IV.—[A SYLVAN SURPRISE]
(1813)
Time and place give every thing its propriety. Strolling one day in the Twickenham meadows, I was struck with the appearance of something dusky upon the grass, which my eye could not immediately reduce into a shape. Going nearer, I discovered the cause of the phenomenon. In the midst of the most rural scene in the world, the day glorious over head, the wave of Father Thames rippling deliciously by him, lay outstretched at his ease upon Nature's verdant carpet—a chimney-sweeper—
——a spot like which
Astronomer in the sun's lucent orb
Through his glaz'd optic tube yet never saw.
There is no reason in nature why a chimney-sweeper should not indulge a taste for rural objects, but somehow the ideas were discordant. It struck upon me like an inartificial discord in music. It was a combination of urbs in rure, which my experience had not prepared me to anticipate.
V.—[STREET CONVERSATION]
(1813)
It should seem almost impossible for a person to have arrived at the age of manhood, and never once to have heard or suspected that there have been people born before our times. Yet this fact I am obliged to conclude from the fragment of a conversation which I overheard between two of the lower order of Irish, who passed me in Holborn the other day. One of them, it seems, had appealed in defence of his argument to the opinions or practice of their forefathers, for I heard the other exclaim "the ancients! who were they?"—"What!" retorted his companion, with an air of insolent superiority, "did you never hear of the ancients? did you never read of them?" They had got too far from me to hear the conclusion of their extraordinary discourse; but I have often thought that it would be amusing to register the sentences, and scraps of sentences, which one catches up in a day's walk about the town; I mean in the way of fair and honest listening, without way-laying one's neighbour for more than he would be willing to communicate. From these flying words, with the help of a little imagination, one might often piece out a long conversation foregone.
VI.—[A TOWN RESIDENCE]
(1813)
Where would a man of taste chuse his town residence, setting convenience out of the question? Palace-yard—for its contiguity to the Abbey, the Courts of Justice, the Sittings of Parliament, Whitehall, the Parks, &c.—I hold of all places in these two great cities of London and Westminster to be the most classical and eligible. Next in classicality, I should name the four Inns of Court: they breathe a learned and collegiate air; and of them chiefly,
——those bricky towers
The which on Thames' broad aged back doth ride,
Where now the studious Lawyers have their bowers;
There whilom wont the Templar Knights to bide,
Till they decay'd through pride—
as Spenser describes evidently with a relish. I think he had Garden Court in his eye. The noble hall which stands there must have been built about that time. Next to the Inns of Court, Covent-Garden, for its rus in urbe, its wholesome scents of early fruits and vegetables, its tasteful church and arcades—above all, the neighbouring theatres, cannot but be approved of. I do not know a fourth station comparable to or worthy to be named after these. To an antiquarian, every spot in London, or even Southwark, teems with historical associations, local interest. He could not chuse amiss. But to me, who have no such qualifying knowledge, the Surrey side of the water is peculiarly distasteful. It is impossible to connect any thing interesting with it. I never knew a man of taste to live, what they term, over the bridge. Observe, in this place I speak solely of chosen and voluntary residence.
VII.—[GRAY'S BARD]
(1813)
The beard of Gray's Bard, "streaming like a meteor," had always struck me as an injudicious imitation of the Satanic ensign in the Paradise Lost, which
——full high advanced,
Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind:
till the other day I met with a passage in Heywood's old play, The Four Prentices of London, which it is difficult to imagine not to be the origin of the similitude in both poets. The line in Italics Gray has almost verbatim adopted—
In Sion towers hangs his victorious flag.
Blowing defiance this way; and its shews
Like a red meteor in the troubled air, Or like a blazing comet that foretells The fall of princes.
All here is noble, and as it should be. The comparison enlarges the thing compared without stretching it upon a violent rack, till it bursts with ridiculous explosion. The application of such gorgeous imagery to an old man's beard is of a piece with the Bardolfian bombast: "see you these meteors, these exhalations?" or the raptures of an Oriental lover, who should compare his mistress's nose to a watchtower or a steeple. The presageful nature of the meteor, which makes so fine an adjunct of the simile in Heywood, Milton has judiciously omitted, as less proper to his purpose; but he seems not to have overlooked the beauty of it, by his introducing the superstition in a succeeding book—
——like a comet burn'd,
That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge
In th' artic sky, and from his horrid hair
Shakes pestilence and war.
VIII.—[AN AMERICAN WAR FOR HELEN]
(1813)
I have in my possession a curious volume of Latin verses, which I believe to be unique. It is entitled Alexandri Fultoni Scoti Epigrammatorum libri quinque. It purports to be printed at Perth, and bears date 1679. By the appellation which the author gives himself in the preface, hypodidasculus, I suppose him to have been usher at some school. It is no uncommon thing now a days for persons concerned in academies to affect a literary reputation in the way of their trade. The "master of a seminary for a limited number of pupils at Islington,"