
me if our steel could have executed the sharp carved work seen on the
obelisks, and which was wrought altogether by edge-tools of copper.

This disconcerted us so greatly that we thought it advisable to vary the
attack to Metaphysics. We sent for a copy of a book called the “Dial,” and
read out of it a chapter or two about something that is not very clear,
but which the Bostonians call the Great Movement of Progress.

The Count merely said that Great Movements were awfully common things in
his day, and as for Progress, it was at one time quite a nuisance, but it
never progressed.

We then spoke of the great beauty and importance of Democracy, and were at
much trouble in impressing the Count with a due sense of the advantages we
enjoyed in living where there was suffrage ad libitum, and no king.

He listened with marked interest, and in fact seemed not a little amused.
When we had done, he said that, a great while ago, there had occurred
something of a very similar sort. Thirteen Egyptian provinces determined
all at once to be free, and to set a magnificent example to the rest of
mankind. They assembled their wise men, and concocted the most ingenious
constitution it is possible to conceive. For a while they managed
remarkably well; only their habit of bragging was prodigious. The thing
ended, however, in the consolidation of the thirteen states, with some
fifteen or twenty others, in the most odious and insupportable despotism
that was ever heard of upon the face of the Earth.

I asked what was the name of the usurping tyrant.

As well as the Count could recollect, it was Mob.

Not knowing what to say to this, I raised my voice, and deplored the
Egyptian ignorance of steam.

The Count looked at me with much astonishment, but made no answer. The
silent gentleman, however, gave me a violent nudge in the ribs with his
elbows—told me I had sufficiently exposed myself for once—and
demanded if I was really such a fool as not to know that the modern
steam-engine is derived from the invention of Hero, through Solomon de
Caus.

We were now in imminent danger of being discomfited; but, as good luck
would have it, Doctor Ponnonner, having rallied, returned to our rescue,
and inquired if the people of Egypt would seriously pretend to rival the
moderns in the all-important particular of dress.

The Count, at this, glanced downward to the straps of his pantaloons, and
then taking hold of the end of one of his coat-tails, held it up close to
his eyes for some minutes. Letting it fall, at last, his mouth extended
itself very gradually from ear to ear; but I do not remember that he said
any thing in the way of reply.

Hereupon we recovered our spirits, and the Doctor, approaching the Mummy
with great dignity, desired it to say candidly, upon its honor as a
gentleman, if the Egyptians had comprehended, at any period, the
manufacture of either Ponnonner’s lozenges or Brandreth’s pills.

We looked, with profound anxiety, for an answer—but in vain. It was
not forthcoming. The Egyptian blushed and hung down his head. Never was
triumph more consummate; never was defeat borne with so ill a grace.
Indeed, I could not endure the spectacle of the poor Mummy’s
mortification. I reached my hat, bowed to him stiffly, and took leave.

Upon getting home I found it past four o’clock, and went immediately to
bed. It is now ten A.M. I have been up since seven, penning these
memoranda for the benefit of my family and of mankind. The former I shall
behold no more. My wife is a shrew. The truth is, I am heartily sick of
this life and of the nineteenth century in general. I am convinced that
every thing is going wrong. Besides, I am anxious to know who will be
President in 2045. As soon, therefore, as I shave and swallow a cup of
coffee, I shall just step over to Ponnonner’s and get embalmed for a
couple of hundred years.

THE POETIC PRINCIPLE

In speaking of the Poetic Principle, I have no design to be either
thorough or profound. While discussing, very much at random, the
essentiality of what we call Poetry, my principal purpose will be to cite
for consideration, some few of those minor English or American poems which
best suit my own taste, or which, upon my own fancy, have left the most
definite impression. By “minor poems” I mean, of course, poems of little
length. And here, in the beginning, permit me to say a few words in regard
to a somewhat peculiar principle, which, whether rightfully or wrongfully,
has always had its influence in my own critical estimate of the poem. I
hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, “a long
poem,” is simply a flat contradiction in terms.

I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it
excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of
this elevating excitement. But all excitements are, through a psychal
necessity, transient. That degree of excitement which would entitle a poem
to be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a composition of
any great length. After the lapse of half an hour, at the very utmost, it
flags—fails—a revulsion ensues—and then the poem is, in
effect, and in fact, no longer such.

There are, no doubt, many who have found difficulty in reconciling the
critical dictum that the “Paradise Lost” is to be devoutly admired
throughout, with the absolute impossibility of maintaining for it, during
perusal, the amount of enthusiasm which that critical dictum would demand.
This great work, in fact, is to be regarded as poetical, only when, losing
sight of that vital requisite in all works of Art, Unity, we view it
merely as a series of minor poems. If, to preserve its Unity—its
totality of effect or impression—we read it (as would be necessary)
at a single sitting, the result is but a constant alternation of
excitement and depression. After a passage of what we feel to be true
poetry, there follows, inevitably, a passage of platitude which no
critical prejudgment can force us to admire; but if, upon completing the
work, we read it again, omitting the first book—that is to say,
commencing with the second—we shall be surprised at now finding that
admirable which we before condemned—that damnable which we had
previously so much admired. It follows from all this that the ultimate,
aggregate, or absolute effect of even the best epic under the sun, is a
nullity:—and this is precisely the fact.

In regard to the Iliad, we have, if not positive proof, at least very good
reason for believing it intended as a series of lyrics; but, granting the
epic intention, I can say only that the work is based in an imperfect
sense of art. The modern epic is, of the supposititious ancient model, but
an inconsiderate and blindfold imitation. But the day of these artistic
anomalies is over. If, at any time, any very long poem were popular
in reality, which I doubt, it is at least clear that no very long poem
will ever be popular again.

That the extent of a poetical work is, ceteris paribus, the measure
of its merit, seems undoubtedly, when we thus state it, a proposition
sufficiently absurd—yet we are indebted for it to the Quarterly
Reviews. Surely there can be nothing in mere size, abstractly
considered—there can be nothing in mere bulk, so far as a
volume is concerned, which has so continuously elicited admiration from
these saturnine pamphlets! A mountain, to be sure, by the mere sentiment
of physical magnitude which it conveys, does impress us with a
sense of the sublime—but no man is impressed after this fashion
by the material grandeur of even “The Columbiad.” Even the Quarterlies
have not instructed us to be so impressed by it. As yet, they have
not insisted on our estimating “Lamar” tine by the cubic foot, or
Pollock by the pound—but what else are we to infer from their
continual plating about “sustained effort”? If, by “sustained effort,” any
little gentleman has accomplished an epic, let us frankly commend him for
the effort—if this indeed be a thing conk mendable—but let us
forbear praising the epic on the effort’s account. It is to be hoped that
common sense, in the time to come, will prefer deciding upon a work of Art
rather by the impression it makes—by the effect it produces—than
by the time it took to impress the effect, or by the amount of “sustained
effort” which had been found necessary in effecting the impression. The
fact is, that perseverance is one thing and genius quite another—nor
can all the Quarterlies in Christendom confound them. By and by, this
proposition, with many which I have been just urging, will be received as
self-evident. In the meantime, by being generally condemned as falsities,
they will not be essentially damaged as truths.

On the other hand, it is clear that a poem may be improperly brief. Undue
brevity degenerates into mere epigrammatism. A very short poem, while now
and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never produces a profound or
enduring effect. There must be the steady pressing down of the stamp upon
the wax. De Beranger has wrought innumerable things, pungent and
spirit-stirring, but in general they have been too imponderous to stamp
themselves deeply into the public attention, and thus, as so many feathers
of fancy, have been blown aloft only to be whistled down the wind.

A remarkable instance of the effect of undue brevity in depressing a poem,
in keeping it out of the popular view, is afforded by the following
exquisite little Serenade—

I arise from dreams of thee
    In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
    And the stars are shining bright.
I arise from dreams of thee,
    And a spirit in my feet
Has led me—who knows how?—
    To thy chamber-window, sweet!

The wandering airs they faint
    On the dark the silent stream—
The champak odors fail
    Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale’s complaint,
    It dies upon her heart,
As I must die on shine,
    O, beloved as thou art!

O, lift me from the grass!
    I die, I faint, I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
    On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
    My heart beats loud and fast:
O, press it close to shine again,
    Where it will break at last.

Very few perhaps are familiar with these lines—yet no less a poet
than Shelley is their author. Their warm, yet delicate and ethereal
imagination will be appreciated by all, but by none so thoroughly as by
him who has himself arisen from sweet dreams of one beloved to bathe in
the aromatic air of a southern midsummer night.

One of the finest poems by Willis—the very best in my opinion which
he has ever written—has no doubt, through this same defect of undue
brevity, been kept back from its proper position, not less in the

In this composition we find it difficult to recognize the Willis who has
written so many mere “verses of society.” The lines are not only richly
ideal, but full of energy, while they breathe an earnestness, an evident
sincerity of sentiment, for which we look in vain throughout all the other
works of this author.

While the epic mania, while the idea that to merit in poetry prolixity is
indispensable, has for some years past been gradually dying out of the
public mind, by mere dint of its own absurdity, we find it succeeded by a
heresy too palpably false to be long tolerated, but one which, in the
brief period it has already endured, may be said to have accomplished more
in the corruption of our Poetical Literature than all its other enemies
combined. I allude to the heresy of The Didactic. It has been
assumed, tacitly and avowedly, directly and indirectly, that the ultimate
object of all Poetry is Truth. Every poem, it is said, should inculcate a
morals and by this moral is the poetical merit of the work to be adjudged.
We Americans especially have patronized this happy idea, and we Bostonians
very especially have developed it in full. We have taken it into our heads
that to write a poem simply for the poem’s sake, and to acknowledge such
to have been our design, would be to confess ourselves radically wanting
in the true poetic dignity and force:—but the simple fact is that
would we but permit ourselves to look into our own souls we should
immediately there discover that under the sun there neither exists nor can
exist any work more thoroughly dignified, more supremely noble, than
this very poem, this poem per se, this poem which is a poem and
nothing more, this poem written solely for the poem’s sake.

With as deep a reverence for the True as ever inspired the bosom of man, I
would nevertheless limit, in some measure, its modes of inculcation. I
would limit to enforce them. I would not enfeeble them by dissipation. The
demands of Truth are severe. She has no sympathy with the myrtles. All that
which is so indispensable in Song is precisely all that with
which she has nothing whatever to do. It is but making her a
flaunting paradox to wreathe her in gems and flowers. In enforcing a truth
we need severity rather than efflorescence of language. We must be simple,
precise, terse. We must be cool, calm, unimpassioned. In a word, we must
be in that mood which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse of the
poetical. He must be blind indeed who does not perceive the radical
and chasmal difference between the truthful and the poetical modes of
inculcation. He must be theory-mad beyond redemption who, in spite of
these differences, shall still persist in attempting to reconcile the
obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.

Dividing the world of mind into its three most immediately obvious
distinctions, we have the Pure Intellect, Taste, and the Moral Sense. I
place Taste in the middle, because it is just this position which in the
mind it occupies. It holds intimate relations with either extreme; but
from the Moral Sense is separated by so faint a difference that Aristotle
has not hesitated to place some of its operations among the virtues
themselves. Nevertheless we find the offices of the trio marked
with a sufficient distinction. Just as the Intellect concerns itself with
Truth, so Taste informs us of the Beautiful, while the Moral Sense is
regardful of Duty. Of this latter, while Conscience teaches the
obligation, and Reason the expediency, Taste contents herself with
displaying the charms:—waging war upon Vice solely on the ground of
her deformity—her disproportion—her animosity to the fitting,
to the appropriate, to the harmonious—in a word, to Beauty.

An immortal instinct deep within the spirit of man is thus plainly a sense
of the Beautiful. This it is which administers to his delight in the
manifold forms, and sounds, and odors and sentiments amid which he exists.
And just as the lily is repeated in the lake, or the eyes of Amaryllis in
the mirror, so is the mere oral or written repetition of these forms, and
sounds, and colors, and odors, and sentiments a duplicate source of the
light. But this mere repetition is not poetry. He who shall simply sing,
with however glowing enthusiasm, or with however vivid a truth of
description, of the sights, and sounds, and odors, and colors, and
sentiments which greet him in common with all mankind—he, I
say, has yet failed to prove his divine title. There is still a something
in the distance which he has been unable to attain. We have still a thirst
unquenchable, to allay which he has not shown us the crystal springs. This
thirst belongs to the immortality of Man. It is at once a consequence and
an indication of his perennial existence. It is the desire of the moth for
the star. It is no mere appreciation of the Beauty before us, but a wild
effort to reach the Beauty above. Inspired by an ecstatic prescience of
the glories beyond the grave, we struggle by multiform combinations among
the things and thoughts of Time to attain a portion of that Loveliness
whose very elements perhaps appertain to eternity alone. And thus when by
Poetry, or when by Music, the most entrancing of the poetic moods, we find
ourselves melted into tears, we weep then, not as the Abbate Gravina
supposes, through excess of pleasure, but through a certain petulant,
impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at
once and for ever, those divine and rapturous joys of which through’
the poem, or through the music, we attain to but brief and
indeterminate glimpses.

The struggle to apprehend the supernal Loveliness—this struggle, on
the part of souls fittingly constituted—has given to the world all
that which it (the world) has ever been enabled at once to
understand and to feel as poetic.

The Poetic Sentiment, of course, may develop itself in various modes—in
Painting, in Sculpture, in Architecture, in the Dance—very
especially in Music—and very peculiarly, and with a wide field, in
the com position of the Landscape Garden. Our present theme, however, has
regard only to its manifestation in words. And here let me speak briefly
on the topic of rhythm. Contenting myself with the certainty that Music,
in its various modes of metre, rhythm, and rhyme, is of so vast a moment
in Poetry as never to be wisely rejected—is so vitally important an
adjunct, that he is simply silly who declines its assistance, I will not
now pause to maintain its absolute essentiality. It is in Music perhaps
that the soul most nearly attains the great end for which, when inspired
by the Poetic Sentiment, it struggles—the creation of supernal
Beauty. It may be, indeed, that here this sublime end is, now and
then, attained in fact. We are often made to feel, with a shivering
delight, that from an earthly harp are stricken notes which cannot have
been unfamiliar to the angels. And thus there can be little doubt that in
the union of Poetry with Music in its popular sense, we shall find the
widest field for the Poetic development. The old Bards and Minnesingers
had advantages which we do not possess—and Thomas Moore, singing his
own songs, was, in the most legitimate manner, perfecting them as poems.

To recapitulate then:—I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words
as The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is Taste.
With the Intellect or with the Conscience it has only collateral
relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with
Duty or with Truth.

A few words, however, in explanation. That pleasure which is at
once the most pure, the most elevating, and the most intense, is derived,
I maintain, from the contemplation of the Beautiful. In the contemplation
of Beauty we alone find it possible to attain that pleasurable elevation,
or excitement of the soul, which we recognize as the Poetic
Sentiment, and which is so easily distinguished from Truth, which is the
satisfaction of the Reason, or from Passion, which is the excitement of
the heart. I make Beauty, therefore—using the word as inclusive of
the sublime—I make Beauty the province of the poem, simply because
it is an obvious rule of Art that effects should be made to spring as
directly as possible from their causes:—no one as yet having been
weak enough to deny that the peculiar elevation in question is at least most
readily attainable in the poem. It by no means follows, however, that
the incitements of Passion’ or the precepts of Duty, or even the lessons
of Truth, may not be introduced into a poem, and with advantage; for they
may subserve incidentally, in various ways, the general purposes of the
work: but the true artist will always contrive to tone them down in proper
subjection to that Beauty which is the atmosphere and the real
essence of the poem.

I cannot better introduce the few poems which I shall present for your
consideration, than by the citation of the Proem to Longfellow’s “Waif”:—

With no great range of imagination, these lines have been justly admired
for their delicacy of expression. Some of the images are very effective.
Nothing can be better than—

The idea of the last quatrain is also very effective. The poem on the
whole, however, is chiefly to be admired for the graceful insouciance
of its metre, so well in accordance with the character of the
sentiments, and especially for the ease of the general manner. This
“ease” or naturalness, in a literary style, it has long been the fashion
to regard as ease in appearance alone—as a point of really difficult
attainment. But not so:—a natural manner is difficult only to him
who should never meddle with it—to the unnatural. It is but the
result of writing with the understanding, or with the instinct, that the
tone, in composition, should always be that which the mass of mankind
would adopt—and must perpetually vary, of course, with the occasion.
The author who, after the fashion of “The North American Review,” should
be upon all occasions merely “quiet,” must necessarily upon many
occasions be simply silly, or stupid; and has no more right to be
considered “easy” or “natural” than a Cockney exquisite, or than the
sleeping Beauty in the waxworks.

Among the minor poems of Bryant, none has so much impressed me as the one
which he entitles “June.” I quote only a portion of it:—

The rhythmical flow here is even voluptuous—nothing could be more
melodious. The poem has always affected me in a remarkable manner. The
intense melancholy which seems to well up, perforce, to the surface of all
the poet’s cheerful sayings about his grave, we find thrilling us to the
soul—while there is the truest poetic elevation in the thrill. The
impression left is one of a pleasurable sadness. And if, in the remaining
compositions which I shall introduce to you, there be more or less of a
similar tone always apparent, let me remind you that (how or why we know
not) this certain taint of sadness is inseparably connected with all the
higher manifestations of true Beauty. It is, nevertheless,

The taint of which I speak is clearly perceptible even in a poem so full
of brilliancy and spirit as “The Health” of Edward Coate Pinckney:—

It was the misfortune of Mr. Pinckney to have been born too far south. Had
he been a New Englander, it is probable that he would have been ranked as
the first of American lyrists by that magnanimous cabal which has so long
controlled the destinies of American Letters, in conducting the thing
called “The North American Review.” The poem just cited is especially
beautiful; but the poetic elevation which it induces we must refer chiefly
to our sympathy in the poet’s enthusiasm. We pardon his hyperboles for the
evident earnestness with which they are uttered.

It was by no means my design, however, to expatiate upon the merits
of what I should read you. These will necessarily speak for
themselves. Boccalini, in his “Advertisements from Parnassus,” tells us
that Zoilus once presented Apollo a very caustic criticism upon a very
admirable book:—whereupon the god asked him for the beauties of the
work. He replied that he only busied himself about the errors. On hearing
this, Apollo, handing him a sack of unwinnowed wheat, bade him pick out all
the chaff for his reward.

Now this fable answers very well as a hit at the critics—but I am by
no means sure that the god was in the right. I am by no means certain that
the true limits of the critical duty are not grossly misunderstood.
Excellence, in a poem especially, may be considered in the light of an
axiom, which need only be properly put, to become self-evident. It
is not excellence if it require to be demonstrated as such:—and
thus to point out too particularly the merits of a work of Art, is to
admit that they are not merits altogether.

Among the “Melodies” of Thomas Moore is one whose distinguished character
as a poem proper seems to have been singularly left out of view. I allude
to his lines beginning—“Come, rest in this bosom.” The intense
energy of their expression is not surpassed by anything in Byron. There
are two of the lines in which a sentiment is conveyed that embodies the all
in all of the divine passion of Love—a sentiment which, perhaps,
has found its echo in more, and in more passionate, human hearts than any
other single sentiment ever embodied in words:—

It has been the fashion of late days to deny Moore Imagination, while
granting him Fancy—a distinction originating with Coleridge—than
whom no man more fully comprehended the great powers of Moore. The fact
is, that the fancy of this poet so far predominates over all his other
faculties, and over the fancy of all other men, as to have induced, very
naturally, the idea that he is fanciful only. But never was there a
greater mistake. Never was a grosser wrong done the fame of a true poet.
In the compass of the English language I can call to mind no poem more
profoundly—more weirdly imaginative, in the best sense, than
the lines commencing—“I would I were by that dim lake”—which
are the com. position of Thomas Moore. I regret that I am unable to
remember them.

One of the noblest—and, speaking of Fancy—one of the most
singularly fanciful of modern poets, was Thomas Hood. His “Fair Ines” had
always for me an inexpressible charm:—

“The Haunted House,” by the same author, is one of the truest poems ever
written,—one of the truest, one of the most unexceptionable, one of
the most thoroughly artistic, both in its theme and in its execution. It
is, moreover, powerfully ideal—imaginative. I regret that its length
renders it unsuitable for the purposes of this lecture. In place of it
permit me to offer the universally appreciated “Bridge of Sighs”:—

The vigor of this poem is no less remarkable than its pathos. The
versification although carrying the fanciful to the very verge of the
fantastic, is nevertheless admirably adapted to the wild insanity which is
the thesis of the poem.

Among the minor poems of Lord Byron is one which has never received from
the critics the praise which it undoubtedly deserves:—

Although the rhythm here is one of the most difficult, the versification
could scarcely be improved. No nobler theme ever engaged the pen of
poet. It is the soul-elevating idea that no man can consider himself
entitled to complain of Fate while in his adversity he still retains the
unwavering love of woman.

From Alfred Tennyson, although in perfect sincerity I regard him as the
noblest poet that ever lived, I have left myself time to cite only a very
brief specimen. I call him, and think him the noblest of poets, not
because the impressions he produces are at all times the most
profound—not because the poetical excitement which he induces
is at all times the most intense—but because it is at all
times the most ethereal—in other words, the most elevating and most
pure. No poet is so little of the earth, earthy. What I am about to read
is from his last long poem, “The Princess”:—

Thus, although in a very cursory and imperfect manner, I have endeavored
to convey to you my conception of the Poetic Principle. It has been my
purpose to suggest that, while this principle itself is strictly and
simply the Human Aspiration for Supernal Beauty, the manifestation of the
Principle is always found in an elevating excitement of the soul, quite
independent of that passion which is the intoxication of the Heart, or of
that truth which is the satisfaction of the Reason. For in regard to
passion, alas! its tendency is to degrade rather than to elevate the Soul.
Love, on the contrary—Love—the true, the divine Eros—the
Uranian as distinguished from the Diona an Venus—is unquestionably
the purest and truest of all poetical themes. And in regard to Truth, if,
to be sure, through the attainment of a truth we are led to perceive a
harmony where none was apparent before, we experience at once the true
poetical effect; but this effect is referable to the harmony alone, and
not in the least degree to the truth which merely served to render the
harmony manifest.

We shall reach, however, more immediately a distinct conception of what
the true Poetry is, by mere reference to a few of the simple elements
which induce in the Poet himself the poetical effect He recognizes the
ambrosia which nourishes his soul in the bright orbs that shine in Heaven—in
the volutes of the flower—in the clustering of low shrubberies—in
the waving of the grain-fields—in the slanting of tall eastern trees—in
the blue distance of mountains—in the grouping of clouds—in
the twinkling of half-hidden brooks—in the gleaming of silver rivers—in
the repose of sequestered lakes—in the star-mirroring depths of
lonely wells. He perceives it in the songs of birds—in the harp of
Bolos—in the sighing of the night-wind—in the repining voice
of the forest—in the surf that complains to the shore—in the
fresh breath of the woods—in the scent of the violet—in the
voluptuous perfume of the hyacinth—in the suggestive odour that
comes to him at eventide from far distant undiscovered islands, over dim
oceans, illimitable and unexplored. He owns it in all noble thoughts—in
all unworldly motives—in all holy impulses—in all chivalrous,
generous, and self-sacrificing deeds. He feels it in the beauty of woman—in
the grace of her step—in the lustre of her eye—in the melody
of her voice—in her soft laughter, in her sigh—in the harmony
of the rustling of her robes. He deeply feels it in her winning
endearments—in her burning enthusiasms—in her gentle charities—in
her meek and devotional endurances—but above all—ah, far above
all, he kneels to it—he worships it in the faith, in the purity, in
the strength, in the altogether divine majesty—of her love.

Let me conclude by—the recitation of yet another brief poem—one
very different in character from any that I have before quoted. It is by
Motherwell, and is called “The Song of the Cavalier.” With our modern and
altogether rational ideas of the absurdity and impiety of warfare, we are
not precisely in that frame of mind best adapted to sympathize with the
sentiments, and thus to appreciate the real excellence of the poem. To do
this fully we must identify ourselves in fancy with the soul of the old
cavalier:—

OLD ENGLISH POETRY (*)

It should not be doubted that at least one-third of the affection with
which we regard the elder poets of Great Britain should be-attributed to
what is, in itself, a thing apart from poetry-we mean to the simple love
of the antique-and that, again, a third of even the proper poetic
sentiment inspiredby their writings should be ascribed to a fact
which, while it has strict connection with poetry in the abstract, and
with the old British poems themselves, should not be looked upon as a
merit appertaining to the authors of the poems. Almost every devout
admirer of the old bards, if demanded his opinion of their productions,
would mention vaguely, yet with perfect sincerity, a sense of dreamy,
wild, indefinite, and he would perhaps say, indefinable delight; on being
required to point out the source of this so shadowy pleasure, he would be
apt to speak of the quaint in phraseology and in general handling. This
quaintness is, in fact, a very powerful adjunct to ideality, but in the
case in question it arises independently of the author’s will, and is
altogether apart from his intention. Words and their rhythm have varied.
Verses which affect us to-day with a vivid delight, and which delight, in
many instances, may be traced to the one source, quaintness, must have
worn in the days of their construction, a very commonplace air. This is,
of course, no argument against the poems now-we mean it only as against
the poets thew. There is a growing desire to overrate them. The old
English muse was frank, guileless, sincere, and although very learned,
still learned without art. No general error evinces a more thorough
confusion of ideas than the error of supposing Donne and Cowley
metaphysical in the sense wherein Wordsworth and Coleridge are so. With
the two former ethics were the end-with the two latter the means. The poet
of the “Creation” wished, by highly artificial verse, to inculcate what he
supposed to be moral truth-the poet of the “Ancient Mariner” to infuse the
Poetic Sentiment through channels suggested by analysis. The one finished
by complete failure what he commenced in the grossest misconception; the
other, by a path which could not possibly lead him astray, arrived at a
triumph which is not the less glorious because hidden from the profane
eyes of the multitude. But in this view even the “metaphysical verse” of
Cowley is but evidence of the simplicity and single-heartedness of the
man. And he was in this but a type of his school-for we may as well
designate in this way the entire class of writers whose poems are bound up
in the volume before us, and throughout all of whom there runs a very
perceptible general character. They used little art in composition. Their
writings sprang immediately from the soul-and partook intensely of that
soul’s nature. Nor is it difficult to perceive the tendency of this abandon-to
elevate immeasurably all the energies of mind-but, again, so to mingle
the greatest possible fire, force, delicacy, and all good things, with the
lowest possible bathos, baldness, and imbecility, as to render it not a
matter of doubt that the average results of mind in such a school will be
found inferior to those results in one (ceteris paribus) more
artificial.

We can not bring ourselves to believe that the selections of the “Book of
Gems” are such as will impart to a poetical reader the clearest possible
idea of the beauty of the school-but if the intention had been merely to
show the school’s character, the attempt might have been considered
successful in the highest degree. There are long passages now before us of
the most despicable trash, with no merit whatever beyond that of their
antiquity. The criticisms of the editor do not particularly please us.
His enthusiasm is too general and too vivid not to be false. His opinion,
for example, of Sir Henry Wotton’s “Verses on the Queen of Bohemia”—that
“there are few finer things in our language,” is untenable and absurd.

In such lines we can perceive not one of those higher attributes of Poesy
which belong to her in all circumstances and throughout all time. Here
every thing is art, nakedly, or but awkwardly concealed. No prepossession
for the mere antique (and in this case we can imagine no other
prepossession) should induce us to dignify with the sacred name of poetry,
a series, such as this, of elaborate and threadbare compliments, stitched,
apparently, together, without fancy, without plausibility, and without
even an attempt at adaptation.

In common with all the world, we have been much delighted with “The
Shepherd’s Hunting” by Withers—a poem partaking, in a remarkable
degree, of the peculiarities of “Il Penseroso.” Speaking of Poesy the
author says:

But these lines, however good, do not bear with them much of the general
character of the English antique. Something more of this will be found in
Corbet’s “Farewell to the Fairies!” We copy a portion of Marvell’s “Maiden
lamenting for her Fawn,” which we prefer-not only as a specimen of the
elder poets, but in itself as a beautiful poem, abounding in pathos,
exquisitely delicate imagination and truthfulness-to anything of its
species:

How truthful an air of lamentations hangs here upon every syllable! It
pervades all. It comes over the sweet melody of the words-over the
gentleness and grace which we fancy in the little maiden herself-even over
the half-playful, half-petulant air with which she lingers on the beauties
and good qualities of her favorite-like the cool shadow of a summer cloud
over a bed of lilies and violets, “and all sweet flowers.” The whole is
redolent with poetry of a very lofty order. Every line is an idea
conveying either the beauty and playfulness of the fawn, or the
artlessness of the maiden, or her love, or her admiration, or her grief,
or the fragrance and warmth and appropriateness of the little
nest-like bed of lilies and roses which the fawn devoured as it lay upon
them, and could scarcely be distinguished from them by the once happy
little damsel who went to seek her pet with an arch and rosy smile on her
face. Consider the great variety of truthful and delicate thought in the
few lines we have quoted the wonder of the little maiden at the
fleetness of her favorite-the “little silver feet”—the fawn
challenging his mistress to a race with “a pretty skipping grace,” running
on before, and then, with head turned back, awaiting her approach only to
fly from it again-can we not distinctly perceive all these things? How
exceedingly vigorous, too, is the line,

“And trod as if on the four winds!”

A vigor apparent only when we keep in mind the artless character of the
speaker and the four feet of the favorite, one for each wind. Then
consider the garden of “my own,” so overgrown, entangled with roses and
lilies, as to be “a little wilderness”—the fawn loving to be there,
and there “only”—the maiden seeking it “where it should lie”—and
not being able to distinguish it from the flowers until “itself would
rise”—the lying among the lilies “like a bank of lilies”—the
loving to “fill itself with roses,”

and these things being its “chief” delights-and then the pre-eminent
beauty and naturalness of the concluding lines, whose very hyperbole only
renders them more true to nature when we consider the innocence, the
artlessness, the enthusiasm, the passionate girl, and more passionate
admiration of the bereaved child—

“Had it lived long, it would have been Lilies without, roses within.”

* “Book of Gems,” Edited by S. C. Hall

POEMS

PREFACE

These trifles are collected and republished chiefly with a view to their
redemption from the many improvements to which they have been subjected
while going at random the “rounds of the press.” I am naturally anxious
that what I have written should circulate as I wrote it, if it circulate
at all. In defence of my own taste, nevertheless, it is incumbent upon me
to say that I think nothing in this volume of much value to the public, or
very creditable to myself. Events not to be controlled have prevented me
from making, at any time, any serious effort in what, under happier
circumstances, would have been the field of my choice. With me poetry has
been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in
reverence: they must not-they can not at will be excited, with an eye to
the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of man-kind.

POEMS OF LATER LIFE

THE RAVEN.

Published 1845.

THE BELLS.

1849.

ULALUME

1847.

TO HELEN

ANNABEL LEE.

1849.

A VALENTINE.

1846.

[To discover the names in this and the following poem read the first
letter of the first line in connection with the second letter of the
second line, the third letter of the third line, the fourth of the fourth
and so on to the end.]

AN ENIGMA

1847. TO MY MOTHER

1849.

[The above was addressed to the poet’s mother-in-law, Mrs. Clemm—Ed.]

FOR ANNIE

1849.

TO F——.

1845.

TO FRANCES S. OSGOOD

1845.

ELDORADO.

1849.

1845.

1849

TO MARIE LOUISE (SHEW)

1847.

TO MARIE LOUISE (SHEW)

1848.

THE CITY IN THE SEA.

1845.

THE SLEEPER.

1845.

1845.

NOTES

1. “The Raven” was first published on the 29th January, 1845, in the New
York “Evening Mirror”-a paper its author was then assistant editor of. It
was prefaced by the following words, understood to have been written by N.
P. Willis: “We are permitted to copy (in advance of publication) from the
second number of the “American Review,” the following remarkable poem by
Edgar Poe. In our opinion, it is the most effective single example of
‘fugitive poetry’ ever published in this country, and unsurpassed in
English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification,
and consistent sustaining of imaginative lift and ‘pokerishness.’ It is
one of those ‘dainties bred in a book’ which we feed on. It will stick to
the memory of everybody who reads it.” In the February number of the
“American Review” the poem was published as by “Quarles,” and it was
introduced by the following note, evidently suggested if not written by
Poe himself.

[“The following lines from a correspondent-besides the deep, quaint strain
of the sentiment, and the curious introduction of some ludicrous touches
amidst the serious and impressive, as was doubtless intended by the
author-appears to us one of the most felicitous specimens of unique
rhyming which has for some time met our eye. The resources of English
rhythm for varieties of melody, measure, and sound, producing
corresponding diversities of effect, having been thoroughly studied, much
more perceived, by very few poets in the language. While the classic
tongues, especially the Greek, possess, by power of accent, several
advantages for versification over our own, chiefly through greater
abundance of spondaic feet, we have other and very great advantages of
sound by the modern usage of rhyme. Alliteration is nearly the only effect
of that kind which the ancients had in common with us. It will be seen
that much of the melody of ‘The Raven’ arises from alliteration, and the
studious use of similar sounds in unusual places. In regard to its
measure, it may be noted that if all the verses were like the second, they
might properly be placed merely in short lines, producing a not uncommon
form; but the presence in all the others of one line-mostly the second in
the verse” (stanza?)—“which flows continuously, with only an
aspirate pause in the middle, like that before the short line in the
Sapphic Adonic, while the fifth has at the middle pause no similarity of
sound with any part besides, gives the versification an entirely different
effect. We could wish the capacities of our noble language in prosody were
better understood.”—ED. “Am. Rev.”]

2. The bibliographical history of “The Bells” is curious. The subject, and
some lines of the original version, having been suggested by the poet’s
friend, Mrs. Shew, Poe, when he wrote out the first draft of the poem,
headed it, “The Bells, By Mrs. M. A. Shew.” This draft, now the editor’s
property, consists of only seventeen lines, and read thus:

In the autumn of 1848 Poe added another line to this poem, and sent it to
the editor of the “Union Magazine.” It was not published. So, in the
following February, the poet forwarded to the same periodical a much
enlarged and altered transcript. Three months having elapsed without
publication, another revision of the poem, similar to the current version,
was sent, and in the following October was published in the “Union
Magazine.”

3. This poem was first published in Colton’s “American Review” for
December, 1847, as “To—Ulalume: a Ballad.” Being reprinted
immediately in the “Home Journal,” it was copied into various publications
with the name of the editor, N. P. Willis, appended, and was ascribed to
him. When first published, it contained the following additional stanza
which Poe subsequently, at the suggestion of Mrs. Whitman, wisely
suppressed:

4. “To Helen” (Mrs. S. Helen Whitman) was not published until November,
1848, although written several months earlier. It first appeared in the
“Union Magazine,” and with the omission, contrary to the knowledge or
desire of Poe, of the line, “Oh, God! oh, Heaven—how my heart beats
in coupling those two words.”

5. “Annabel Lee” was written early in 1849, and is evidently an expression
of the poet’s undying love for his deceased bride, although at least one
of his lady admirers deemed it a response to her admiration. Poe sent a
copy of the ballad to the “Union Magazine,” in which publication it
appeared in January, 1850, three months after the author’s death. While
suffering from “hope deferred” as to its fate, Poe presented a copy of
“Annabel Lee” to the editor of the “Southern Literary Messenger,” who
published it in the November number of his periodical, a month after Poe’s
death. In the meantime the poet’s own copy, left among his papers, passed
into the hands of the person engaged to edit his works, and he quoted the
poem in an obituary of Poe, in the New York “Tribune,” before any one else
had an opportunity of publishing it.

6. “A Valentine,” one of three poems addressed to Mrs. Osgood, appears to
have been written early in 1846.

7. “An Enigma,” addressed to Mrs. Sarah Anna Lewis (“Stella”), was sent to
that lady in a letter, in November, 1847, and the following March appeared
in Sartain’s “Union Magazine.”

8. The sonnet, “To My Mother” (Maria Clemm), was sent for publication to
the short-lived “Flag of our Union,” early in 1849, but does not appear
to have been issued until after its author’s death, when it appeared in
the “Leaflets of Memory” for 1850.

9. “For Annie” was first published in the “Flag of our Union,” in the
spring of 1849. Poe, annoyed at some misprints in this issue, shortly
afterwards caused a corrected copy to be inserted in the “Home Journal.”

10. “To F——” (Frances Sargeant Osgood) appeared in the
“Broadway Journal” for April, 1845. These lines are but slightly varied
from those inscribed “To Mary,” in the “Southern Literary Messenger” for
July, 1835, and subsequently republished, with the two stanzas transposed,
in “Graham’s Magazine” for March, 1842, as “To One Departed.”

11. “To F——s S. O—d,” a portion of the poet’s triune
tribute to Mrs. Osgood, was published in the “Broadway Journal” for
September, 1845. The earliest version of these lines appeared in the
“Southern Literary Messenger” for September, 1835, as “Lines written in an
Album,” and was addressed to Eliza White, the proprietor’s daughter.
Slightly revised, the poem reappeared in Burton’s “Gentleman’s Magazine”
for August, 1839, as “To——.”

12. Although “Eldorado” was published during Poe’s lifetime, in 1849, in
the “Flag of our Union,” it does not appear to have ever received the
author’s finishing touches.

POEMS OF MANHOOD

LENORE

TO ONE IN PARADISE.

1835.

THE COLISEUM.

1833.

THE HAUNTED PALACE.

1838.

THE CONQUEROR WORM.

1838.

SILENCE

1840.

DREAM-LAND

1844.

HYMN

1835.

TO ZANTE

1837.

SCENES FROM “POLITIAN”

AN UNPUBLISHED DRAMA.

NOTE

29. Such portions of “Politian” as are known to the public first saw the
light of publicity in the “Southern Literary Messenger” for December,
1835, and January, 1836, being styled “Scenes from Politian: an
unpublished drama.” These scenes were included, unaltered, in the 1845
collection of Poems, by Poe. The larger portion of the original draft
subsequently became the property of the present editor, but it is not
considered just to the poet’s memory to publish it. The work is a hasty
and unrevised production of its author’s earlier days of literary labor;
and, beyond the scenes already known, scarcely calculated to enhance his
reputation. As a specimen, however, of the parts unpublished, the
following fragment from the first scene of Act II. may be offered. The
Duke, it should be premised, is uncle to Alessandra, and father of
Castiglione her betrothed.

POEMS OF YOUTH

INTRODUCTION TO POEMS—1831

LETTER TO MR. B—.

“Dear B…… Believing only a portion of my former volume to be worthy
a second edition-that small portion I thought it as well to include in the
present book as to republish by itself. I have therefore herein combined
‘Al Aaraaf’ and ‘Tamerlane’ with other poems hitherto unprinted. Nor have
I hesitated to insert from the ‘Minor Poems,’ now omitted, whole lines,
and even passages, to the end that being placed in a fairer light, and the
trash shaken from them in which they were imbedded, they may have some
chance of being seen by posterity.

“It has been said that a good critique on a poem may be written by one who
is no poet himself. This, according to your idea and mine of
poetry, I feel to be false-the less poetical the critic, the less just the
critique, and the converse. On this account, and because there are but few
B-’s in the world, I would be as much ashamed of the world’s good opinion
as proud of your own. Another than yourself might here observe,
‘Shakespeare is in possession of the world’s good opinion, and yet
Shakespeare is the greatest of poets. It appears then that the world judge
correctly, why should you be ashamed of their favorable judgment?’ The
difficulty lies in the interpretation of the word ‘judgment’ or ‘opinion.’
The opinion is the world’s, truly, but it may be called theirs as a man
would call a book his, having bought it; he did not write the book, but it
is his; they did not originate the opinion, but it is theirs. A fool, for
example, thinks Shakespeare a great poet-yet the fool has never read
Shakespeare. But the fool’s neighbor, who is a step higher on the Andes of
the mind, whose head (that is to say, his more exalted thought) is too far
above the fool to be seen or understood, but whose feet (by which I mean
his everyday actions) are sufficiently near to be discerned, and by means
of which that superiority is ascertained, which but for them would never
have been discovered-this neighbor asserts that Shakespeare is a great
poet—the fool believes him, and it is henceforward his opinion.
This neighbor’s own opinion has, in like manner, been adopted from one
above him, and so, ascendingly, to a few gifted individuals who kneel
around the summit, beholding, face to face, the master spirit who stands
upon the pinnacle.

“You are aware of the great barrier in the path of an American writer. He
is read, if at all, in preference to the combined and established wit of
the world. I say established; for it is with literature as with law or
empire-an established name is an estate in tenure, or a throne in
possession. Besides, one might suppose that books, like their authors,
improve by travel-their having crossed the sea is, with us, so great a
distinction. Our antiquaries abandon time for distance; our very fops
glance from the binding to the bottom of the title-page, where the mystic
characters which spell London, Paris, or Genoa, are precisely so many
letters of recommendation.

“I mentioned just now a vulgar error as regards criticism. I think the
notion that no poet can form a correct estimate of his own writings is
another. I remarked before that in proportion to the poetical talent would
be the justice of a critique upon poetry. Therefore a bad poet would, I
grant, make a false critique, and his self-love would infallibly bias his
little judgment in his favor; but a poet, who is indeed a poet, could not,
I think, fail of making-a just critique; whatever should be deducted on
the score of self-love might be replaced on account of his intimate
acquaintance with the subject; in short, we have more instances of false
criticism than of just where one’s own writings are the test, simply
because we have more bad poets than good. There are, of course, many
objections to what I say: Milton is a great example of the contrary; but
his opinion with respect to the ‘Paradise Regained’ is by no means fairly
ascertained. By what trivial circumstances men are often led to assert
what they do not really believe! Perhaps an inadvertent word has descended
to posterity. But, in fact, the ‘Paradise Regained’ is little, if at all,
inferior to the ‘Paradise Lost,’ and is only supposed so to be because men
do not like epics, whatever they may say to the contrary, and, reading
those of Milton in their natural order, are too much wearied with the
first to derive any pleasure from the second.

“I dare say Milton preferred ‘Comus’ to either-. if so-justly.

“As I am speaking of poetry, it will not be amiss to touch slightly upon
the most singular heresy in its modern history-the heresy of what is
called, very foolishly, the Lake School. Some years ago I might have been
induced, by an occasion like the present, to attempt a formal refutation
of their doctrine; at present it would be a work of supererogation. The
wise must bow to the wisdom of such men as Coleridge and Southey, but,
being wise, have laughed at poetical theories so prosaically exemplifled.

“Aristotle, with singular assurance, has declared poetry the most
philosophical of all writings*-but it required a Wordsworth to pronounce
it the most metaphysical. He seems to think that the end of poetry is, or
should be, instruction; yet it is a truism that the end of our existence
is happiness; if so, the end of every separate part of our existence,
everything connected with our existence, should be still happiness.
Therefore the end of instruction should be happiness; and happiness is
another name for pleasure;-therefore the end of instruction should be
pleasure: yet we see the above-mentioned opinion implies precisely the
reverse.

“To proceed: ceteris paribus, he who pleases is of more importance
to his fellow-men than he who instructs, since utility is happiness, and
pleasure is the end already obtained which instruction is merely the means
of obtaining.

“I see no reason, then, why our metaphysical poets should plume themselves
so much on the utility of their works, unless indeed they refer to
instruction with eternity in view; in which case, sincere respect for
their piety would not allow me to express my contempt for their judgment;
contempt which it would be difficult to conceal, since their writings are
professedly to be understood by the few, and it is the many who stand in
need of salvation. In such case I should no doubt be tempted to think of
the devil in ‘Melmoth.’ who labors indefatigably, through three octavo
volumes, to accomplish the destruction of one or two souls, while any
common devil would have demolished one or two thousand.

are lines which have done much mischief. As regards the greater truths,
men oftener err by seeking them at the bottom than at the top; Truth lies
in the huge abysses where wisdom is sought-not in the palpable palaces
where she is found. The ancients were not always right in hiding—the
goddess in a well; witness the light which Bacon has thrown upon
philosophy; witness the principles of our divine faith—that moral
mechanism by which the simplicity of a child may overbalance the wisdom of
a man.

“We see an instance of Coleridge’s liability to err, in his ‘Biographia
Literaria’—professedly his literary life and opinions, but, in fact,
a treatise de omni scibili et quibusdam aliis. He goes wrong by
reason of his very profundity, and of his error we have a natural type in
the contemplation of a star. He who regards it directly and intensely
sees, it is true, the star, but it is the star without a ray-while he who
surveys it less inquisitively is conscious of all for which the star is
useful to us below-its brilliancy and its beauty.

“As to Wordsworth, I have no faith in him. That he had in youth the
feelings of a poet I believe-for there are glimpses of extreme delicacy in
his writings-(and delicacy is the poet’s own kingdom-his El Dorado)-but
they have the appearance of a better day recollected; and glimpses, at
best, are little evidence of present poetic fire; we know that a few
straggling flowers spring up daily in the crevices of the glacier.

“He was to blame in wearing away his youth in contemplation with the end
of poetizing in his manhood. With the increase of his judgment the light
which should make it apparent has faded away. His judgment consequently is
too correct. This may not be understood-but the old Goths of Germany would
have understood it, who used to debate matters of importance to their
State twice, once when drunk, and once when sober-sober that they might
not be deficient in formality—drunk lest they should be destitute of
vigor.

“The long wordy discussions by which he tries to reason us into admiration
of his poetry, speak very little in his favor: they are full of such
assertions as this (I have opened one of his volumes at random)—‘Of
genius the only proof is the act of doing well what is worthy to be done,
and what was never done before;’-indeed? then it follows that in doing
what is unworthy to be done, or what has been done before, no
genius can be evinced; yet the picking of pockets is an unworthy act,
pockets have been picked time immemorial, and Barrington, the pickpocket,
in point of genius, would have thought hard of a comparison with William
Wordsworth, the poet.

“Again, in estimating the merit of certain poems, whether they be Ossian’s
or Macpherson’s can surely be of little consequence, yet, in order to
prove their worthlessness, Mr. W. has expended many pages in the
controversy. Tantaene animis? Can great minds descend to such
absurdity? But worse still: that he may bear down every argument in favor
of these poems, he triumphantly drags forward a passage, in his
abomination with which he expects the reader to sympathize. It is the
beginning of the epic poem ‘Temora.’ ‘The blue waves of Ullin roll in
light; the green hills are covered with day; trees shake their dusty heads
in the breeze.’ And this this gorgeous, yet simple imagery, where all is
alive and panting with immortality-this, William Wordsworth, the author of
‘Peter Bell,’ has selected for his contempt. We shall see what
better he, in his own person, has to offer. Imprimis:

Secondly:

“Now, we have no doubt this is all true: we will believe it, indeed we
will, Mr. W. Is it sympathy for the sheep you wish to excite? I love a
sheep from the bottom of my heart.

“But there are occasions, dear B-, there are occasions when even
Wordsworth is reasonable. Even Stamboul, it is said, shall have an end,
and the most unlucky blunders must come to a conclusion. Here is an
extract from his preface:—

“‘Those who have been accustomed to the phraseology of modern writers, if
they persist in reading this book to a conclusion (impossible!) will,
no doubt, have to struggle with feelings of awkwardness; (ha! ha! ha!)
they will look round for poetry (ha! ha! ha! ha!), and will be induced to
inquire by what species of courtesy these attempts have been permitted to
assume that title.’ Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!

“Yet, let not Mr. W. despair; he has given immortality to a wagon, and the
bee Sophocles has transmitted to eternity a sore toe, and dignified a
tragedy with a chorus of turkeys.

“Of Coleridge, I can not speak but with reverence. His towering intellect!
his gigantic power! To use an author quoted by himself, ‘Tai trouvé
souvent que la plupart des sectes ont raison dans une bonne partie de ce
qu’elles avancent, mais non pas en ce qu’elles nient,’ and to employ
his own language, he has imprisoned his own conceptions by the barrier he
has erected against those of others. It is lamentable to think that such a
mind should be buried in metaphysics, and, like the Nyctanthes, waste its
perfume upon the night alone. In reading that man’s poetry, I tremble like
one who stands upon a volcano, conscious from the very darkness bursting
from the crater, of the fire and the light that are weltering below.

“What is poetry?—Poetry! that Proteus-like idea, with as many
appellations as the nine-titled Corcyra! ‘Give me,’ I demanded of a
scholar some time ago, ‘give me a definition of poetry.’ ‘Trèsvolontiers;’
and he proceeded to his library, brought me a Dr. Johnson, and
overwhelmed me with a definition. Shade of the immortal Shakespeare! I
imagine to myself the scowl of your spiritual eye upon the profanity of
that scurrilous Ursa Major. Think of poetry, dear B-, think of poetry, and
then think of Dr. Samuel Johnson! Think of all that is airy and
fairy-like, and then of all that is hideous and unwieldy; think of his
huge bulk, the Elephant! and then-and then think of the ‘Tempest’—the
‘Midsummer-Night’s Dream’—Prospero Oberon—and Titania!

“A poem, in my opinion, is opposed to a work of science by having, for its
immediate object, pleasure, not truth; to romance, by having, for
its object, an indefinite instead of a definite pleasure,
being a poem only so far as this object is attained; romance presenting
perceptible images with definite, poetry with indefinite sensations, to
which end music is an essential, since the comprehension of sweet
sound is our most indefinite conception. Music, when combined with a
pleasurable idea, is poetry; music, without the idea, is simply music; the
idea, wi thout the music, is prose, from its very definitiveness.

“What was meant by the invective against him who had no music in his soul?

“To sum up this long rigmarole, I have, dear B—, what you, no doubt,
perceive, for the metaphysical poets as poets, the most sovereign
contempt. That they have followers proves nothing—

SONNET—TO SCIENCE

AL AARAAF (*)

TAMERLANE

1829.

TO HELEN

1831.

THE VALLEY OF UNREST

1831.

ISRAFEL*

1836.

TO ——

1829.

TO ——

1829.

TO THE RIVER——

1829.

SONG

1827.

SPIRITS OF THE DEAD

1827.

A DREAM

1827.

ROMANCE

FAIRY-LAND

THE LAKE —— TO——

EVENING STAR

“THE HAPPIEST DAY.”

IMITATION

HYMN TO ARISTOGEITON AND HARMODIUS

Translation from the Greek

DREAMS

“IN YOUTH I HAVE KNOWN ONE”

A PÆAN.

NOTES

30. On the “Poems written in Youth” little comment is needed. This section
includes the pieces printed for first volume of 1827 (which was
subsequently suppressed), such poems from the first and second published
volumes of 1829 and 1831 as have not already been given in their revised
versions, and a few others collected from various sources. “Al Aaraaf”
first appeared, with the sonnet “To Silence” prefixed to it, in 1829, and
is, substantially, as originally issued. In the edition for 1831, however,
this poem, its author’s longest, was introduced by the following
twenty-nine lines, which have been omitted in—all subsequent
collections:

31. The earliest version of “Tamerlane” was included in the suppressed
volume of 1827, but differs very considerably from the poem as now
published. The present draft, besides innumerable verbal alterations and
improvements upon the original, is more carefully punctuated, and, the
lines being indented, presents a more pleasing appearance, to the eye at
least.

32. “To Helen” first appeared in the 1831 volume, as did also “The Valley
of Unrest” (as “The Valley Nis”), “Israfel,” and one or two others of the
youthful pieces. The poem styled “Romance,” constituted the Preface of the
1829 volume, but with the addition of the following lines:

DOUBTFUL POEMS

ALONE

{This poem is no longer considered doubtful as it was in 1903. Liberty has
been taken to replace the book version with an earlier, perhaps more
original manuscript version—Ed}

TO ISADORE

THE VILLAGE STREET

THE FOREST REVERIE

NOTES

Of the many verses from time to time ascribed to the pen of Edgar Poe, and
not included among his known writings, the lines entitled “Alone” have the
chief claim to our notice. Fac-simile copies of this piece had been
in possession of the present editor some time previous to its publication
in “Scribner’s Magazine” for September, 1875; but as proofs of the
authorship claimed for it were not forthcoming, he refrained from
publishing it as requested. The desired proofs have not yet been adduced,
and there is, at present, nothing but internal evidence to guide us.
“Alone” is stated to have been written by Poe in the album of a Baltimore
lady (Mrs. Balderstone?), on March 17th, 1829, and the facsimile given in
“Scribner’s” is alleged to be of his handwriting. If the caligraphy be
Poe’s, it is different in all essential respects from all the many
specimens known to us, and strongly resembles that of the writer of the
heading and dating of the manuscript, both of which the contributor of the
poem acknowledges to have been recently added. The lines, however, if not
by Poe, are the most successful imitation of his early mannerisms yet made
public, and, in the opinion of one well qualified to speak, “are not
unworthy on the whole of the parentage claimed for them.”

While Edgar Poe was editor of the “Broadway Journal,” some lines “To
Isadore” appeared therein, and, like several of his known pieces, bore no
signature. They were at once ascribed to Poe, and in order to satisfy
questioners, an editorial paragraph subsequently appeared saying they were
by “A. Ide, junior.” Two previous poems had appeared in the “Broadway
journal” over the signature of “A. M. Ide,” and whoever wrote them was
also the author of the lines “To Isadore.” In order, doubtless, to give a
show of variety, Poe was then publishing some of his known works in his
journal over noms de plume, and as no other writings whatever can
be traced to any person bearing the name of “A. M. Ide,” it is not
impossible that the poems now republished in this collection may be by the
author of “The Raven.” Having been published without his usual elaborate
revision, Poe may have wished to hide his hasty work under an
assumed name. The three pieces are included in the present collection, so
the reader can judge for himself what pretensions they possess to be by
the author of “The Raven.”