OLD FRIENDS




PREFACE



The studies in this volume originally appeared in the "St. James's
Gazette."  Two, from a friendly hand, have been omitted here by the
author of the rest, as non sua poma.  One was by Mr. RICHARD
SWIVELLER to a boon companion and brother in the lyric Apollo; the
other, though purporting to have been addressed by Messrs. DOMBEY &
SON to Mr. TOOTS, is believed, on internal evidence, to have been
composed by the patron of the CHICKEN himself.  A few prefatory
notes, an introductory essay, and two letters have been added.

The portrait in the frontispiece, copied by Mr. T. Hodge from an
old painting in the Club at St. Andrews, is believed to represent
the Baron Bradwardine addressing himself to his ball.

A. L.



FRIENDS IN FICTION



Every fancy which dwells much with the unborn and immortal
characters of Fiction must ask itself, Did the persons in
contemporary novels never meet?  In so little a world their paths
must often have crossed, their orbits must have intersected, though
we hear nothing about the adventure from the accredited narrators.
In historical fiction authors make their people meet real men and
women of history--Louis XI., Lazarus, Mary Queen of Scots, General
Webbe, Moses, the Man in the Iron Mask, Marie Antoinette; the list
is endless.  But novelists, in spite of Mr. Thackeray's advice to
Alexandre Dumas, and of his own example in "Rebecca and Rowena,"
have not introduced each other's characters.  Dumas never pursued
the fortunes of the Master of Ravenswood after he was picked up by
that coasting vessel in the Kelpie's Flow.  Sometimes a meeting
between characters in novels by different hands looked all but
unavoidable.  "Pendennis" and "David Copperfield" came out
simultaneously in numbers, yet Pen never encountered Steerforth at
the University, nor did Warrington, in his life of journalism,
jostle against a reporter named David Copperfield.  One fears that
the Major would have called Steerforth a tiger, that Pen would have
been very loftily condescending to the nephew of Betsy Trotwood.
But Captain Costigan would scarcely have refused to take a sip of
Mr. Micawber's punch, and I doubt, not that Litimer would have
conspired darkly with Morgan, the Major's sinister man.  Most of
those delightful sets of old friends, the Dickens and Thackeray
people, might well have met, though they belonged to very different
worlds.  In older novels, too, it might easily have chanced that
Mr. Edward Waverley of Waverley Honour, came into contact with
Lieutenant Booth, or, after the Forty-five, with Thomas Jones, or,
in Scotland, Balmawhapple might have foregathered with Lieutenant
Lismahagow.  Might not even Jeanie Deans have crossed the path of
Major Lambert of the "Virginians," and been helped on her way by
that good man?  Assuredly Dugald Dalgetty in his wanderings in
search of fights and fortune may have crushed a cup or rattled a
dicebox with four gallant gentlemen of the King's Mousquetaires.
It is agreeable to wonder what all these very real people would
have thought of their companions in the region of Romance, and to
guess how their natures would have acted and reacted on each other.

This was the idea which suggested the following little essays in
parody.  In making them the writer, though an assiduous and veteran
novel reader, had to recognise that after all he knew, on really
intimate and friendly terms, comparatively few people in the
Paradise of Fiction.  Setting aside the dramatic poets and their
creations, the children of Moliere and Shakspeare, the reader of
novels will find, may be, that his airy friends are scarce so many
as he deemed.  We all know Sancho and the Don, by repute at least;
we have all our memories of Gil Blas; Manon Lescaut does not fade
from the heart, nor her lover, the Chevalier des Grieux, from the
remembrance.  Our mental picture of Anna Karenine is fresh enough
and fair enough, but how few can most of us recall out of the
myriad progeny of George Sand!  Indiana, Valentine, Lelia, do you
quite believe in them, would you know them if you met them in the
Paradise of Fiction?  Noun one might recognise, but there is a
haziness about La Petite Fadette.  Consuelo, let it be admitted, is
not evanescent, oblivion scatters no poppy over her; but Madame
Sand's later ladies, still more her men, are easily lost in the
forests of fancy.  Even their names with difficulty return to us,
and if we read the roll-call, would Horace and Jacques cry Adsum
like the good Colonel?  There are living critics who have all Mr.
George Meredith's heroines and heroes and oddities at their finger
ends, and yet forget that musical name, like the close of a rich
hexameter, Clare Doria Forey.  But this is a digression; it is
perhaps admitted that George Sand, so great a novelist, gave the
world few characters who live in and are dear to memory.  We can
just fancy one of her dignified later heroines, all self-
renunciation and rural sentiment, preaching in vain to that real
woman, Emma Bovary.  HER we know, her we remember, as we remember
few, comparatively, of Balzac's thronging faces, from La Cousine
Bette to Seraphitus Seraphita.  Many of those are certain to live
and keep their hold, but it is by dint of long and elaborate
preparation, description, analysis.  A stranger intermeddleth not
with them, though we can fancy Lucien de Rubempre let loose in a
country neighbourhood of George Sand's, and making sonnets and love
to some rural chatelaine, while Vautrin might stray among the
ruffians of Gaboriau, a giant of crime.  Among M. Zola's people,
however it may fare with others, I find myself remembering few:
the guilty Hippolytus of "La Curee," the poor girl in "La Fortune
des Rougon," the Abbe Mouret, the artist in "L'Oeuvre," and the
half idiotic girl of the farm house, and Helene in "Un Page
d'Amour."  They are not amongst M. Zola's most prominent creations,
and it must be some accident that makes them most memorable and
recognisable to one of his readers.

Probably we all notice that the characters of fiction who remain
our intimates, whose words come to our lips often, whose conduct in
this or that situation we could easily forecast, are the characters
whom we met when we were young.  We may be wrong in thinking them
the best, the most true and living of the unborn; perhaps they only
seem so real because they came fresh to fresh hearts and unworn
memories.  This at least we must allow for, when we are tempted to
say about novelists, "The old are better."  It was we who, long
ago, were young and better, better fitted to enjoy and retain the
pleasure of making new visionary acquaintances.  If this be so,
what an argument it is in favour of reading the best books first
and earliest in youth!  Do the ladies who now find Scott slow, and
Miss Austen dull, and Dickens vulgar, and Thackeray prosy, and
Fielding and Richardson impossible, come to this belief because
they began early with the volumes of the circulating library?  Are
their memories happily stored with the words and deeds of modern
fictitious romps, and passionate governesses, and tremendous
guardsmen with huge cigars?  Are the people of--well, why mention
names of living authors?--of whom you will--are those as much to
the young readers of 1890 as Quentin Durward, and Colonel Newcome,
and Sam Weller, and Becky Sharp, and Anne Elliot, and Elizabeth
Bennett, and Jane Eyre were to young readers of 1860?  It may very
well be so, and we seniors will not regret our choice, and the
young men and maids will be pleased enough with theirs.  Yet it is
not impossible that the old really are better, and do not gain all
their life and permanent charm merely from the unjaded memories and
affections with which we came to them long ago.

We shall never be certain, for even if we tried the experiment of
comparing, we are no longer good judges, our hearts are with our
old friends, whom we think deathless; their birth is far enough off
in time, but they will serve us for ours.

These friends, it has been said, are not such a very numerous
company after all.  Most of them are children of our own soil,
their spirits were made in England, or at least in Great Britain,
or, perhaps, came of English stock across the seas, like our dear
old Leather Stocking and Madam Hester Prynne.  Probably most of us
are insular enough to confess this limitation; even if we be so
unpatriotic to read far more new French than new English novels.
One may study M. Daudet, and not remember his Sidonie as we
remember Becky, nor his Petit Chose or his Jack as we remember
David Copperfield.  In the Paradise of Fiction are folk of all
nations and tongues; but the English (as Swedenborg saw them doing
in his vision of Heaven) keep very much to themselves.  The
American visitors, or some of them, disdain our old acquaintances,
and associate with Russian, Spanish, Lithuanian, Armenian heroes
and heroines, conversing, probably, in some sort of French.  Few of
us "poor islanders" are so cosmopolitan; we read foreign novels,
and yet among all the brilliant persons met there we remember but a
few.  Most of my own foreign friends in fiction wear love-locks and
large boots, have rapiers at their side which they are very ready
to draw, are great trenchermen, mighty fine drinkers, and somewhat
gallant in their conduct to the sex.  There is also a citizen or
two from Furetiere's "Roman Bourgeois," there is Manon, aforesaid,
and a company of picaroons, and an archbishop, and a lady styled
Marianne, and a newly ennobled Count of mysterious wealth, and two
grisettes, named Mimi and Musette, with their student-lovers.  M.
Balzac has introduced us to mystics, and murderers, and old maids,
and doctors, and adventurers, and poets, and a girl with golden
eyes, and malefactors, and bankrupts, and mad old collectors,
peasants, cures, critics, dreamers, debauchees; but all these are
somewhat distant acquaintances, many of them undesirable
acquaintances.  In the great "Comedie Humaine" have you a single
real friend?  Some of Charles de Bernard's folk are more akin to
us, such as "La Femme de Quarante Ans," and the owner of the hound
Justinian, and that drunken artist in "Gerfaut."  But an Englishman
is rather friendless, rather an alien and an outcast, in the
society of French fiction.  Monsieur de Camors is not of our monde,
nor is the Enfant du Siecle; indeed, perhaps good Monsieur
Sylvestre Bonnard is as sympathetic as anyone in that populous
country of modern French romance.  Or do you know Fifi Vollard?

Something must be allowed for strange manners, for exotic ideas,
and ways not our own.  More perhaps is due to what, as Englishmen
think, is the lack of HUMOUR in the most brilliant and witty of
races.  We have friends many in Moliere, in Dumas, in Rabelais; but
it is far more difficult to be familiar, at ease, and happy in the
circles to which Madame Sand, M. Daudet, M. Flaubert, or M. Paul
Bourget introduce us.  M. Bourget's old professor, in "Le
Disciple," we understand, but he does not interest himself much in
us, and to us he is rather a curiosity, a "character," than an
intimate.  We are driven to the belief that humour, with its loving
and smiling observation, is necessary to the author who would make
his persons real and congenial, and, above all, friendly.  Now
humour is the quality which Dumas, Moliere, and Rabelais possess
conspicuously among Frenchmen.  Montaigne has it too, and makes
himself dear to us, as the humorous novelists make their fancied
people dear.  Without humour an author may draw characters distinct
and clear, and entertaining, and even real; but they want
atmosphere, and with them we are never intimate.  Mr. Alfred Austin
says that "we know the hero or the heroine in prose romance far
more familiarly than we know the hero or heroine in the poem or the
drama."  "Which of the serious characters in Shakspeare's plays are
not indefinite and shadowy compared with Harry Esmond or Maggie
Tulliver?"  The SERIOUS characters--they are seldom very familiar
or definite to us in any kind of literature.  One might say, to be
sure, that he knows Hotspur a good deal more intimately than he
knows Mr. Henry Esmond, and that he has a pretty definite idea of
Iago, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, as definite as he has (to follow
Mr. Austin) of Tito Melema.  But we cannot reckon Othello, or
Macbeth, or King Lear as FRIENDS; nay, we would rather drink with
the honest ancient.  All heroes and the heroines are usually too
august, and also too young, to be friendly with us; to be handled
humorously by their creators.  We know Cuddie Headrigg a great deal
better than Henry Morton, and Le Balafre better than Quentin
Durward, and Dugald Dalgetty better than anybody.  Humour it is
that gives flesh and blood to the persons of romance; makes Mr.
Lenville real, while Nicholas Nickleby is only a "walking
gentleman."  You cannot know Oliver Twist as you know the Dodger
and Charlie Bates.  If you met Edward Waverley you could scarce
tell him from another young officer of his time; but there would be
no chance of mistake about the Dugald creature, or Bailie Nicol
Jarvie, or the Baron Bradwardine, or Balmawhapple.

These ideas might be pushed too far; it might be said that only the
persons in "character parts"--more or less caricatures--are really
vivid in the recollection.  But Colonel Newcome is as real as
Captain Costigan, and George Warrington as the Chevalier Strong.
The hero is commonly too much of a beau tenebreux to be actual;
Scott knew it well, and in one of his unpublished letters frankly
admits that his heroes are wooden, and no favourites of his own.
He had to make them, as most authors make their heroes, romantic,
amorous, and serious; few of them have the life of Roland Graeme,
or even of Quentin Durward.  Ivanhoe might put on the cloak of the
Master of Ravenswood, the Master might wear the armour of the
Disinherited Knight, and the disguise would deceive the keenest.
Nay, Mr. Henry Esmond might pass for either, if arrayed in
appropriate costume.

To treat a hero with humour is difficult in romance, all but
impossible.  Hence the heroes are rarely our friends, except in
Fielding, or, now and then, in Thackeray.  No book is so full of
friends as the novel that has no hero, but has Rawdon Crawley,
Becky, Lady Jane, Mr. Jim Crawley, MacMurdo, Mrs. Major O'Dowd, and
the rest.  Even Dobbin is too much the hero to be admitted among
our most kindly acquaintances.  So unlucky are heroes that we know
Squire Western and the Philosopher Square and Parson Adams far
better than even that unheroic hero, Tom Jones, or Joseph Andrews.
The humour of Fielding and his tenderness make Amelia and Sophia
far more sure of our hearts than, let us say, Rowena, or the Fair
Maid of Perth, or Flora MacIvor, or Rose Bradwardine.  It is humour
that makes Mr. Collins immortal, and Mrs. Bennett, and Emma; while
a multitude of nice girls in fiction, good girls too, are as dead
as Queen Tiah.

Perhaps, after all, this theory explains why it is so very hard to
recall with vividness the persons of our later fiction.  Humour is
not the strong point of novelists to-day.  There may be amateurs
who know Mr. Howells's characters as their elders know Sophia and
Amelia and Catherine Seyton--there may be.  To the old reader of
romance, however earnestly he keeps up with modern fiction, the
salt of life seems often lacking in its puppets or its persons.
Among the creations of living men and women I, for one, feel that I
have two friends at least across the sea, Master Thomas Sawyer and
his companion, Huckleberry Finn.  If these are not real boys, then
Dr. Farrar's Eric IS a real boy; I cannot put it stronger.  There
is a lady on those distant shores (for she never died of Roman
fever) who I may venture to believe is not unfriendly--Miss Annie
P. Miller--and there is a daughter of Mr. Silas Lapham whom one
cannot readily forget, and there is a beery journalist in a "Modern
Instance," an acquaintance, a distant professional acquaintance,
not a friend.  The rest of the fictitious white population of the
States are shadowy to myself; I have often followed their fortunes
with interest, but the details slip my aging memory, which recalls
Topsy and Uncle Remus.

To speak of new friends at home is a more delicate matter.  A man
may have an undue partiality for the airy children of his friends'
fancy.  Mr. Meredith has introduced me to an amiable Countess, to a
strange country girl named Rhoda, to a wonderful old AEschylean
nurse, to some genuine boys, to a wise Youth,--but that society
grows as numerous as brilliant.  Mr. Besant has made us friends
with twins of literary and artistic genius, with a very highly-
cultured Fellow of Lothian, with a Son of Vulcan, with a bevy of
fair but rather indistinguishable damsels, like a group of
agreeable-looking girls at a dance.  But they are too busy with
their partners to be friendly.  We admire them, but they are
unconcerned with us.  In Mr. Black's large family the Whaup seems
most congenial to some strangers; the name of one of Mr. Payn's
friendly lads is Legion, and Miss Broughton's dogs, with THEIR
friend Sara, and Mrs. Moberley, welcome the casual visitor with
hospitable care.  Among the kindly children of a later generation
one may number a sailor man with a wooden leg; a Highland
gentleman, who, though landless, bears a king's name; an Irish
chevalier who was out in the '45; a Zulu chief who plied the axe
well; a private named Mulvaney in Her Majesty's Indian army; an
elderly sportsman of agile imagination or unparalleled experience
in remote adventure. {1}  All these a person who had once
encountered them would recognise, perhaps, when he was fortunate
enough to find himself in their company.

There are children, too, of a dead author, an author seldom lauded
by critics, who, possibly, have as many living friends as any
modern characters can claim.  A very large company of Christian
people are fond of Lord Welter, Charles Ravenshoe, Flora and Gus,
Lady Ascot, the boy who played fives with a brass button, and a
dozen others of Henry Kingsley's men, women, and children, whom we
have laughed with often, and very nearly cried with.  For Henry
Kingsley had humour, and his children are dear to us; while which
of Charles Kingsley's far more famous offspring would be welcome--
unless it were Salvation Yeo--if we met them all in the Paradise of
Fiction?

It is not very safe, in literature as in life, to speak well of our
friends or of their families.  Other readers, other people, have
theirs, whom we may not care much for, whom we may even chance
never to have met.  In the following Letters from Old Friends
(mainly reprinted from the "St. James's Gazette"), a few of the
writers may, to some who glance at the sketches, be unfamiliar.
When Dugald Dalgetty's epistle on his duel with Aramis was written,
a man of letters proposed to write a reply from Aramis in a certain
journal.  But his Editor had never heard of any of the gentlemen
concerned in that affair of honour; had never heard of Dugald, of
Athos, Porthos, Aramis, nor D'Artagnan.  He had not been introduced
to them.  This little book will be fortunate far beyond its deserts
if it tempts a few readers to extend the circle of their visionary
acquaintances, of friends who, like Brahma, know not birth, nor
decay, "sleep, waking, nor trance."

A theme more delicate and intimate than that of our Friends in
fiction awaits a more passionate writer than the present parodist.
Our LOVES in fiction are probably numerous, and our choice depends
on age and temperament.  In romance, if not in life, we can be in
love with a number of ladies at once.  It is probable that Beatrix
Esmond has not fewer knights than Marie Antoinette or Mary Stuart.
These ladies have been the marks of scandal.  Unkind things are
said of all three, but our hearts do not believe the evil reports.
Sir Walter Scott refused to write a life of Mary Stuart because his
opinion was not on the popular side, nor on the side of his
feelings.  The reasoning and judicial faculties may be convinced
that Beatrix was "other than a guid ane," but reason does not touch
the affections; we see her with the eyes of Harry Esmond, and, like
him, "remember a paragon."  With similar lack of logic we believe
that Mrs. Wenham really had one of her headaches, and that Becky
was guiltless on a notorious occasion.  Bad or not so bad, what
lady would we so gladly meet as Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, whose kindness
was so great that she even condescended to be amusing to her own
husband?  For a more serious and life-long affection there are few
heroines so satisfactory as Sophia Western and Amelia Booth (nee
Harris).  Never before nor since did a man's ideal put on flesh and
blood--out of poetry, that is,--and apart from the ladies of
Shakspeare.  Fielding's women have a manly honour, tolerance,
greatness, in addition to their tenderness and kindness.
Literature has not their peers, and life has never had many to
compare with them.  They are not "superior" like Romola, nor
flighty and destitute of taste like Maggie Tulliver; among
Fielding's crowd of fribbles and sots and oafs they carry that pure
moly of the Lady in "Comus."  It is curious, indeed, that men have
drawn women more true and charming than women themselves have
invented, and the heroines of George Eliot, of George Sand (except
Consuelo), and even of Miss Austen, do not subdue us like Di
Vernon, nor win our sympathies like Rebecca of York.  They may
please and charm for their hour, but they have not the immortality
of the first heroines of all--of Helen, or of that Alcmena who
makes even comedy grave when she enters, and even Plautus
chivalrous.  Poetry, rather than prose fiction, is the proper home
of our spiritual mistresses; they dwell where Rosalind and Imogen
are, with women perhaps as unreal or as ideal as themselves, men's
lost loves and unforgotten, in a Paradise apart.



LETTER:  From Mr. Clive Newcome to Mr. Arthur Pendennis.



Mr. Newcome, a married man and an exile at Boulogne, sends Mr.
Arthur Pendennis a poem on his undying affection for his cousin,
Miss Ethel Newcome.  He desires that it may be published in a
journal with which Mr. Pendennis is connected.  He adds a few
remarks on his pictures for the Academy.

Boulogne, March 28.

Dear Pen,--I have finished Belisarius, and he has gone to face the
Academicians.  There is another little thing I sent--"Blondel" I
call it--a troubadour playing under a castle wall.  They have not
much chance; but there is always the little print-shop in Long
Acre.  My sketches of mail-coaches continue to please the public;
they have raised the price to a guinea.

Here we are not happier than when you visited us.  My poor wife is
no better.  It is something to have put my father out of hearing of
her mother's tongue:  that cannot cross the Channel.  Perhaps I am
as well here as in town.  There I always hope, I always fear to
meet HER . . . my cousin, you know.  I think I see her face under
every bonnet.  God knows I don't go where she is likely to be met.
Oh, Pen, haeret lethalis arundo; it is always right--the Latin
Delectus!  Everything I see is full of her, everything I do is done
for her.  "Perhaps she'll see it and know the hand, and remember,"
I think, even when I do the mail-coaches and the milestones.  I
used to draw for her at Brighton when she was a child.  My
sketches, my pictures, are always making that silent piteous appeal
to her, WON'T YOU LOOK AT US? WON'T YOU REMEMBER?  I dare say she
has quite forgotten.  Here I send you a little set of rhymes; my
picture of Blondel and this old story brought them into my mind.
They are gazes, as the drunk painter says in "Gerfaut;" they are
veiled, a mystery.  I know she's not in a castle or a tower or a
cloistered cell anywhere; she is in Park Lane.  Don't I read it in
the "Morning Post?"  But I can't, I won't, go and sing at the area-
gate, you know.  Try if F. B. will put the rhymes into the paper.
Do they take it in in Park Lane?  See whether you can get me a
guinea for these tears of mine:  "Mes Larmes," Pen, do you
remember?--Yours ever, C. N.

The verses are enclosed.

THE NEW BLONDEL.

O ma Reine!

Although the Minstrel's lost you long,
Although for bread the Minstrel sings,
Ah, still for you he pipes the song,
And thrums upon the crazy strings!

As Blondel sang by cot and hall,
Through town and stream and forest passed,
And found, at length, the dungeon wall,
And freed the Lion-heart at last -

So must your hapless minstrel fare,
By hill and hollow violing;
He flings a ditty on the air,
He wonders if you hear him sing!

For in some castle you must dwell
Of this wide land he wanders through -
In palace, tower, or cloistered cell -
He knows not; but he sings to YOU!

The wind may blow it to your ear,
And you, perchance, may understand;
But from your lattice, though you hear,
He knows you will not wave a hand.

Your eyes upon the page may fall,
More like the page will miss your eyes;
You may be listening after all,
So goes he singing till he dies.



LETTER:  From the Hon. Cecil Bertie to the Lady Guinevere.



Mr. Cecil Tremayne, who served "Under Two Flags," an officer in her
Majesty's Guards, describes to the Lady Guinevere the circumstances
of his encounter with Miss Annie P. (or Daisy) Miller.  The
incident has been omitted by Ouida and Mr. Henry James.

You ask me, Camarada, what I think of the little American donzella,
Daisy Miller?  Hesterna Rosa, I may cry with the blind old bard of
Tusculum; or shall we say, Hesterna Margaritae?  Yesterday's Daisy,
yesterday's Rose, were it of Paestum, who values it to-day?  Mais
ou sont les neiges d'automne?  However, yesterday--the day before
yesterday, rather--Miss Annie P. Miller was well enough.

We were smoking at the club windows on the Ponte Vecchio;
Marmalada, Giovanelli of the Bersaglieri, young Ponto of the
K.O.B.'s, and myself--men who never give a thought save to the gold
embroidery of their pantoufles or the exquisite ebon laquer of
their Russia leather cricket-shoes.  Suddenly we heard a clatter in
the streets.  The riderless chargers of the Bersaglieri were racing
down the Santo Croce, and just turning, with a swing and shriek of
clattering spurs, into the Maremma.  In the midst of the street,
under our very window, was a little thing like a butterfly, with
yeux de pervenche.  You remember, Camarada, Voltaire's love of the
pervenche; we have plucked it, have we not? in his garden of Les
Charmettes.  Nous n'irons plus aux bois!  Basta!

But to return.  There she stood, terror-stricken, petrified, like
her who of old turned her back on Zoar and beheld the incandescent
hurricane of hail smite the City of the Plain!  She was dressed in
white muslin, joli comme un coeur, with a myriad frills and
flounces and knots of pale-coloured ribbon.  Open-eyed, open-
mouthed, she stared at the tide of foaming steeds, like a maiden
martyr gazing at the on-rushing waves of ocean!  "Caramba!" said
Marmalada, "voila une jeune fille pas trop bien gardee!"
Giovanelli turned pale, and, muttering Corpo di Bacco, quaffed a
carafon of green Chartreuse, holding at least a quart, which stood
by him in its native pewter.  Young Ponto merely muttered, "Egad!"
I leaped through the open window and landed at her feet.

The racing steeds were within ten yards of us.  Calmly I cast my
eye over their points.  Far the fleetest, though he did not hold
the lead, was Marmalada's charger, the Atys gelding, by Celerima
out of Sac de Nuit.  With one wave of my arm I had placed her on
his crupper, and, with the same action, swung myself into the
saddle.  Then, in a flash and thunder of flying horses, we swept
like tawny lightning down the Pincian.  The last words I heard from
the club window, through the heliotrope-scented air, were "Thirty
to one on Atys, half only if declared."  They were wagering on our
lives; the slang of the paddock was on their lips.

Onward, downward, we sped, the fair stranger lifeless in my arms.
Past scarlet cardinals in mufti, past brilliant [Greek text] like
those who swayed the City of the Violet Crown; past pifferari
dancing in front of many an albergo; through the Ghetto with its
marmorine palaces, over the Fountain of Trevi, across the Cascine,
down the streets of the Vatican we flew among yells of "Owner's
up," "The gelding wins, hard held," from the excited bourgeoisie.
Heaven and earth swam before my eyes as we reached the Pons
Sublicia, and heard the tawny waters of Tiber swaying to the sea.

THE PONS SUBLICIA WAS UP!

With an oath of despair, for life is sweet, I rammed my persuaders
into Atys, caught him by the head, and sent him straight at the
flooded Tiber!

"Va-t-en donc, espece de type!" said the girl on my saddle-bow,
finding her tongue at last.  Fear, or girlish modesty, had hitherto
kept her silent.

Then Atys rose on his fetlocks!  Despite his double burden, the
good steed meant to have it.  He deemed, perchance, he was with the
Quorn or the Baron's.  He rose; he sprang.  The deep yellow water,
cold in the moon's rays, with the farthest bank but a chill grey
line in the mist, lay beneath us!  A moment that seemed an
eternity!  Then we landed on the far-off further bank, and for the
first time I could take a pull at his head.  I turned him on the
river's brim, and leaped him back again.

The runaway was now as tame as a driven deer in Richmond Park.

Well, Camarada, the adventure is over.  She was grateful, of
course.  These pervenche eyes were suffused with a dewy radiance.

"You can't call," she said, "for you haven't been introduced, and
Mrs. Walker says we must be more exclusive.  I'm dying to be
exclusive; but I'm very much obliged to you, and so will mother be.
Let's see.  I'll be at the Colosseum to-morrow night, about ten.
I'm bound to see the Colosseum, by moonlight.  Good-bye;" and she
shook her pale parasol at me, and fluttered away.

Ah, Camarada, shall I be there?  Que scais-je?  Well, 'tis time to
go to the dance at the Holy Father's.  Adieu, Carissima.--Tout a
vous,

CIS.



LETTER:  Barry Lyndon



Mr. Redmond Barry (better known as Barry Lyndon) tells his uncle
the story of a singular encounter at Berlin with Mr. Alan Stuart,
called Alan Breck, and well known as the companion of Mr. David
Balfour in many adventures.  Mr. Barry, at this time, was in the
pay of Herr Potzdorff, of his Prussian Majesty's Police, and was
the associate of the Chevalier, his kinsman, in the pursuit of
fortune.


Berlin, April 1, 1748.

Uncle Barry,--I dictate to Pippi, my right hand being wounded, and
that by no common accident.  Going down the Linden Strasse
yesterday, I encountered a mob; and, being curious in Potzdorff's
interest, penetrated to the kernel of it.  There I found two men of
my old regiment--Kurz and another--at words with a small, dark,
nimble fellow, who carried bright and dancing eyes in a pock-marked
face.  He had his iron drawn, a heavy box-handled cut-and-thrust
blade, and seemed ready to fall at once on the pair that had been
jeering him for his strange speech.

"Who is this, lads?" I asked.

"Ein Englander," answered they.

"No Englishman," says he, in a curious accent not unlike our
brogue, "but a plain gentleman, though he bears a king's name and
hath Alan Breck to his by-name."

"Come, come," says I in German, "let the gentleman go his way; he
is my own countryman."  This was true enough for them; and you
should have seen the Highlander's eyes flash, and grow dim again.

I took his arm, for Potzdorff will expect me to know all about the
stranger, and marched him down to the Drei Konige.

"I am your host, sir; what do you call for, Mr. Stuart of -?" said
I, knowing there is never a Scot but has the name of his kailyard
tacked to his own.

"A King's name is good enough for me; I bear it plain.  Mr. -?"
said he, reddening.

"They call me the Chevalier Barry, of Ballybarry."

"I am in the better company, sir," quoth he, with a grand bow.

When a bowl of punch was brought he takes off his hat, and drinks,
very solemnly, "To the King!"

"Over the water?" I asked.

"Nay, sir, on THIS side," he said; and I smoked the Jacobite.  But
to shorten the story, which amuses my tedium but may beget it in
you, I asked him if he knew the cards.

"I'm just daft when I get to the cartes," he answered in his
brogue, and we fell to piquet.  Now my Scot wore a very fine coat,
and on the same very large smooth silver buttons, well burnished.
Therefore, perceiving such an advantage as a skilled player may
enjoy, I let him win a little to whet his appetite, but presently
used his buttons as a mirror, wherein I readily detected the
strength of the cards he held.  Before attempting this artifice, I
had solemnly turned my chair round thrice.

"You have changed the luck, sir," says Mr. Breck, or Stuart,
presently; and, rising with a mighty grave air, he turned his coat
and put it on inside out.

"Sir," says I, "what am I to understand by this conduct?"

"What for should not I turn my coat, for luck, if you turn your
chair?" says he.  "But if you are not preceesely satisfied, I will
be proud to step outside with you."

I answered that we were not in a Highland wilderness, and that if
no malice were meant no affront was taken.  We continued at the
game till, though deprived of my mirror, I had won some 500
Fredericks.  On this he rose, saying, "Sir, in this purse you will
find the exact sum that I am owing you, and I will call for my
empty sporran the morn.  It was Rob Roy's before it was mine."
Therewith he laid on the table a sort of goatskin pouch, such as
Highlanders gird about their loins, and marched forth.

I set to work at opening his pouch, that was fastened by a spring
and button, seeming easy enough of access.  But I had scarce
pressed the button when lo! a flash, a pistol shot, and my right
hand is grazed with a bullet that flew out of the bag.  This
Highlander of the Devil had some mechanism in his purse that
discharged a small steel pistol when unwarily opened.  My hand is
but slightly wounded, yet I cannot hold my sword, nor hath my
search brought me any news of Alan Breck.  He has vanished like an
emissary of the Devil or the Pretender, as I doubt not he is.  But
I will have his blood, if he is not one of their Scotch fairies.--
Your loving Nephew,

REDMOND BARRY, OF BALLYBARRY.

P.S.--The Fredericks were in the bag, all told.



LETTER:  From Mrs. Gamp to Mrs. Prig.



Mrs. Gamp nurses an old friend who is under a singular delusion.


Todgers's.

My precious Betsy,--Which when last we parted it was not as I could
wish, but bearing malice in our hearts.  But, as often and often
Mrs. Harris have said it before me, with the tears in her angel
eyes--one of them having a slight cast from an accident with the
moderator lamp, Harris being quick in his temper--often and often
have she said to me:  "Ah, Sairey, the quarrels of friends is
affection's best restorer."  And good reason to know it she have,
with a husband as was ever true, and never gave her no cause to
form the wish to pizen them as has good looks, but, for I will not
deceive you, ready with his hands.

And so, between you and me may it be, Betsy Prig, as was constant
partners afore them Chuzzlewidges, and Nadgetts, and Lewsomses, and
Tiggses, and Chuffeys got that mixed and that aggerawating that to
remember who of them poisoned which or for why in a slime draught,
it makes my poor head go round, nor could such be soothing to the
temper.  So let bygones be bygones between us.  For, wanting of my
Betsy, I am now in a nice state of confusion, with a patient as was
well beknown to me in younger days, when there wasn't so much of a
shadder on this mortial vial, {2} meaning Mr. Pecksniff.  Which you
will not forget of him, by reason of his daughter as married that
Jonadge, and his collars as mints of money must have gone to the
getting them up; but is now at Todgers's, and confused in his poor
mind, thinking hisself Somebody else high in Parliament.  And
wonder at it I do not, them Chuzzlewidges and Chuffeys being that
distracting, and ever proving to be some other pusson in disguise,
as would confuge a calkilating boy.

So being applied to for to nightly him, there in that very sick
room--for why should I deceive you?--I meets the daily nuss; and,
Betsy, I was that overcome to have such a pardner propoged to me as
I had to ring and ask the young woman immediate for a small glass
of their oldest rum, being what I am not accustomed to but having
had a turn.  For, will you believe it, she was not a widger woman
as has experience in the ways of men, but a huzzy in a bragian cap
like them the Nuns wear in "Mariar Monk," as you may have seen it
in the small sweet-shops, at a penny.  And her hands as white as
her papistry cap, and she a turning up of her nose at what I had
took, and a presuming to give ME advice about nussing, as St.
Pancradge's Churchyard wouldn't hold them I've seen comfortable to
their long homes, and no complaints made but ever the highest
satigefaction.  So I ups and gives her a bit of my mind; and Mrs.
Todgers coming down, "It's she goes or me," says I, "for never will
Sairey Gamp nuss, sick or monthly, with a pardner as has not
confidence in me, nor I in her, but contrary."  Then SHE says
she'll go and speak to the doctor about it; and out she tramps with
her nose in the air, and sneezing most awful, not being accustomed
to that which I take, find it strengthening, but as it have been a
cause of sorrow and strife let it be nameless between you and me.
For to have the name "Snuffey" brought forward it is what the heart
can forgive, but never forget in this valley of the shaddock.

I have nussed a many lunacies, Betsy, and in a general way am
dispoged to humour them rather than set them right up agin the fire
when fractious.  But this Pecksniff is the tryingest creature; he
having got it in his mind as he is Somebody very high, and talking
about the House, and Bills, and clauses, and the "sacred cause of
Universal Anarchy," for such was his Bible language, though meaning
to me no more than the babe unborn.  Whereby Mrs. Harris she have
often said to me, "What DO them blessed infants occupy their little
minds with afore they are called into that condition where, unless
changed at nuss, Providence have appointed them?" And many a time
have I said, "Seek not, Mrs. Harris, to diskiver; for we know not
wot's hidden in our own hearts, and the torters of the Imposition
should not make me diwulge it."

But Pecksniff is that aggravating as I can hardly heed the words I
now put on the paper.

"Some of my birds have left me," says he, "for the stranger's
breast, and one have took wing for the Government benches. {3}  But
I have ever sacrificed my country's happiness to my own, and I will
not begin to regulate my life by other rules of conduct now.  I
know the purity of my own motives, and while my Merry, my little
Sir William, playful warbler, prattles under this patriarchal wing,
and my Cherry, my darling Morley, supports the old man's tottering
walk, I can do without my Goschy, my dears, I can do without him."
And wants to borrer MY umbreller for them "to rally round," the
bragian idgiot!

A chattering creature he always were, and will be; but, Betsy, I
have this wery momink fixed him up with a shoehorn in his mouth, as
was lying round providential, and the strings of my bonnet, and the
last word as he will say this blessed night was some lunacy about
"denouncing the clogeure," as won't give much more trouble now.

So having rung for a shilling's worth of gin-and-water warm, and
wishing you was here to take another of the same, I puts my lips to
it, and drinks to one as was my frequent pardner in this mortial
vale, and am, as in old days, my Betsy's own

SAIREY GAMP.



LETTER:  From Herodotus of Halicarnassus to Sophocles the Athenian.



Herodotus describes, in a letter to his friend Sophocles, a curious
encounter with a mariner just returned from unknown parts of
Africa.


To Sophocles, the Athenian, greeting.  Yesterday, as I was going
down to the market-place of Naucratis, I met Nicarete, who of all
the hetairai in this place is the most beautiful.  Now, the
hetairai of Naucratis are wont somehow to be exceedingly fair,
beyond all women whom we know.  She had with her a certain Phocaean
mariner, who was but now returned from a voyage to those parts of
Africa which lie below Arabia; and she saluted me courteously, as
knowing that it is my wont to seek out and inquire the tidings of
all men who have intelligence concerning the ends of the earth.

"Hail to thee, Nicarete," said I; "verily thou art this morning as
lovely as the dawn, or as the beautiful Rhodopis that died ere thou
wert born to us through the favour of Aphrodite." {4}

Now this Rhodopis was she who built, they say, the Pyramid of
Mycerinus:  wherein they speak not truly but falsely, for Rhodopis
lived long after the kings who built the Pyramids.

"Rhodopis died not, O Herodotus," said Nicarete, "but is yet
living, and as fair as ever she was; and he who is now my lover,
even this Phanes of Phocaea, hath lately beheld her."

Then she seemed to me to be jesting, like that scribe who told me
of Krophi and Mophi; for Rhodopis lived in the days of King Amasis
and of Sappho the minstrel, and was beloved by Charaxus, the
brother of Sappho, wherefore Sappho reviled him in a song.  How
then could Rhodopis, who flourished more than a hundred years
before my time, be living yet?

While I was considering these things they led me into the booth of
one that sold wine; and when Nicarete had set garlands of roses on
our heads, Phanes began and told me what I now tell thee but
whether speaking truly or falsely I know not.  He said that being
on a voyage to Punt (for so the Egyptians call that part of
Arabia), he was driven by a north wind for many days, and at last
landed in the mouth of a certain river where were many sea-fowl and
water-birds.  And thereby is a rock, no common one, but fashioned
into the likeness of the head of an Ethiopian.  There he said that
the people of that country found him, namely the Amagardoi, and
carried him to their village.  They have this peculiar to
themselves, and unlike all other peoples whom we know, that the
woman asks the man in marriage.  They then, when they have kissed
each other, are man and wife wedded.  And they derive their names
from the mother; wherein they agree with the Lycians, whether being
a colony of the Lycians, or the Lycians a colony of theirs, Phanes
could not give me to understand.  But, whereas they are black and
the Lycians are white, I rather believe that one of them has
learned this custom from the other; for anything might happen in
the past of time.

The Amagardoi have also this custom, such as we know of none other
people; that they slay strangers by crowning them with amphorae,
having made them red-hot.  Now, having taken Phanes, they were
about to crown him on this wise, when there appeared among them a
veiled woman, very tall and goodly, whom they conceive to be a
goddess and worship.  By her was Phanes delivered out of their
hands; and "she kept him in her hollow caves having a desire that
he should be her lover," as Homer says in the Odyssey, if the
Odyssey be Homer's.  And Phanes reports of her that she is the most
beautiful woman in the world, but of her coming thither, whence she
came or when, she would tell him nothing.  But he swore to me, by
him who is buried at Thebes (and whose name in such a matter as
this it is not holy for me to utter), that this woman was no other
than Rhodopis the Thracian.  For there is a portrait of Rhodopis in
the temple of Aphrodite in Naucratis, and, knowing this portrait
well, Phanes recognised by it that the woman was Rhodopis. {5}
Therefore Rhodopis is yet living, being now about one hundred and
fifty years of age.  And Phanes added that there is in the country
of the Amagardoi a fire; and whoso enters into that fire does not
die, but is "without age and immortal," as Homer says concerning
the horses of Peleus.  Now, I would have deemed that he was making
a mock of that sacred story which he knows who has been initiated
into the mysteries of Demeter at Eleusis.  But he and Nicarete are
about to sail together without delay to the country of the
Amagardoi, believing that there they will enter the fire and become
immortal.  Yet methinks that Rhodopis will not look lovingly on
Nicarete, when they meet in that land, nor Nicarete on Rhodopis.
Nay, belike the amphora will be made hot for one or the other.

Such, howbeit, was the story of Phanes the Phocaean, whether he
spoke falsely or truly.  The God be with thee.

HERODOTUS.



LETTER:  Mrs Proudie



Mrs. Proudie, wife of the Bishop of Barchester, admits Mrs.
Quiverful into her confidence.  Mrs. Proudie first takes pleasure
in a new and pious acquaintance, Lady Crawley (nee Sharp), but
afterwards discovers the true character of this insidious and
dangerous woman.


The Palace, Barchester, July 17.

Dear Letitia,--The appearance of mumps in a small family of
fourteen like yours, is indeed one of those dispensations which
teach us how mysterious are the ways!  But I need not tell you to
be most careful about cold, which greatly adds to the virulence of
the complaint, and it is difficult for you, in lodgings at
Brighton, to keep a watchful eye on so many at once.  May this
discipline be blessed to you, and to the dear children!

I have much to tell you of Barchester.  The light worldly tone of
some families in this place (I will not mention the Grantleys nor
the Arabins) has been checked, I hope, by one of those accidents
which surely, surely, are not to be considered accidents alone!
You know how strong is my objection to fancy fairs or bazaars, too
often rather scenes of giddy merriment than exhibitions of genuine
Christian feeling.  Yet by means of one of these (how strangely are
things ordered!) a happy change, I trust, is being brought about in
our midst.

You have heard of Hogglestock, though you may never have visited
that benighted and outlying parish.  Indeed, I was never there
myself till last week, when Tom felt it his duty (though woefully
misdirected, to my mind, but we are fallible creatures) to go and
open a bazaar in that place for the restoration of the church. {6}
I accompanied him; for I trusted that an opportunity might be made
for me, and that I might especially bear in on the mind of the
rector's wife the absolute necessity of Sabbath-day schools.  The
rector is a Mr. Crawley.  He led us on our arrival into a scene of
re d cloth, wax dolls most indelicately displayed, cushions,
antimacassars, and similar IDOLS.  The Bishop's speech (I composed
it myself) you will read in the "Barchester Guardian," which I send
you.  While approving the END he rebuked the MEANS, and took the
opportunity to read a much-needed lesson on JESUITRY and the
dangers of worldliness in high ecclesiastical places.  Let those
wince who feel a sense of their own backslidings.  When the Bishop
had ended, I determined to walk once through the bazaar just to
make sure that there were no lotteries nor games of chance--a
desecration of our MITES now too, too frequent.  As I was returning
through the throng, alas! of PLEASURE-SEEKERS, and wishing that I
might scourge them out of the schoolroom, Mr. Crawley met me, in
company with a lady who desired, he said, to be presented to me.
He is a distant relation of the well-known county family, the
Crawleys, of Queen's Crawley; the present baronet, Sir Rawdon,
having recently married Miss Jane Dobbin, daughter of Colonel
Dobbin.  The lady who was now introduced to me, and whose STILL
PLEASING face wears an aspect of humble devoutness, was Lady
Crawley, mother of the present baronet.

"Madam," she said, "I came here in the belief that I was
discharging a pious duty.  My life, alas! has been one of sore
trial, and I only try to do good." . . .

I was going to say that I had seen her name in a score of charity
lists, and knew her as a patroness of the Destitute Orange-Girls,
the Neglected Washerwomen, and the Distressed Muffin-Men.  But she
shook her head; and then, looking up at me with eyes like a SAINT'S
(if our PRIVILEGES permitted us to believe in these fabulous beings
of the Romish superstition), she said, "Ah, no!  I have always been
in the wrong.  The beautiful address of the Bishop of Barchester
has awakened me, and convinced me that the PATH does not lie
through Fancy Fairs.  I have to begin again.  Who shall guide me?"

I trust I am not subject to vanity; but the news that I (for I
composed the Charge, as I may almost call it) had been the
instrument of so affecting a change did not fail to please me.  I
thanked Lady Crawley, and expressed my deep interest in her altered
convictions.  Finally she promised to come on a visit to us at the
Palace (she usually resides at Bath or Cheltenham), and has been
three days an inmate.  Never have I met a more singular example of
what the Truth can do for one who, as she admits, was long ago a
worldling.  "I have seen the vanity of it," she tells me, with
tears in her eyes; and from her example I expect an AWAKENING among
our worldlings.  They will follow the path of a TITLED person.  Tom
is much interested in his CONVERT, as he thinks her.  Not to ME be
the glory!--Your assured friend,

EMILY BARNUM. {7}


From Mrs. Proudie to Mrs. Quiverful.


The Palace, Barchester, July 22.

Dear Letitia,--My hand trembles so with indignation that I can
hardly direct my pen.  Pray BURN my letter of July 17 at once, if
you have not already done so. {8}  We have been DECEIVED in that
woman!  She is a brazenfaced, painted daughter of Heth, and has no
more right to the title of Lady Crawley than YOU have.  I am told
that she was at one time the paramour of Lord Steyne, and that her
conduct made it impossible for her husband to live with her.  And
this is the woman who has come within the gates of the palace of a
Christian prelate; nay, more, who has secured his signature to a
cheque of very considerable value.  I think my suspicions were
first excited by the disappearance of the brandy in the liqueur-
stand, and by meeting "her ladyship's" maid carrying the bottle up
to her room!  I spoke to the Bishop, but he would not listen to me-
-quite unlike himself; and even turned on me in her defence.

Entering his study hastily on the following day, I found her
kneeling at his feet, her yellow hair (dyed, no doubt, for she must
be sixty if she is a day) about her shoulders, doing what do you
suppose -?  CONFESSING HERSELF TO THE BISHOP OF BARCHESTER

And he was listening to her "confession" with an appearance of
interest, and with one of her hands in his.

"Serpent!" I said--and her green eyes glittered just like one--
"unhand his lordship!"  She gave a little laugh and said, "Dear
Mrs. Proudie, do not let me monopolise the Bishop's time.  Perhaps
I am in the way?"

"And you shall go out of it," I said.  "You are one of those who
cause Israel to sin.  You bring the Confessional, for it is no
better, into the house of a Prelate of the Protestant Church of
England!"  Would you believe that she had the assurance to answer
me with a passage from the Prayer Book, which I have often felt
certain must be MISTRANSLATED?

"Pack, madam," said I; "we know who can quote Scripture for his own
ends!"

And I pretty soon saw her out of the house, though NOT IN TIME; for
the infatuated Bishop had already given her a cheque for a sum
which I cannot bring myself to tell you, for the Funds of the
Destitute Orange-Girls.  Not a penny of it will they ever see; nor
do I approve of such ostentatious alms in any case.--Yours in
haste,

EMILY BARNUM.

P.S.--I have heard from Lady Courtney all her history.  It is
ABOMINABLE.



LETTER:  From Robert Surtees, Esq., of Mainsforth, to Jonathan
Oldbuck, Esq., of Monkbarns.



It is well known that Mr. Surtees of Mainsforth not only palmed off
on Sir Waiter Scott several ballads of his own manufacture, but
also invented and pretended to have found in a document (since
burned) the story of the duel with the spectre knight which occurs
in Marmion.  In the following letter this ingenious antiquary plays
the same game with Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck, of Monkbarns, the
celebrated antiquary.  A note on the subject is published in the
Appendix.


Mainsforth, May 9, 1815.

Dear Sir,--I am something of the Mussulman's humour, as you know,
and never willingly pass by a scrap of printed paper, however it
comes in my way.  I cannot, indeed, like the "Spectator," "mention
a paper kite from which I have received great improvement," nor "a
hat-case which I would not exchange for all the beavers in Great
Britain."  It is in a less unlikely place that I have made a little
discovery which will interest you, I hope; for as it chances, not
only has a lost ballad been at least partially recovered, but . . .
however, I will keep your learned patience on the tenterhooks for a
while.

Business taking me to Newcastle of late, I found myself in Bell's
little shop on the quay. {9}  You know the man by report at least;
he is more a collector than a bookseller, though poor; and I verily
believe that he would sell all his children--Douglas Bell, Percy
Bell, Hobbie Bell, and Kinmont Bell--"for a song."  Ballads are his
foible, and he can hardly be made to part with one of the
broadsides in his broken portfolios.  Well, semel insanivimus omnes
(by the way, did it ever strike you that the Roman "cribbed" that
line, as the vulgar say, from an epigram in the Anthology?), and
you and I will scarce throw the first stone at the poor man's
folly.  However, I am delaying your natural eagerness.  So now for
the story of my great discovery.  As our friend Bell would scarce
let his dusty broadsheet lumber out of his hands, I was turning to
leave him in no very good humour, when I noticed a small and rather
long octavo, in dirty and crumpled vellum, lying on the top of a
heap of rubbish, Boston's "Crook in the Lot," "The Pilgrim's
Progress," and other chap-book trumpery.  I do not know what good
angel that watches over us collectors made me take up the thing,
which I found to be nothing less than a copy of old Guillaume
Coquillart.  It was not Galliot du Pre's edition, in lettres
rondes, but, still more precious had it only been complete, an
example in black letter.  I give you the whole title.  First the
motto, in the frieze of an architectural design, [Greek text].
Then, in small capitals -


LES OEUVRES
MAISTRE GVIL
LAUME COQUIL
LART EN SON VI
VANT OFFICIAL
DE REIMS.  NOV
VELLEMENT RE
VEVES ET CORRI
GEES.
M. D. XXXV.

On les vend a Lyon en la
Maison de Francoys Juste,
Demourant devant nostre
Dame de Confort.


By bad (or good) luck this rare piece was imperfect--the back
gaping and three sheets gone.  But, in turning over the leaves, I
saw something that brought my heart, as they say, into my mouth.
So, beating down Bell from his upset price of fourpence to six
bawbees, I pushed the treasure carelessly in my pocket, and never
stopped till I was in a lonely place by Tyne-side and secure from
observation.  Then, with my knife, I very carefully uncased Maistre
Guillaume, and extracted the sheet of parchment, printed in black
letter with red capitals, that had been used to line the binding.
A corner of it had crept out, through the injuries of time, and on
that, in Bell's "crame" (for it is more a crame than a shop), I had
caught the mystic words Runjt macht Gunjt.

And now, I think, Monkbarns, you prick up your ears and wipe your
spectacles.  That is the motto, as every one of the learned family
of antiquaries is well aware, and, as you have often told me, of
your great forbear, the venerable and praiseworthy Aldobrand
Oldenbuck the Typographer, who fled from the Low Countries during
the tyrannical attempt of Philip II. to suppress at once civil and
religious liberty.  As all the world knows, he withdrew from
Nuremberg to Scotland, and set up his Penates and (what you may not
hitherto have been aware of) his Printing Press at Fairport, and
under your ancestral roof of Monkbarns.  But, what will surprise
you yet more, the parchment sheet which bears Aldobrand's motto in
German contains printed matter in good Scots!  This excellent and
enterprising man must have set himself to ply his noble art in his
new home, and in our unfamiliar tongue.

Yet, even now, we are not at the end of this most fortunate
discovery.  It would appear that there was little demand for works
of learning and religion in Scotland, or at least at Fairport; for
the parchment sheet contains fragments of a Ballad in the Scots
tongue.  None but a poor and struggling printer would then have
lent his types to such work, and fortunate for us has been the
poverty of your great ancestor.  Here we have the very earliest
printed ballad in the world, and, though fragmentary, it is the
more precious as the style proves to demonstration, and against the
frantic scepticism even of a Ritson, the antique and venerable
character of those compositions.  I send you a copy of the Ballad,
with the gaps (where the tooth of time or of the worm, edax rerum,
hath impaired it) filled up with conjectural restorations of my
own.  But how far do they fall short of the original simplicity!
Non cuivis contingit.  As the title is lacking, as well as the
imprint, I have styled it


THE FRAGMENT OF THE FAUSE LOVER
AND THE DEAD LEMAN.

O Willie rade, and Willie gaed
Atween the shore and sea,
And still it was his dead Lady
That kept him company.

O Willie rade, and Willie gaed
Atween the [loch and heather],
And still it was his dead Lady
That [held his stirrup leather].

"O Willie, tak' me up by ye,
Sae far it is I gang;
O tak' me on your saddle bow,
Or [your day shall not be lang]."

"Gae back, gae back, ye fause ill wife,
To the grave wherein ye lie,
It never was seen that a dead leman
Kept lover's company!

"Gae back, gae back frae me," he said,
"For this day maun I wed,
And how can I kiss a living lass,
When ye come frae the dead?

"If ye maun haunt a living man,
Your brither haunt," says he,
"For it was never my knife, but his
That [twined thy life and thee!]

* * *

We are to understand, I make no doubt, that Willie had been too
fortunate a lover, and that in his absence--the frailty of his lady
becoming conspicuous--her brother had avenged the family honour
according to that old law of Scotland which the courteous Ariosto
styles "l' aspra legge di Scozia, empia e severa."

Pray let me know, at your leisure, what you think of this
trouvaille.  It is, of course, entirely at your service, if you
think it worthy of a place in a new edition of the "Minstrelsy."  I
have no room to inflict more ballads or legends on you; and remain,
most faithfully yours,

R. SURTEES.



LETTER:  From Jonathan Oldbuck, Esq., of Monkbarns, to Robert
Surtees, Esq., Mainsforth.



Monkbarns, June 1.

My Dear Sir,--How kind hath Fortune been to you, and, in a
secondary degree, to myself.  Your letter must dispel the
unreasoning and I fear envious scepticism of MacCribb, who has put
forth a plaunflet (I love that old spelling) in which he derides
the history of Aldobrand Oldenbuck as a fable.  The Ballad shall,
indeed, have an honoured place in my poor Collection whenever the
public taste calls for a new edition.  But the original, what would
I not give to have it in my hands, to touch the very parchment
which came from the press of my revered ancestor, and, gloating on
the crabbed letters, confute MacCribb to his face ipso visu et
tactu of so inestimable a rarity.  Exchanges--or "swaps," as the
vulgar call them--are not unknown among our fraternity.  Ask what
you will for this treasure, to the half of my kingdom:  my gold
Aurelius (found at Bermuckety, on the very limits of Roman
Caledonia), my "Complaynte of Scotland" (the only perfect copy
known),


My copperplate, with almanacks
Engrav'd upon't, and other knacks;
My moon-dial, with Napier's bones
And several constellation stones.


Make your choice, in fact, of all my Gabions, as honest old George
Ruthven called them.

Nay, excuse the covetousness of an Antiquary, my dear sir; I well
know that nothing I could offer were worth a tithe of your
priceless discovery, the oldest printed Scots Ballad extant.  It
shall suffice for me to look on it, under the roof of Mainsforth,
when next I make a raid across the Border.  I have conquered my
passions, and can obey the last of the Commandments.  Haud equiden
invideo, minor magis.  I need not bid you be watchful of your
booty.--Yours most faithfully,

JONATHAN OLDBUCK.


From Robert Surtees, Esq., to Jonathan Oldbuck, Esq.


June 11.

My Dear Sir,--Alas, your warning comes too late.  An accursed
example of womankind, fit descendant of that unhappy Betty Barnes,
cook to Mr. Warburton, who destroyed his ancient manuscript plays,
hath invaded my sanctum, and the original black-letter text of the
ballad has gone to join Shakspeare's "Stephen" and "Henry II."  She
hath lit with it my study fire, and it is fortunate indeed that I
had made the copy of the ballad for you.  But the volume of
Coquillart is alive to testify to the authenticity of the poem;
which, after all, is needless evidence, as not even Ritson could
suspect of either the skill or the malice of such a forgery, Yours
most faithfully,

ROBERT SURTEES.



LETTER:  From Nicholas to the Editor of the St. James's Gazette,



It is only too probable that a later generation has forgotten
"Nicholas," the sporting Prophet of "Fun," in the reign of Mr. Hood
the younger.  The little work, "Nicholas's Notes," in which Mr. W.
J. Prowse collected the papers of the old Prophet, is, indeed, not
an "edition de looks," as the aged Seer says, with his simple
humour.  From the Paradise of Fiction, however (and the Paradise of
Touts), Nicholas has communicated, perhaps to the Psychical
Society, the following Epistle.  His friendly mention of a brother
journalist speaks well for the Old Man's head and heart.


The Paradise of Fiction, Feb. 9, 1888.

Sir,--My dear young friend, it is ten to one, and no takers, that
the public, than whom, between you and me, I do not think much of
them, have forgotten Nicholas, or even never heard of the Prophet.
Youth will be served; and it is now between twenty years since he
left off vaticinating in "Fun," during young Mr. Hood's time, of
future sportive events for to come, and came to live HERE with the
other celebrated characters of Fiction, than whom I am sure a more
mixed lot, though perhaps a little gay.  It having come to the
Prophet's knowledge that some of them was writing letters to "The
St. James's Gazette" (than which I am sure none more respectable,
though perhaps a little not quite so attentive to sportive
interests as it might be), he have decided that Nicholas will take
up his pen once more, as of old.

The State of the Turf, my dear young friend, since an old but still
handsome bird would freely alight (when not warned off) on
Newmarket Heath, have caused Nicholas some anxiety.  Sir, between
you and me, IT IS RAPIDLY GETTING NO BETTER.  Here is Lord -- (than
whom a more sterling sportsman) as good as saying to Sir -- (than
whom, perhaps), "Did you ever hear of a sporting character called
Swindells?"  And the Prophet HAVE been told that it may furnish
matter for the gentlemen of the long robe--which, in my time, many
of them was backers of horses.

And all along of what?  Why, of the "inexplicable in-and-out
running of horses," as the "Standard" says, and as will often
happen, you, perhaps, having a likely dark one as you want to get
light into a high-class autumn handicap.  The days is long past
since Nicholas was nuts on the game little Lecturer, but still has
the interests of the Turf at heart; and, my dear young friend, if
horses never ran in and out, where would be "the glorious
uncertainty of the sport"?  On the whole, then, if asked my opinion
on this affair, the Prophet would say--putting it ambiguous-like--
"Gentlemen, when there's so much dirty linen to wash, can't you
remember that we're all pretty much tarred with the same brush?"  A
great politician--which a lot of his family is here, Coningsby, and
the Young Duke, and many other sportsmen--used to say as what the
Turf was "a gigantic engine of national demoralisation;" which
Nicholas is not quite sure but what he was right for him, though
his language on rather a large scale.  Horses running in and out is
inexplicable!  Why, gents all, which of us WOULDN'T do it, if he
had the chance to put the pot on handsome, human nature being what
it is, especially considering the lowness of the market odds as you
have often and often to be content with.  In short, the more you
stir it the more it won't exactly remind you of gales from Araby
the Blest; than which a more delightful country, only not to be
found on any atlas as Nicholas ever cast a glance at the map,
however large.

But enough of a subject than which perhaps one more painful to me;
the Prophet having often and often, in early days, been warned off
Newmarket Heath himself, and called a "disreputable old tout,"
though only labouring in his vocation.

(Make a new beginning here, please, Printer.)

It have come to the knowledge of the Prophet that his "Notes" are
not quite so much read as they once was, partly owing, no doubt, to
the book being not so much an "edition de looks" as rather a low-
lived lot, to a casual eye, at fourpence; the picture outside
representing Nicholas rather as having had too much for to drink
than as a prominent member of the Blue Ribbon Society, which it did
not exist in his period, nor would it have enjoyed, to any
considerable extent, my personal or pecuniary support, he having
something else to do with his money.  (Printer, please put in a
full stop somewhere here, Nicholas being a little out of the habit
of writing for the periodical press.)  He have also heard that it
is proposed in literary circles to start a "Nicholas Society" for
the purpose of printing a limited edition of my works including my
lost treatise of Knur and Spell, on Japanese paper, illustrated
with photo-gravelures; they having come in since the Prophet's
period, though perhaps a little gay.

But, my dear though exquisite young friends, is there no better way
of rallying round the Prophet than THIS?  I have heard, from
characters in ancient literature, such as Agamemnon--than whom a
more energetic soldier, though perhaps a trifle arbitrary--the
Prophet HAVE heard, I say, that a deal of liquor used to be poured
on the graves of coves like him and me, and that it did them good.
This may be the case, and anyway the experiment is well worth
trying; though, I would say, do not let it be milk, as I gather was
customary in early times, as didn't know any better; but, if
possible, a bottle or two of sherry wine, to which, as is well
beknown, Nicholas was partial.  He will now conclude; and the
Prophet hopes that an experiment, than which, I am sure, one more
deeply interesting, will not be deferred; he not much taking to the
liquor here, though the company makes up for a great deal,
especially an Irish officer by the name of Costigan, than whom a
sweeter singer or a more honourable gentleman; and signs himself,
with gratitude for past favours, and kind respects to the Editor of
the "Guardian,"

NICHOLAS.



LETTER:  From the Earl of Montrose to Captain Dugald Dalgetty.



Whoever has read the "Memoirs of Monsieur d'Artagnan"--a Marshal in
the French King's service--as they are published by Monsieur
Alexandre Dumas in "Les Trois Mousquetaires," will not have
forgotten that duel behind the Luxembourg, in which, as is
declared, an Englishman ran away from the Chevalier d'Herblay,
called Aramis in his regiment.  Englishmen have never held that
Monsieur Dumas was well informed about this affair.  The following
letters of the Great Marquis and Captain Dalgetty from the
"Kirkhope Papers" prove that Englishmen were in the right.


-, 164-.

Sir,--Touching that I did, to your apprehension, turn away from you
with some show of coldness on your late coming, it may be that you
but little misread me.  But, for that no man is condemned without a
hearing, I would fain know under your own hand the truth concerning
that whereof a shameful report is bruited abroad, even in the
"Gallo Belgicus" and the "Fliegender Mercoeur" of Leipsic--namely,
that in a certain duel lately fought in Paris behind the Palace of
the Luxembourg, four Englishmen encountering as many Musketeers of
the French King's, one out of this realm, to our disgrace,
shamefully fled; and he (by report) Rittmaster Dugald Dalgetty.
Till which, bruit be either abolished, and the stain--as an ill
blot on a clean scutcheon--wiped away, or as shamefully
acknowledged as it is itself shameful, I abide, as I shall hear
from yourself,

MONTROSE.


From Captain Dugald Dalgetty, of Drumthwacket, to the Most Noble
and Puissant Prince James, Earl of Montrose, commanding the musters
of the King in Scotland.  These -


My Lord,--As touching the bruit, or fama, as we said at the
Mareschal College, I shall forthwith answer, and that peremptorie.
For this story of the duello, as a man may say (though, indeed,
they that fought in it were not in the dual number, as your Grecian
hath it, but eight soldados--seven of them gallant men), truly the
story is of the longest; but as your lordship will have it, though
more expert with the sword than the goosequill, I must even buckle
to.

Let your lordship conceive of your poor officer, once lieutenant
and Rittmaster under that invincible monarch, the bulwark of the
Protestant faith, Gustavus the Victorious; conceive, I say, Dugald
Dalgetty, of Drumthwacket that should be, in Paris, concerned with
a matter of weight and moment not necessary to be mooted or minted
of.  As I am sitting at my tavern ordinary, for I consider that an
experienced cavalier should ever lay in provenant as occasion
serveth, comes in to me a stipendiary of my Lord Winter, bidding me
know that his master would speak to me:  and that not coram populo,
as I doubt not your lordship said at St. Leonard's College in St.
Andrews, but privily.  Thereon I rise and wait on him; to be brief-
-brevis esse laboro, as we said lang syne--his lordship would have
me to be of his backers in private rencontre with four gentlemen of
the King's Musketeers.

Concerning the cause of this duello, I may well say teterrima
causa.  His lordship's own sister Milady Clarik was in question;
she being, I fear me, rather akin in her way of life to Jean
Drocheils (whom your lordship may remember; for, the Baillies
expulsing her from Aberdeen, she migrated to St. Andrews, ad
eundem, as the saying is) than like, in her walk and conduct, to a
virtuous lady of a noble family.  She was, indeed, as current
rumour had it, the light o'love or belle amie of Monsieur
d'Artagnan, his lordship's adversary.

But of siclike least said soonest mended.  I take cloak and sword,
and follow with his lordship and two other experienced cavaliers
unto the place of rencontre, being a waste croft whereon a loon was
herding goats, behind the Palace of the Luxembourg.  Here we find
waiting us four soldados, proper tall men of their hands, who
receive us courteously.  He that first gave cause of quarrel to my
Lord Winter bore a worthy name enough out of Gascony, that is arida
nutrix, as we said at the Mareschal College, of honourable
soldados--to wit, as I said, he was Monsieur d'Artagnan.  To his
friends, howbeit, he gave sic heathen titles as I never saw or
heard of out of the Grecian books:  namely, Monsieur Porthos, a
very tall man, albeit something of a lourdaud; Monsieur Athos; and
he that was to be mine own opposite, Monsieur Aramis.  Hearing
these outlandish and insolent appellations, I thought it becoming
me, as an honourable cavalier, to resent this fashion of
presenting:  and demurred that a gentleman of the House of Dalgetty
of Drumthwacket could neither take affront from, nor give
honourable satisfaction to, a nameless landlouper.  Wherein your
lordship, I doubt me not, will hold me justificate.

Lord Winter homologating mine opinion, he that called himself Athos
drew each of us apart, and whispered the true names and qualities
territorial of these gentlemen; the whilk, as may befall honourable
soldados, they had reason sufficient to conceal while serving as
private gentlemen in a regiment, though disdaining to receive
halberds, as unbecoming their birth.  He that aligned himself
forenenst me was styled the Chevalier d'Herblay; and, the word
being given, we fell to.

Now, mine adversary declining to fight comminus gladio, but
breaking ground in a manner unworthy of a gallant soldado, and the
place, saving your presence, being somewhat slippery and
treacherous because of the goats that were fed there, I delivered a
sufficient onslaught; and he fell, his sword flying from his hand.
When I had taken his weapon--the spolia opima, as we said at
Mareschal College--I bid him rise, and then discoursed him on the
dishonour of such a hasty defeat.  Then, he confessing himself to
me that, though under arms, he was a young fledgeling priest in
Popish orders, I began upon him with such words on his disgracing
the noble profession of arms as might have made him choose to
return to his cloister; when suddenly he fled, and, being young and
light-footed, robbed me, not only of such caduacs and casualties as
an experienced cavalier might well take from his prisoner for
ransom, but also, as now it appears, of my good name.  For I doubt
not that this musketeer priest, Monsieur Aramis, or l'Abbe
d'Herblay (for he hath as many names as I have seen campaigns), was
the loon that beguiled with a lying tale the newsman of the "Gallo
Belgicus."  And I have ever seen that an honourable soldado will
give the go-by to these newsmen and their flying sheets, as
unworthy of the notice of honourable cavaliers; of whom
(recommending your lordship for the truth of my tale to my Lord
Winter, now with his gracious Majesty the King) I am fain to
subscribe myself one, and your lordship's poor officer, as ye shall
entreat him,

DUGALD DALGETTY, of Drumthwacket,

Late Commander of the whole stift of Dunklespiel on the Lower
Rhine.



LETTER:  From Mr. Lovelace to John Belford, Esq.



The following letter must have been omitted from the papers to
which Mr. Samuel Richardson, the editor of "Clarissa," had access.
It was written, apparently, after the disgraceful success of
Lovelace's disgraceful adventure, and shows us that scoundrel in
company not choice, indeed, but better than he deserved, the
society of Mr. Thomas Jones, a Foundling.  Mr. Jones's admirable
wife (nee Western), having heard of Lovelace's conduct, sent her
husband to execute that revenge which should have been competed for
by every man of heart.  It will be seen that Mr. Jones was no match
for the perfidies of Mr. Lovelace.  The cynical reflections of that
bad man on Lord Fellamar, and his relations with Mrs. Jones, will
only cause indignation and contempt among her innumerable and
honourable admirers.  They will remember the critical and painful
circumstances as recorded in Mr. Henry Fielding's biography of Mr.
Jones.


Parcius junctas quatiunt fenestras
Ictibus crebris juvenes protervi.


Curse upon thy stars, Jack!  How long wilt thou beat me about the
head with thy musty citations from Nat Lee and thy troop of
poetical divines?  Thou hast driven me to motto-hunting for the
comeliness of mine epistle, like the weekly scribblers.  See, Jack,
I have an adventure to tell thee!  It is not the avenging Morden
that hath flashed through the window, sword in hand, as in my
frightful dream; nor hath the statue of the Commandant visited me,
like Don Juan, that Rake of Spain; but a challenger came hither
that is not akin to my beloved Miss.  Dost remember a tall, fresh-
coloured, cudgel-playing oaf that my Lady Bellaston led about with
her--as maids lead apes in hell, though he more of an ape than she
of a maid--'tis a year gone?  This brawny-beefed chairman hath
married a fortune and a delicious girl, you dog, Miss Sophia
Western, of Somerset, and is now in train, I doubt not, to beget as
goodly a tribe of chuckle-headed boys and whey-faced wenches as you
shall see round an old squire's tomb in a parish church.  Wherefore
does he not abide at this his appointed lawful husbandry, I marvel;
but not a whit!

Our cursed adventure hath spread from the flippanti of both sexes
down to the heathenish parts of Somerset; where it hath reached
Madam Jones's ears, and inflamed this pretty vixen with a desire to
avenge Miss Harlowe on me, and by the cudgel of Mr. Jones, his
Sophia having sent him up to town for no other purpose.  De la
Tour, my man, came to me yesterday morning with the tidings that
the New Giant, as he supposes, waits on me to solicit the favour of
my patronage.  I am in the powdering closet, being bound for a
rout, and cry, "Let the Giant in!"  Then a heavy tread:  and,
looking up, what do I see but a shoulder-of-mutton fist at my nose,
and lo! a Somerset tongue cries, "Lovelace, thou villain, thou
shalt taste of this!"  A man in a powdering closet cannot fight,
even if he be a boxing glutton like your Figs and other gladiators
of the Artillery Ground.  Needs must I parley.  "What," says I,
"what, the happy Mr. Jones from the West!  What brings him here
among the wicked, and how can the possessor of the beauteous Sophia
be a moment from her charms?"

"Take not her name," cries my clod-hopper, "into thy perjured
mouth.  'Tis herself sends me here to avenge the best, the most
injured . . . "  Here he fell a-blubbering!  Oh, Belford, the
virtue of this world is a great discourager of repentance.

"If Mr. Jones insists on the arbitrament of the sword . . . " I was
beginning--"Nay, none of thy Frenchified blades," cries he, "come
out of thy earth, thou stinking fox, and try conclusions with an
English cudgel!"

Belford, I am no cudgel-player, and I knew not well how to rid
myself of this swasher.

"Mr. Jones!" I said, "I will fight you how you will, where you
will, with what weapon you will; but first inform me of the nature
of our quarrel.  Would you blazon abroad yet further the malignant
tales that have injured both me and a lady for whom I have none but
the most hallowed esteem?  I pray you sit down, Sir; be calm, the
light is ill for any play with cudgel or sword.  De la Tour, a
bottle of right Burgundy; Mr. Jones and I have business, and he
hath travelled far."

In a trice there was a chicken, a bottle, a set of knives and
forks, a white cloth, and a hungry oaf that did eat and swear!  One
bottle followed another.  By the third Mr. Jones embraced me,
saying that never had a man been more belied than I; that it was
Lord Fellamar, not I, was the villain.  To this effect I own that I
did myself drop a hint; conceiving that the divine Sophia must
often have regretted our friend Fellamar when once she was bound to
the oaf, and that Jones was capable of a resentful jealousy.  By
midnight I had to call a chair for my besotted challenger, and when
the Avenger was there safely bestowed, I asked him where the men
should carry him?  His tongue being now thick, and his brains
bemused, he could not find the sign of his inn in his noddle.  So,
the merry devil prompting me, I gave the men the address of his
ancient flame, my Lady Bellaston, and off they jogged with Jones.

Was there ever, Belford, a stranger amoris redintegratio than this
must have been, when our Lydia heard the old love at the rarely
shaken doors:


Me tuo longas pereunte noctes,
Lydia, dormis?


Ah, how little hath Madam Sophia taken by despatching her lord to
town, and all to break my head.  My fellow, who carries this to
thee, has just met Fellamar's man, and tells me that FELLAMAR
YESTERDAY WENT DOWN INTO SOMERSET.  What bodes this rare
conjunction and disjunction of man and wife and of old affections?
and hath "Thomas, a Foundling," too, gone the way of all flesh?

Thy LOVELACE.

No news of the dear fugitive!  Ah, Belford, my conscience and my
cousins call me a villain!  Minxes all.



LETTER:  From Miss Catherine Morland to Miss Eleanor Tilney.



Miss Catherine Morland, of "Northanger Abbey," gives her account of
a visit to Mr. Rochester, and of his governess's peculiar
behaviour.  Mrs. Rochester (nee Eyre) has no mention of this in her
Memoirs.


Thornfield, Midnight

At length, my dear Eleanor, the terrors on which you have so often
rallied me are become REALITIES, and your Catherine is in the midst
of those circumstances to which we may, without exaggeration, give
the epithet "horrible."  I write, as I firmly believe, from the
mansion of a maniac!  On a visit to my Aunt Ingram, and carried by
her to Thornfield, the seat of her wealthy neighbour, Mr.
Rochester, how shall your Catherine's trembling pen unfold the
mysteries by which she finds herself surrounded!  No sooner had I
entered this battlemented mansion than a cold chill struck through
me, as with a sense of some brooding terror.  All, indeed, was
elegance, all splendour!  The arches were hung with Tyrian-dyed
curtains.  The ornaments on the pale Parian mantelpiece were of red
Bohemian glass.  Everywhere were crimson couches and sofas.  The
housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax, pointed out to my notice some vases of
fine purple spar, and on all sides were Turkey carpets and large
mirrors.  Elegance of taste and fastidious research of ornament
could do no more; but what is luxury to the mind ill at ease? or
can a restless conscience be stilled by red Bohemian glass or pale
Parian mantelpieces?

No, alas! too plainly was this conspicuous when, on entering the
library, we found Mr. Rochester--alone!  The envied possessor of
all this opulence can be no happy man.  He was seated with his head
bent on his folded arms, and when he looked up a morose--almost a
malignant--scowl blackened his features!  Hastily beckoning to the
governess, who entered with us, to follow him, he exclaimed, "Oh,
hang it all!" in an accent of despair, and rushed from the chamber.
We distinctly heard the doors clanging behind him as he flew!  At
dinner, the same hollow reserve; his conversation entirely confined
to the governess (a Miss Eyre), whose position here your Catherine
does not understand, and to whom I distinctly heard him observe
that Miss Blanche Ingram was "an extensive armful."

The evening was spent in the lugubrious mockery of pretending to
consult an old gipsy-woman who smoked a short black pipe, and was
recognised BY ALL as Mr. Rochester in disguise.  I was conducted by
Miss Eyre to my bedroom--through a long passage, narrow, low, and
dim, with two rows of small black doors, all shut; 'twas like a
corridor in some Blue Beard's castle.  "Hurry, hurry, I hear the
chains rattling," said this strange girl; whose position, my
Eleanor, in this house causes your Catherine some natural
perplexity.  When we had reached my chamber, "Be silent, silent as
death," said Miss Eyre, her finger on her lip and her meagre body
convulsed with some mysterious emotion.  "Speak not of what you
hear, do not remember what you see!" and she was gone.

I undressed, after testing the walls for secret panels and looking
for assassins in the usual place, but was haunted all the time by
an unnatural sound of laughter.  At length, groping my way to the
bed, I jumped hastily in, and would have sought some suspension of
anguish by creeping far underneath the clothes.  But even this
refuge was denied to your wretched Catherine!  I could not stretch
my limbs; for the sheet, my dear Eleanor, had been so arranged, in
some manner which I do not understand, as to render this
impossible.  The laughter seemed to redouble.  I heard a footstep
at my door.  I hurried on my frock and shawl and crept into the
gallery.  A strange dark figure was gliding in front of me,
stooping at each door; and every time it stooped, came A LOW
GURGLING NOISE!  Inspired by I know not what desperation of
courage, I rushed on the figure and seized it by the neck.  It was
Miss Eyre, the governess, filling the boots of all the guests with
water, which she carried in a can.  When she saw me she gave a
scream and threw herself against a door hung with a curtain of
Tyrian dye.  It yielded, and there poured into the passage a blue
cloud of smoke, with a strong and odious smell of cigars, into
which (and to what company?) she vanished.  I groped my way as well
as I might to my own chamber:  where each hour the clocks, as they
struck, found an echo in the apprehensive heart of

THE ILL-FATED
CATHERINE MORLAND.



LETTER:  From Montague Tigg, Esq., to Mr. David Crimp.



The following letter needs no explanation for any who have studied
the fortunes and admired the style of that celebrated and sanguine
financier, Mr. Montague Tigg, in "Martin Chuzzlewit."  His chance
meeting with the romantic Comte de Monte Cristo naturally suggested
to him the plans and hopes which he unfolds to an unsympathetic
capitalist.


1542 Park Lane, May 27, 1848.

My Premium Pomegranate,--Oracles are not in it, David, with you, my
pippin, as auspicious counsellors of ingenious indigence.  The
remark which you uttered lately, when refusing to make the trumpery
advance of half-a-crown on a garment which had been near to the
illustrious person of my friend Chevy Slime, that remark was
inspired.  "Go to Holborn!" you said, and the longest-bearded of
early prophets never uttered aught more pregnant with Destiny.  I
went to Holborn, to the humble establishment of the tuneful tonsor,
Sweedle-pipe.  All things come, the poet says, to him who knows how
to wait--especially, I may add, to him who knows how to wait behind
thin partitions with a chink in them.  Ensconced in such an ambush-
-in fact, in the back shop--I bided my time, intending to solicit
pecuniary accommodation from the barber, and studying human nature
as developed in his customers.

There are odd customers in Kingsgate Street, Holborn--foreign gents
and refugees.  Such a cove my eagle eye detected in a man who
entered the shop wearing a long black beard streaked with the snows
of age, and who requested Poll to shave him clean.  He was a
sailor-man to look at; but his profile, David, might have been
carved by a Grecian chisel out of an iceberg, and that steel grey
eye of his might have struck a chill, even through a chink, into
any heart less stout than beats behind the vest of Montague Tigg.
The task of rasping so hirsute a customer seemed to sit heavy on
the soul of Poll, and threatened to exhaust the resources of his
limited establishment.  The barber went forth to command, as I
presume, a fresher strop, or more keenly tempered steel, and
glittering cans of water heated to a fiercer heat.  No sooner was
the coast clear than the street-door opened, and my stranger was
joined by a mantled form, that glided into Poll's emporium.  The
new-comer doffed a swart sombrero, and disclosed historic features
that were not unknown to the concealed observer--meaning me.  Yes,
David, that aquiline beak, that long and waxed moustache, that
impassible mask of a face, I had seen them, Sir, conspicuous
(though their owner be of alien and even hostile birth) among
England's special chivalry.  The foremost he had charged on the
Ides of April (I mean against the ungentlemanly Chartist throng)
and in the storied lists of Eglinton.  The new-comer, in short, was
the nephew of him who ate his heart out in an English gaol (like
our illustrious Chiv)--in fact, he was Prince Louis N- B-.

Gliding to the seat where, half-lathered, the more or less ancient
Mariner awaited Poll's return, the Prince muttered (in the French
lingo, familiar to me from long exile in Boulogne):

"Hist, goes all well?"

"Magnificently, Sire!" says the other chap.

"Our passages taken?"

"Ay, and private cabins paid for to boot, in case of the storm's
inclemency."

The Prince nodded and seemed pleased; then he asked anxiously,

"The Bird?  You have been to Jamrach's?"

"Pardon me, Sire," says the man who was waiting to be shaved, "I
can slip from your jesses no mercenary eagle.  These limbs have yet
the pith to climb and this heart the daring to venture to the
airiest crag of Monte d'Oro, and I have ravished from his eyrie a
true Corsican eagle to be the omen of our expedition.  Wherever
this eagle is your uncle's legions will gather together."

"'Tis well; and the gold?"

"TRUST MONTE CRISTO!" says the bearded man; and then, David, begad!
I knew I had them!

"We meet?"

"At Folkestone pier, 7.45, tidal train."

"I shall be there without fail," says the Prince, and sneaks out of
the street-door just as Poll comes in with the extra soap and
strop.

Well, David, to make it as short as I can, the man of the icy
glance was clean-shaved at last, and the mother who bore him would
not have known him as he looked in the glass when it was done.  He
chucked Poll a diamond worth about a million piastres, and,
remarking that he would not trouble him for the change, he walked
out.  By this characteristic swagger, of course, he more than
confirmed my belief that he was, indeed, the celebrated foreigner
the Count of Monte Cristo; whose name and history even YOU must be
acquainted with, though you may not be what I have heard my friend
Chevy Slime call himself, "the most literary man alive."  A
desperate follower of the star of Austerlitz from his youth, a
martyr to the cause in the Chateau d'If, Monte Cristo has not
deserted it now that he has come into his own--or anybody else's.

Of course I was after him like a shot.  He walked down Kingsgate
Street and took a four-wheeler that was loitering at the corner.  I
followed on foot, escaping the notice of the police from the fact,
made only too natural by Fortune's cursed spite, that under the
toga-like simplicity of Montague Tigg's costume these minions
merely guessed at a cab-tout.

Well, David, he led me a long chase.  He got out of the four-
wheeler (it was dark now) at the Travellers', throwing the cabman a
purse--of sequins, no doubt.  At the door of the Travellers' he
entered a brougham; and, driving to the French Embassy in Albert
Gate, he alighted, IN DIFFERENT TOGS, quite the swell, and LET
HIMSELF IN WITH HIS OWN LATCH-KEY.

In fact, Sir, this conspirator of barbers' shops, this prisoner of
the Chateau d'If, this climber of Corsican eyries, is to-day the
French Minister accredited to the Court of St. James's!

And now perhaps, David, you begin to see how the land lies, the
Promised Land, the land where there is corn and milk and honey-dew.
I hold those eminent and highly romantic parties in the hollow of
my hand.  A letter from me to M. Lecoq, of the Rue Jerusalem, and
their little game is up, their eagle moults, the history of Europe
is altered.  But what good would all that do Montague Tigg?  Will
it so much as put that delightful coin, a golden sovereign, in the
pocket of his nether garments?  No, Tigg is no informer; a man who
has charged at the head of his regiment on the coast of Africa is
no vulgar spy.  There is more to be got by making the Count pay
through the nose, as we say; chanter, as the French say; "sing a
song of sixpence"--to a golden tune.

But, as Fortune now uses me, I cannot personally approach his
Excellency.  Powdered menials would urge me from his portals.  An
advance, a small advance--say 30l.--is needed for preliminary
expenses:  for the charges of the clothier, the bootmaker, the
hosier, the barber.  Give me 30l. for the restoration of Tigg to
the semblance of the Montagues, and with that sum I conquer
millions.  The diamonds of Monte Cristo, the ingots, the rubies,
the golden crowns with the image and superscription of Pope
Alexander VI.--all are mine:  I mean are ours.

More, David; more, my premium tulip:  we shall make the Count a
richer man than ever he has been.  We shall promote new companies,
we shall put him on the board of directors.  I see the prospectuses
from afar.


UNIVERSAL INTERNATIONAL TREASURE RECOVERY COMPANY.

Chairman.

His Excellency the COMTE DE MONTE CRISTO.  K.G., K.C.B., Knight of
the Black Eagle.

Directors.

CHEVY SLIME, Esq., Berkeley Square.
MONTAGUE TIGG, Esq., Park Lane.
M. VAUTRIN (Les Bagnes pres de Toulon).
M. JEAN VALJEAN.
The CHEVALIER STRONG.  (Would he come in?)
Hon. Secretary.--DAVID CRIMP, Esq.
Archaeological Adviser.--Dr. SPIEGELMANN, Berlin.


Then the prospectus!  Treasure-hunting too long left to individual
and uneducated enterprise.  Need of organised and instructed
effort.  Examples of treasure easily to be had.  Grave of Alaric.
Golden chain of Cuzco.  Galleons of Vigo Bay.  Loot of Delphi.
Straits of Salamis.  Advice of most distinguished foreign experts
already secured.  Paid-up capital, a 6 and as many 0's as the
resources of the printing establishment can command.  The public
will rush in by the myriad.  And I am also sketching a

"Disinterested Association for Securing the Rights of Foundlings,"
again with Monte Cristo in the chair.  David, you have saved a few
pounds; in the confidence of unofficial moments you have confessed
as much (though not exactly HOW much) to me.  Will you neglect one
of those opportunities which only genius can discover, but which
the humble capitalist can help to fructify?  With thirty, nay, with
twenty pounds, I can master this millionaire and tame this Earthly
Providence.  Behind us lies penury and squalor, before us glitters
jewelled opulence.  You will be at 1542 Park Lane to-morrow WITH
THE DIBS?--Yours expectantly,

MONTAGUE TIGG.


From Mr. David Crimp to Montague Tigg, Esq.
The Golden Balls, May 28.


Dear Mr. Tigg,--You always WERE full of your chaff, but you must
have been drinking when you wrote all that cock-and-a-bull gammon.
Thirty pounds!  No; nor fifteen; nor as many pence.  I never heard
of the party you mention by the name of the Count of Monte Cristo;
and as for the Prince, he's as likely to be setting out for
Boulogne with an eagle as you are to start a monkey and a barrel-
organ in Jericho; or may be THAT'S the likeliest of the two.  So
stow your gammon, and spare your stamps, is my last word.--Yours
respectfully to command,

D. CRIMP.



LETTER:  From Christian to Piscator.



Walton and Bunyan were men who should have known each other.  It is
a pleasant fancy, to me, that they may have met on the banks of
Ouse, while John was meditating a sermon, and Izaak was "attentive
of his trembling quill."


Sir,--Being now come into the Land of Beulah; here, whence I cannot
so much as see Doubting Castle; here, where I am solaced with the
sound of voices from the City,--my mind, that is now more at peace
about mine own salvation, misgives me sore about thine.  Thou wilt
remember me, perchance, for him that met thee by a stream of the
Delectable Mountains, and took thee to be a man fleeing from the
City of Destruction.  For, beholding thee from afar, methought that
thou didst carry a burden on thy back, even as myself before my
deliverance did bear the burden of my sins and fears.  Yet when I
drew near I perceived that it was but a fisherman's basket on thy
back, and that thou didst rather seek to add to the weight of thy
burden than to lighten it or fling it away.  But, when we fell into
discourse, I marvelled much how thou camest so far upon the way,
even among the sheep and the shepherds of that country.  For I
found that thou hadst little experience in conflict with Apollyon,
and that thou hadst never passed through the Slough of Despond nor
wandered in the Valley of the Shadow.  Nay, thou hadst never so
much as been distressed in thy mind with great fear, nor hadst thou
fled from thy wife and children, to save, if it might be, thy soul
for thyself, as I have done.  Nay, rather thou didst parley with
the shepherds as one that loved their life; and I remember, even
now, that sweet carnal song


The Shepherd swains shall dance and sing,
For thy delight, each May morning;
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.


These are not the songs that fit the Delectable Country; nay,
rather they are the mirth of wantons.  Yet didst thou take pleasure
in them; and therefore I make bold to ask how didst thou flee at
all from the City of Destruction, and come so far upon thy way?
Beware lest, when thou winnest to that brook wherein no man casts
angle, even to that flood where there is no bridge to go over and
the River is very deep--beware, I say, of one Vain Hope, the
Ferryman!  For I would not have thee lost, because thou art a
kindly man and a simple.  Yet for Ignorance there is an ill way,
even from the very gates of the City.--Thy fellow-traveller,

CHRISTIAN.


From Piscator to Christian.


Sir,--I do indeed remember thee; and I trust thou art amended of
these gripings which caused thee to groan and moan, even by the
pleasant streams from the hills of the Delectable Mountains.  And
as for my "burden" 'twas pleasant to me to bear it; for, like not
the least of the Apostles, I am a fisher, and I carried trout.  But
I take no shame in that I am an angler; for angling is somewhat
like poetry; men are to be born so, and I would not be otherwise
than my Maker designed to have me.  Of the antiquity of angling I
could say much; but I misdoubt me that thou dost not heed the
learning of ancient times, but art a contemner of good learning and
virtuous recreations.  Yet it may a little move thee that in the
Book of Job mention is made of fish-hooks, and without reproof; for
let me tell you that in the Scriptures angling is always taken in
the best sense.

Touching my flight from the City of Destruction, I love that place
no more than thou dost; yet I fear not its evil communications, nor
would I so hastily desert it as to leave my wife and children
behind therein.  Nor have I any experience of conflict with the
Evil One; wherefore I thank Him that hath set me in pleasant
fields, by clear waters, where come no wicked whispers (be they
from Apollyon or from our own hearts); but there is calmness of
spirit, and a world of blessings attending upon it.  And hence can
no man see the towers of Doubting Castle, for the green trees and
the hedges white with May.  This life is not wholly vile, as some
of thy friends declare (Thou, who makest thy pilgrims dance to the
lute, knowest better); and, for myself, I own that I love such
mirth as does not make men ashamed to look upon each other next
morning.  Let him that bears a heavy heart for his ill-deeds turn
him to better, but not mourn as though the sun were taken out of
the sky.  What says the song?--nay, 'tis as good balm for the soul
as many a hymn:


A merry heart goes all the day,
Your sad one tires in a mile-a!


He that made the world made man to take delight in it; even as thou
saw'st me joyful with the shepherds--ay, with godly Mr. Richard
Hooker, "he being then tending his small allotment of sheep in a
common field," as I recount in a brief life of a good man.  As to
what awaits me on the other side of that River, I do expect it with
a peaceful heart, and in humble hope that a man may reach the City
with a cheerful countenance, no less than through groans and sighs
and fears.  For we have not a tyrant over us, but a Father, that
loveth a cheerful liver no less than a cheerful giver.
Nevertheless, I thank thee for thy kind thought of one that is not
of thy company, nor no Nonconformist, but a peaceful Protestant.
And, lest thou be troubled with apparitions of hobgoblins and evil
spirits, read that comfortable sermon of Mr. Hooker's to weak
believers, on the CERTAINTY OF ADHERENCE, though they want the
inward testimony of it.

But now falls there a sweet shower, "a singing shower" saith old
George Chapman, and methinks I shall have sport; for I do note that
the mayfly is up; and, seeing all these beautiful creatures playing
in the air and water, I feel my own heart play within me; and I
must out and dape under yonder sycamore tree.  Wherefore, prithee,
pardon me a longer discourse as at this time.--Thy friend,

PISCATOR.



LETTER:  From Truthful James to Mr. Bret Harte.



WILLIAM NYE'S EXPERIMENT.
Angel's.

Dear Bret Harte,
I'm in tears,
And the camp's in the dust,
For with anguish it hears
As poor William may bust,
And the last of the Nyes is in danger of
sleeping the sleep of the just.

No revolver it was
Interfered with his health,
The convivial glass
Did not harm him by stealth;
It was nary!  He fell by a scheme which
he thought would accumulate wealth!

For a Moqui came round
To the camp--Injun Joe;
And the dollars was found
In his pockets to flow;
For he played off some tricks with live
snakes, as was reckoned a competent show.

They was rattlers; a pair
In his teeth he would hold,
And another he'd wear
Like a scarf to enfold
His neck, with them dangerous critters
as safe as the saint was of old.

Sez William, "That same
Is as easy as wink.
I am fly to his game;
For them rattlers, I think,
Has had all their incisors extracted.
They're harmless as suthin' to drink."

So he betted his pile
He could handle them snakes;
And he tried, with a smile,
And a rattler he takes,
Feeling safe as they'd somehow been
doctored; but bless you, that sarpent awakes!

Waken snakes! and they DID
And they rattled like mad;
For it was not a "kid,"
But some medicine he had,
Injun Joe, for persuadin' the critters but
William's bit powerful bad.

So they've put him outside
Of a bottle of Rye,
And they've set him to ride
A mustang as kin shy,
To keep up his poor circulation; and
that's the last chance for Bill Nye.

But a near thing it is,
And the camp's in the dust.
He's a pard as we'd miss
If poor Bill was to bust -
If the last of the Nyes were a-sleepin
the peaceable sleep of the just.



LETTER:  From Professor Forth to the Rev. Mr. Casaubon.



The delicacy of the domestic matters with which the following
correspondence deals cannot be exaggerated.  It seems that Belinda
(whose Memoirs we owe to Miss Rhoda Broughton) was at Oxford while
Mr. and Mrs. Casaubon were also resident near that pleasant city,
so famed for its Bodleian Library.  Professor Forth and Mr.
Casaubon were friends, as may be guessed; their congenial
characters, their kindred studies, Etruscology and Mythology,
combined to ally them.  Their wives were not wholly absorbed in
their learned pursuits, and if Mr. Ladislaw was dangling after Mrs.
Casaubon, we know that Mr. Rivers used to haunt with Mrs. Forth the
walks of Magdalen.  The regret and disapproval which Mrs. Casaubon
expresses, and her desire to do good to Mrs. Forth, are, it is
believed, not alien to her devoted and exemplary character.


Bradmore-road, Oxford, May 29.

Dear Mr. Casaubon,--In the course of an investigation which my
researches into the character of the Etruscan "Involuti" have
necessitated, I frequently encounter the root Kad, k2ad, or Qad.
Schnitzler's recent and epoch-making discovery that d in Etruscan =
b2, has led me to consider it a plausible hypothesis that we may
convert Kad or Qad into Kab2, in which case it is by no means
beyond the range of a cautious conjecture that the Involuti are
identical with the Cab-iri (Cabiri).  Though you will pardon me for
confessing, what you already know, that I am not in all points an
adherent to your ideas concerning a "Key to All Mythologies" (at
least, as briefly set forth by you in Kuhn's Zeitung), yet I am
deeply impressed with this apparent opportunity of bridging the
seemingly impassable gulf between Etrurian Religion and the
comparatively clear and comprehensible systems of the Pelasgo-
Phoenician peoples.  That Kad or Kab can refer either (as in
Quatuor) to a four-footed animal (quadruped, "quad") or to a four-
wheeled vehicle (esseda, Celtic cab) I cannot for a moment believe,
though I understand that this theory has the support of Schrader,
Penka, and Baunder. {10}  Any information which your learning can
procure, and your kind courtesy can supply, will be warmly welcomed
and duly acknowledged.--Believe me, faithfully yours,

JAMES FORTH.

P.S.--I open this note, which was written from my dictation by my
secretary, Mrs. Forth, to assure myself that her inexperience has
been guilty of no error in matters of so much delicacy and
importance.  I have detected no mistake of moment, and begin to
hope that the important step of matrimony to which I was guided by
your example may not have been a rash experiment.


From the Rev. Mr. Casaubon to James Forth, Esq., Professor of
Etruscan, Oxford.


Dear Mr. Forth,--Your letter throws considerable light on a topic
which has long engaged my earnest attention.  To my thinking, the
Cab in Cabiri = CAV, "hollow," as in cavus, and refers to the Ark
of Noah, which, of course, before the entrance of every living
thing according to his kind, must have been the largest artificial
hollow or empty space known to our Adamite ancestors.  Thus the
Cabiri would answer, naturally, to the Pataeci, which, as Herodotus
tells us, were usually figured on the prows of ships.  The Cabiri
or Pataeci, as children of Noah and men of the "great vessel," or
Cave-men (a wonderful anticipation of modern science), would
perpetuate the memory of Arkite circumstances, and would be
selected, as the sacred tradition faded from men's minds, as the
guides of navigation.  I am sorry to seem out of harmony with your
ideas; but it is only a matter of seeming, for I have no doubt that
the Etruscan Involuti are also Arkite, and that they do not, as Max
Muller may be expected to intimate, represent the veiled or cloudy
Dawns, but rather the Arkite Patriarchs.  We thus, from different
starting-places, arrive at the same goal, the Arkite solution of
Bryant.  I am aware that I am old-fashioned--like Eumaeus, "I dwell
here among the swine, and go not often to the city."  Your letters
with little numerals (as k2) may represent the exactness of modern
philology; but more closely remind me of the formulae of algebra, a
study in which I at no time excelled.

It is my purpose to visit Cambridge on June 3, to listen to a most
valuable address by Professor Tosch, of Bonn, on Hittite and Aztec
affinities.  If you can meet me there and accept the hospitality of
my college, the encounter may prove a turning point in Mythological
and Philological Science.--Very faithfully yours,

J. CASAUBON.

P.S.--I open this note, written from my dictation by my wife, to
enclose my congratulations on Mrs. Forth's scholarly attainments.


From Professor Forth to Rev. Mr. Casaubon.
(Telegram.)


Will be with you at Cambridge on the third.



From Mrs. Forth, Bradmore-road, Oxford, to David Rivers, Esq.,
Milnthorpe, Yorkshire.



He goes on Saturday to Cambridge to hear some one talk about the
Hittites and the Asiatics.  Did you not say there was a good Sunday
train?  They sing "O Rest in the Lord" at Magdalen.  I often wonder
that Addison's Walk is so deserted on Sundays.  He stays over
Sunday at Cambridge. {11}


From David Rivers, Esq., to Mrs. Forth, Oxford.


Dear Mrs. Forth,--Saturday is a half-holiday at the Works, and I
propose to come up and see whether our boat cannot bump Balliol.
How extraordinary it is that people should neglect, on Sundays, the
favourite promenade of the Short-faced Humourist.  I shall be
there:  the old place.--Believe me, yours ever,

D. RIVERS.


From Mrs. Casaubon to William Ladislaw, Esq., Stratford-on-Avon.


Dear Friend,--Your kind letter from Stratford is indeed
interesting.  Ah, when shall I have an opportunity of seeing these,
and so many other interesting places!  But in a world where duty is
SO MUCH, and so ALWAYS with us, why should we regret the voids in
our experience which, after all, life is filling in the experience
of others?  The work is advancing, and Mr. Casaubon hopes that the
first chapter of the "Key to All Mythologies" will be fairly copied
and completed by the end of autumn.  Mr. Casaubon is going to
Cambridge on Saturday to hear Professor Tosch lecture on the
Pittites and some other party, I really forget which; {12} but it
is not often that he takes so much interest in mere MODERN history.
How curious it sometimes is to think that the great spirit of
humanity and of the world, as you say, keeps working its way--ah,
to what wonderful goal--by means of these obscure difficult
politics:  almost unworthy instruments, one is tempted to think.
That was a true line you quoted lately from the "Vita Nuova."  We
have no books of poetry here, except a Lithuanian translation of
the Rig Veda.  How delightful it must be to read Dante with a
sympathetic fellow-student, one who has also loved--and RENOUNCED!-
-Yours very sincerely,

DOROTHEA CASAUBON.

P.S.--I do not expect Mr. Casaubon back from Cambridge before
Monday afternoon.


From William Ladislaw, Esq., to the Hon. Secretary of the Literary
and Philosophical Mechanics' Institute, Middlemarch.


My Dear Sir,--I find that I can be in your neighbourhood on
Saturday, and will gladly accept your invitation to lecture at your
Institute on the Immutability of Morals.--Faithfully yours,

W. LADISLAW.


From William Ladislaw, Esq., to Mrs.


Casaubon.

Dear Mrs. Casaubon,--Only a line to say that I am to lecture at the
Mechanics' Institute on Saturday.  I can scarcely hope that, as Mr.
Casaubon is away, you will be able to attend my poor performance,
but on Sunday I may have, I hope, the pleasure of waiting on you in
the afternoon?--Very sincerely yours,

W. LADISLAW.

P.S.--I shall bring the 'Vita Nuova'--it is not so difficult as the
'Paradiso'--and I shall be happy to help you with a few of the
earlier sonnets.


From Mrs. Casaubon to Mrs. Forth.


June 5.

Dear Lady,--You will be surprised at receiving a letter from a
stranger!  How shall I address you--how shall I say what I ought to
say?  Our husbands are not unknown to each other, I may almost call
them friends, but we have met only once.  You did not see me; but I
was at Magdalen a few weeks ago, and I could not help asking who
you were, so young, so beautiful; and when I saw you so lonely
among all those learned men my heart went out to you, for I too
know what the learned are, and how often, when we are young, we
feel as if they were so cold, so remote.  Ah, then there come
TEMPTATIONS, but they must be conquered.--We are not born to live
for ourselves only, we must learn to live for others--ah! not for
ANOTHER!

Some one {13} we both know, a lady, has spoken to me of you lately.
She too, though you did not know it, was in Magdalen Walk on Sunday
evening when the bells were chiming and the birds singing.  She saw
you; you were not alone!  Mr. Rivers (I am informed that is his
name) was with you.  Ah, stop and think, and hear me before it is
too late.  A word; I do not know--a word of mine may be listened
to, though I have no right to speak.  But something forces me to
speak, and to implore you to remember that it is not for Pleasure
we live, but for Duty.  We must break the dearest ties if they do
not bind us to the stake--the stake of all we owe to all!  You will
understand, you will forgive me, will you not?  You will forgive
another woman whom your beauty and sadness have won to admire and
love you.  You WILL break these ties, will you not, and be free,
for only in Renunciation is there freedom?  He MUST NOT come again,
you will tell him that he must not.--Yours always,

DOROTHEA CASAUBON.



LETTER:  From Euphues to Sir Amyas Leigh, Kt.



This little controversy on the value of the herb tobacco passed
between the renowned Euphues and that early but assiduous smoker,
Sir Amyas Leigh, well known to readers of "Westward Ho."

(He dissuadeth him from drinking the smoke of the Indian weed.)


Sir Amyas,--Take it not unkindly that a traveller (though less wide
a wanderer than thou) dissuadeth thee from a new-found novelty--the
wanton misuse, or rather the misuseful wantonness, of the Indian
herb.  It is a blind goose that knoweth not a fox from a fern-bush,
and a strange temerity that mistaketh smoke for provender.  The
sow, when she is sick, eateth the sea-crab and is immediately
recovered:  why, then, should man, being whole and sound, haste to
that which maketh many sick?  The lobster flieth not in the air,
nor doth the salamander wanton in the water; wherefore, then, will
man betake him for nourishment or solace to the fire?  Vesuvius
bringeth not forth speech from his mouth, but man, like a volcano,
will utter smoke.  There is great difference between the table and
the chimney; but thou art for making both alike.  Though the Rose
be sweet, yet will it prove less fragrant if it be wreathed about
the skunk; and so an ill weed from the land where that beast hath
its habitation defileth a courteous knight.  Consider, if this
practice delights thee, that the apples of Sodom are outwardly fair
but inwardly full of ashes; the box-tree is always green, but his
seed is poison.  Mithridate must be taken inwardly, not spread on
plasters.  Of his nature smoke goeth upward and outward; why wilt
thou make it go inward and downward?  The manners of the Cannibal
fit not the Englishman; and this thy poison is unlike Love, which
maimeth every part before it kill the Liver, whereas tobacco doth
vex the Liver before it harmeth any other part.  Excuse this my
boldness, and forswear thy weed, an thou lovest

EUPHUES.


From Sir Amyas Leigh to Euphues.


Whereas thou bringest in a rabble of reasons to convince me, I will
answer thee in thine own kind.  Thou art like those that proffer a
man physic before he be sick, and, because his pleasure is not
theirs, call him foolish that is but early advised.  Nature maketh
nothing without an end:  the eye to see with, the ear to hear, the
herb tobacco to be smoked.  As wine strengtheneth and meat maketh
full, tobacco maketh the heart at rest.  Helen gave Nepenthe to
them that sorrowed, and Heaven hath made this weed for such as lack
comfort.  Tobacco is the hungry man's food, the wakeful man's
sleep, the weary man's rest, the old man's defence against
melancholy, the busy man's repose, the talkative man's muzzle, the
lonely man's companion.  Indeed, there was nothing but this one
thing wanting to man, of those that earth can give; wherefore,
having found it, let him so use as not abusing it, as now I am
about doing.--Thy servant,

AMYAS LEIGH.



LETTER:  From Mr. Paul Rondelet to the Very Rev. Dean Maitland.
{14}



That Dean Maitland should have taken the political line indicated
in Mr. Rondelet's letter will amaze no reader of 'The Silence of
Dean Maitland.'  That Mr. Paul Rondelet flew from his penny paper
to a Paradise meet for him is a matter of congratulation to all but
his creditors.  He really is now in the only true Monastery of
Thelema, and is simply dressed in an eye-glass and a cincture of
pandanus flowers.  The natives worship him, and he is the First
AEsthetic Beach-comber.


Te-a-Iti, The Pacific.

Dear Maitland,--As my old friend and tutor at Lothian, you ask me
to join the Oxford Home Rule Association.  Excuse my delay in
answering.  Your letter was sent to that detested and long-deserted
newspaper office in Fleet Street, and from Fleet Street to Te-a-
Iti; thank Heaven! it is a long way.  Were I at home, and still
endeavouring to sway the masses, I might possibly accept your
invitation.  I dislike crowds, and I dislike shouting; but if shout
I must, like you I would choose to chime in with the dingier and
the larger and the more violent assembly.  But, having perceived
that the masses were very perceptibly learning to sway themselves,
I have retired to Te-a-Iti.  You have read "Epipsychidion," my dear
Dean?  And, in your time, no doubt you have loved? {15}   Well,
this is the Isle of Love, described, as in a dream, by the rapt
fancy of Shelley.  Urged, perhaps, by a reminiscence of the Great
Aryan wave of migration, I have moved westward to this Paradise.
Like Obermann, I hide my head "from the wild tempest of the age,"
but in a much dearer place than "chalets near the Alpine snow."
Long ago I said, to one who would not listen, that "all the
religions of the world are based on false foundations, resting on
the Family, and fatally unsound."  Here the Family, in our sense,
has not been developed.  Here no rules trammel the best and
therefore the most evanescent of our affections.  And as for
Religion, it is based upon Me, on Rondelet of Lothian.  Here nobody
asks me why or how I am "superior."  The artless natives at once
perceived the fact, recognised me as a god, and worship me (do not
shudder, my good Dean) with floral services.  In Te-a-Iti (vain to
look for it on the map!) I have found my place--a place far from
the babel of your brutal politics, a place where I am addressed in
liquid accents of adoration.

You may ask whether I endeavour to raise the islanders to my own
level?  It is the last thing that I would attempt.  Culture they do
not need:  their dainty hieratic precisions of ritual are a
sufficient culture in themselves.  As I said once before, "it is an
absurdity to speak of married people being one."  Here we are an
indefinite number; and no jealousy, no ambitious exclusiveness,
mars the happiness of all.  This is the Higher Life about which we
used ignorantly to talk.  Here the gross temporal necessities are
satisfied with a breadfruit, a roasted fish, and a few pandanus
flowers.  The rest is all climate and the affections.

Conceive, my dear Dean, the undisturbed felicity of life without
newspapers!  Empires may fall, perhaps have fallen, since I left
Fleet Street; Alan Dunlop may be a ditcher in good earnest on an
estate no longer his; but here we fleet the time carelessly, as in
the golden world.  And you ask me to join a raucous political
association for an object you detest in your heart, merely because
you want to swim with the turbid democratic current!  You are an
historian, Maitland:  did you ever know this policy succeed?  Did
you ever know the respectables prosper when they allied themselves
with the vulgar?  Ah, keep out of your second-hand revolutions.
Keep your hands clean, whether you keep your head on your shoulders
or not.  You will never, I fear, be Bishop of Winkum, with all your
historical handbooks and all your Oxford Liberalism.

But I am losing my temper, for the first time since I discovered
Te-a-Iti.  This must not be.--Yours regretfully,

PAUL RONDELET.

P.S.--Don't give any one my address; some of these Oxford harpies
are still unappeased.  The only European I have seen was not an
University man.  He was a popular Scotch novelist, and carried
Shorter Catechisms, which he distributed to my flock.  I only hope
he won't make "copy" out of me and my situation.

P. R.



LETTER:  From Harold Skimpole, Esq., to the Rev. Charles Honeyman,
M.A.



These letters tell their own tale of Genius and Virtue indigent and
in chains.  The eloquence of a Honeyman, the accomplishments of a
Skimpole, lead only to Cursitor Street.


Coavins's, Cursitor Street, May 1.

My Dear Honeyman,--It is May-day, when even the chimney-sweeper,
developing the pleasant unconscious poetry of his nature, forgets
the flues, wreathes the flowers, and persuades himself that he is
Jack-in-the-Green.  Jack who?  Was he Jack Sprat, or the young
swain who mated with Jill!  Who knows?  The chimney-sweeper has all
I ask, all that the butterflies possess, all that Common-sense and
Business and Society deny to Harold Skimpole.  He lives, he is
free, he is "in the green!"  I am in Coavins's!  In Cursitor Street
I cannot hear the streams warble, the birds chant, the music roll
through the stately fane, let us say, of Lady Whittlesea's.
Coavins's (as Coavins's man says) is "a 'ouse;" but how unlike, for
example, the hospitable home of our friend Jarndyce!  I can sketch
Coavins's, but I cannot alter it:  I can set it to music, on
Coavins's piano; but how melancholy are the jingling strains of
that dilapidated instrument!  At Jarndyce's house, when I am there,
I am in possession of it:  here Coavins's is in possession of me--
of the person of Harold Skimpole.

And why am I here?  Why am I far from landscape, music,
conversation?  Why, merely because I will follow neither Fame nor
Fortune nor Faith.  They call to us in the market-place, but I will
not dance.  Fame blows her trumpet, and offers her shilling (the
Queen's).  Faith peals her bells, and asks for MY shilling.
Fortune rattles her banking-scales.  They call, and the world joins
the waltz; but I will not march with them.  "Go after glory,
commerce, creeds," I cry; "only let Harold Skimpole live!" {16}
The world pursues the jangling music; but in my ear sound the pipes
of Pan, the voices of the river and the wood.

Yet I cannot be in the playground, whither they invite me.  Harold
Skimpole is fettered--by what?  By items!  I regret my incapacity
for details.  It may be the tinker or the tailor at whose suit I am
detained.  I am certain it is not at that of the soldier, or the
sailor, or the ploughboy, or the thief.  But, for the apothecary--
why, yes--it MAY be the apothecary!  In the dawn of life I loved--
who has not?--I wedded.  I set about surrounding myself with rosy
cheeks.  These cheeks grow pallid.  I call for the aid of Science--
Science sends in her bill!  "To the Mixture as Before," so much to
"the Tonic," so much.  The cheeks are rosy again.  I pour forth the
blessings of a father's heart; but there stands Science inexorable,
with her bill, her items.  I vainly point out that the mixture has
played its part, the tonic has played ITS part; and that, in the
nature of things, the transaction is ended.  The bill is
unappeasable.  I forget the details; a certain number of pieces of
yellow and white dross are spoken of.  Ah, I see it is fifteen and
some odd shillings and coppers.  Let us say twenty.

My dear Honeyman, you who, as I hear, are about to follow the
flutes of Aphrodite into a temple where Hymen gilds the horns of
the victims {17}--you, I am sure, will hurry to my rescue.  You may
not have the specie actually in your coffers; but with your
prospects, surely you can sign something, or make over something,
or back something, say a post obit or post vincula, or employ some
other instrument?  Excuse my inexperience; or, I should say, excuse
my congenital inability to profit by experience, now considerable,
of DIFFICULTIES--and of friendship.  Let not the sun of May-day go
down on Harold Skimpole in Coavins's!--Yours ever,

H. S.

P.S.--A youthful myrmidon of Coavins's will wait for a reply.
Shall we say, while we are about it, Twenty-five?


From the Rev. Charles Honeyman to Harold Skimpole, Esq.
Cursitor Street, May 1.


My Dear Skimpole,--How would I have joyed, had Providence placed it
within my power to relieve your distress!  But it cannot be.  Like
the Carthaginian Queen of whom we read in happier days at dear old
Borhambury, I may say that I am haud ignarus mali.  But, alas! the
very evils in which I am not unlearned, make it impossible for me
to add miseris succurrere disco!  Rather am I myself in need of
succour.  You, my dear Harold, have fallen among thieves; I may too
truly add that in this I am your neighbour.  The dens in which we
are lodged are contiguous; we are separated only by the bars.  Your
note was sent on hither from my rooms in Walpole Street.  Since we
met I have known the utmost that woman's perfidy and the rich man's
contumely can inflict.  But I can bear my punishment.  I loved, I
trusted.  She to whose hand I aspired, she on whose affections I
had based hopes at once of happiness in life and of extended
usefulness in the clerical profession, SHE was less confiding.  She
summoned to her council a minion of the Law, one Briggs.  HIS
estimate of my position and prospects could not possibly tally with
that of one whose HOPES are not set where the worldling places
them.  Let him, and such as he, take thought for the morrow and
chaffer about settlements.  I do not regret the gold to which you
so delicately allude.  I sorrow only for the bloom that has been
brushed from the soaring pinions of a pure and disinterested
affection. Sunt lacrymae rerum, and the handkerchief in which I
bury my face is dank with them.

Nor is this disappointment my only CROSS.  The carrion-birds of
commerce have marked down the stricken deer from their eyries in
Bond Street and Jermyn Street.  To know how Solomons has behaved,
and the BLACK colours in which Moss (of Wardour Street) has shown
himself, is to receive a new light on the character of a People
chosen under a very different Dispensation!  Detainers flock in,
like ravens to a feast.  At this moment I have endured the
humiliation of meeting a sneering child of this world--Mr. Arthur
Pendennis--the emissary of one {18} to whom I gave in other days
the sweetest blossom in the garden of my affections--my sister--of
one who has, indeed, behaved like a brother--IN LAW!  My word
distrusted, my statements received with a chilling scepticism by
this NABOB Newcome, I am urged to make some "composition" with my
creditors.  The world is very censorious, the ear of a Bishop is
easily won; who knows how those who have ENVIED talents not misused
may turn my circumstances to my disadvantage?  You will see that,
far from aiding another, I am rather obliged to seek succour
myself.  But that saying about the sparrows abides with me to my
comfort.  Could aught be done, think you, with a bill backed by our
joint names?  On July 12 my pew-rents will come in.  I swear to you
that they HAVE NOT BEEN ANTICIPATED.  Yours afflictedly,

CHARLES HONEYMAN.

P.S.--Would Jarndyce lend his name to a small bill at three months?
You know him well, and I have heard that he is a man of benevolent
character, and of substance.  But "how hardly shall a rich man"--
you remember the text.--C. H.



LETTER:  From Miss Harriet to M. Guy de Maupassant.



This note, from one of the English damsels whom M. Guy de
Maupassant dislikes so much, is written in such French as the lady
could muster.  It explains that recurrent mystery, WHY ENGLISHWOMEN
ABROAD SMELL OF GUTTA-PERCHA.  The reason is not discreditable to
our countrywomen, but if M. de Maupassant asks, as he often does,
why Englishwomen dress like scarecrows when they are on the
Continent, Miss Harriet does not provide the answer.


Miss Pinkerton's, Stratford-atte-Bowe, Mars 12.

Monsieur,--Vous devez me connaitre, quoique je ne vous connais pas
le moins du monde.  Il m'est defendu de lire vos romans, je ne sais
trop pourquoi; mais j'ai bien lu la notice que M. Henry James a
consacree, dans le Fortnightly Review, a votre aimable talent.
Vous n'aimez pas, a ce qu'il parait, ni "la sale Angleterre" ni les
filles de ce pays immonde.  Je figure moi-meme dans vos romans (ou
moa-meme," car les Anglais, il est convenu, prononcent ce pronom
comme le nom d'un oiseau monstrueux et meme prehistorique de New
Zealand)--oui, "Miss Harriet" se risque assez souvent dans vos
contes assez risques.

Vous avez pose, Monsieur, le sublime probleme, "Comment se
prennentelles les demoiselles anglaises pour sentir toujours le
caoutchouc?" ("to smell of india-rubber":  traduction Henry James).
En premier lieu, Monsieur, elles ne "smell of india-rubber" quand
elles se trouvent chez elles, dans les bouges infectes qu'on
appelle les "stately homes of England." {19}  C'est seulement a
l'etranger que nous repandons l'odeur saine et rejouissante de
caoutchouc.  Et pourquoi?  Parce que, Monsieur, Miss Harriet tient
a son tub--ou tob--la chose est anglaise; c'est permis pourtant a
un galant homme d'en prononcer le nom comme il veut, ou comme il
peut

Or, quand elle voyage, Miss Harriet trouve, assez souvent, que le
"tub" est une institution tout-a-fait inconnue a ses hotes.  Que
fait-elle donc?  Elle porte dans sa malle un tub de caoutchouc,
"patent compressible india-rubber tub!"  Inutile a dire que ses
vetements se trouvent impregnes du "smell of india-rubber."  Voici,
Monsieur, la solution naturelle, et meme fort louable, d'une
question qui est faite pour desesperer les savants de la France!

Vous, Monsieur, qui etes un styliste accompli, veuillez bien me
pardonner les torts que je viens de faire a la belle langue
francaise.  Dame, on fait ce qu'on peut (comme on dit dans les
romans policiers) pour etre intelligible a un ecrivain si celebre,
qui ne lit couramment, peut-etre, l'idiome barbare et malsonnant de
la sale Angleterre.  M. Paul Bourget lui-meme ne lit plus le Grec.
Non omnia possumus omnes.

Agreez, Monsieur, mes sentiments les plus distingues.

MISS HARRIET.



LETTER:  From S. Gandish, Esq., to the "Newcome Independent."



THE ROYAL ACADEMY.

It appears that Mr. Gandish, at a great age--though he was not
older than several industrious Academicans--withdrew from the
active exercise of his art and employed his learning and experience
as Art Critic of the "Newcome Independent."  The following critique
appears to show traces of declining mental vigour in the veteran
Gandish.


Our great gallery has once more opened her doors, if not to the
public, nor even to the fashionable elite, at least to the critics.
They are a motley throng who lounge on Press Days in the sumptuous
halls; ladies, small boys, clergymen are there, and among them but
few, perhaps, who have received the training in High Art of your
correspondent, and have had their eye, through a lifetime more than
commonly prolonged, on the glorious Antique.  And what shall we say
of the present Academy?  In some ways, things have improved a
little since my "Boadishia" came back on my hands (1839) at a time
when High Art and the Antique would not do in this country:  they
would not do.  As far as the new exhibition shows, they do better
now than when the century was younger and "Portrait of the Artist,
by S. Gandish"--at thirty-three years of age--was offered in vain
to the jealously Papist clique who then controlled the Uffizi.
Foreigners are more affable now; they have taken Mr. Poynter's of
himself.

To return to the Antique, what the President's "Captive Andromache"
must have cost in models alone is difficult to reckon.  When times
were cheaper, fifty years since, my ancient Britons in "Boadishia"
stood me in thirty pounds:  the central figures, however, were
members of my own family.  To give every one his due, "Andromache"
is high art--yes, it is high--and the Antique has not been
overlooked.  About the back-view of the young party at the fountain
Mr. Horsley may have something to say.  For my part, there seems a
want of muscle in vigorous action:  where are the BICEPS, where are
the thews of Michael Angelo?  The President is a touch too quiet
for a taste framed in the best schools.  As to his colour, where is
that nutty brown tone of the flesh?  But the designs on the Greek
vase are carefully rendered; though I have heard it remarked by a
classical scholar that these kind of vases were not in use about
Homer's time.  Still, the intention is good, though the costumes
are not what WE should have called Ancient Roman when the President
was a boy--ay, or earlier.

Then, Mr. Alma-Tadema, he has not turned HIS back on the glorious
Antique.  "The Roses of Heliogabalus" are not explained in the
catalogue.  As far as I understand, there has been an earthquake at
a banquet of this unprincipled monarch.  The King himself, and his
friends, are safe enough at a kind of high table; though which IS
Heliogabalus (he being a consumptive-looking character in his coins
in the Classical Dictionary) your critic has not made out.  The
earth having opened down below, the heads of some women, and of a
man with a beard and his hair done up like a girl, are tossing
about in a quantity of rose-leaves, which had doubtless been strown
on the floor, as Martial tells us was the custom, dum regnat rosa.
So I overheard a very erudite critic remarking.  The composition of
the piece would be thus accounted for; but I cannot pretend that
Mr. Tadema reminds one of either Poussin or Annibale Carracci.
However, rumour whispers that a high price has been paid for this
curious performance.  To my thinking the friends of Heliogabalus
are a little flat and leathery in the handling of the flesh.  The
silver work, and the marble, will please admirers of this eccentric
artist; but I can hardly call the whole effect "High."  But Mr.
Armitage's "Siren" will console people who remember the old school.
This beautiful girl (somewhat careless in her attitude, though she
has been sensible enough NOT to sit down on the damp rock without
putting her drapery beneath her) would have been a true gem in one
of the old Books of Beauty, such as the Honourable Percy Popjoy and
my old friend, Miss Bunnion, used to contribute to in the palmy
days of the English school.  Mr. Armitage's "Juno," standing in
mid-air, with the moon in the neighbourhood, is also an example to
youth, and very unlike the way such things are generally done now.
Mr. Burne-Jones (who does not exhibit) never did anything like
this.  Poor Haydon, with whom I have smoked many a pipe, would have
acknowledged that Mr. Goodall's "David's Promise to Bathsheba" and
"By the Sea of Galilee" prove that his aspirations are nearly
fulfilled.  These are extremely large pictures, yet well hung.  The
figure of Abishag is a little too much in the French taste for an
old-fashioned painter.  Ars longa, nuda veritas!  I hope (and so
will the Liberal readers of the "Newcome Independent") that it is
by an accident the catalogue reads--"The Traitor."  "Earl Spencer,
K.G."  "The Moonlighters."  (Nos. 220, 221, 225.)  Some Tory WAG
among the Hanging Committee may have taken this juxtaposition for
wit:  our readers will adopt a different view.

There is a fine dog in Mr. Briton Riviere's "Requiescat," but how
did the relations of the dead knight in plate armour acquire the
embroidery, at least three centuries later, on which he is laid to
his last repose?  This destroys the illusion, but does not diminish
the pathos in the attitude of the faithful hound.  Mr. Long's large
picture appears to exhibit an Oriental girl being tried by a jury
of matrons--at least, not having my Diodorus Scriblerus by me, I
can arrive at no other conclusion.  From the number of models
engaged, this picture must have been designed quite regardless of
expense.  It is a study of the Antique, but I doubt if Smee would
have called it High Art.

Speaking of Smee reminds me of portraits.  I miss "Portrait of a
Lady," "Portrait of a Gentleman;" the names of the sitters are now
always given--a concession to the notoriety-hunting proclivities of
the present period.  Few portraits are more in the style of the
palmy days of our school (just after Lawrence) than a study of a
lady by Mr. Goodall (687).  On the other hand, young Mr. Richmond
goes back to the antiquated manner of Reynolds in one of his
representations.  I must admit that I hear this work much admired
by many; to me it seems old-fashioned and lacking in blandness and
affability.  Mr Waterhouse has a study of a subject from a poem
that Mr. Pendennis, the novelist (whom I knew well), was very fond
of when he first came on the town:  "The Lady of Shalott."  It
represents a very delicate invalid, in a boat, under a counterpane.
I remember the poem ran (it was by young Mr. Tennyson):-


They crossed themselves, their stars they blest,
Knight, minstrel, abbot, squire, and guest.
There lay a parchment on her breast
That puzzled more than all the rest
The well-fed wits of Camelot:
"The web was woven curiously,
The charm is broken utterly;
Draw near and fear not, this is I
The Lady of Shalott."


I admit that the wonder and dismay of the "well-fed wits," if the
Lady was like Mr. Waterhouse's picture of her, do not surprise me.
But I confess I do not understand modern poetry, nor, perhaps,
modern painting.  Where is historical Art?  Where is Alfred and the
Cake--a subject which, as is well known, I discovered in my
researches in history.  Where is "Udolpho in the Tower"? or the
"Duke of Rothsay the Fourth Day after He was Deprived of his
Victuals"?  or "King John Signing Magna Charta"?  They are gone
with the red curtain, the brown tree, the storm in the background.
Art is revolutionary, like everything else in these times, when
Treason itself, in the form of a hoary apostate and reviewer of
contemporary fiction, glares from the walls, and is painted by
Royal--mark ROYAL!--Academicians! . . .


From Thomas Potts, Esq., of the "Newcome Independent," to S.
Gandish, Esq.
Newcome, May 3.


My Dear Sir,--I am truly sorry to have to interrupt a connection
with so old and respected a contributor.  But I think you will
acknowledge, on reading the proof of your article on the Academy,
which I enclose, that the time has arrived when public criticism is
no longer your province.  I do not so much refer to the old-
fashioned tone of your observations on modern art.  I know little
about it, and care not much more.  But you have entirely forgotten,
towards the end of the notice, that the "Newcome Independent," as
becomes its name, is a journal of Liberty and Progress.  The very
proper remarks on Lord Spencer's portrait elsewhere show that you
are not unacquainted with our politics; but, at the close
(expressing, I fear, your true sentiments), you glide into language
which makes me shudder, and which, if printed in the "Independent,"
would spell ruin.  Send it, by all means, to the "Sentinel," if you
like.  Send your Tory views, I mean.  As for your quotation from
the "Lady of Shalott," I can find it nowhere in the poem of that
name by the author you strangely style "young Mr. Tennyson." {20}

I enclose a cheque for a quarter's salary, and, while always happy
to meet you as man with man, must get the notice of the Academy
written up in the office from the "Daily Telegraph," "Standard,"
and "Times." {21}--Faithfully and with deep regret yours,

THOMAS POTTS.



LETTER:  From Monsieur Lecoq, Rue Jerusalem, Paris, to Inspector
Bucket, Scotland Yard.



This correspondence appears to prove that mistakes may be made by
the most astute officers of police, and that even so manifest a
Briton as Mr. Pickwick might chance to find himself in the toils of
international conspiracy.


(Translated.)  May 19, 1852.

Sir and Dear Fellow-Brother (confrere).--The so cordial
understanding between our countries ought to expand itself into a
community of the political police.  But the just susceptibilities
of the Old England forbid at this moment the restoration to a
friendly Power of political offenders.  In the name of the French
police of surety I venture to present to the famous officer Bucket
a prayer that he will shut his eyes, for once, on the letter, and
open his heart to the spirit of the laws.

No one needs to teach Monsieur Bucket that a foreign miscreant can
be given up, under all reserves, to the justice!  A small vial of a
harmless soporific, a closed carriage, a private cabin on board a
Channel steamer--with these and a little of the adroitness so
remarked in the celebrated Bucket, the affair is in the bag! (dans
le sac).  All these things are in the cords (dans les cordes) of my
esteemed English fellow-brother; will he not employ them in the
interest of a devoted colleague and a friendly Administration?  We
seek a malefactor of the worst species (un chenapan de la pire
espece).  This funny fellow (drole) calls himself Count of Fosco,
and he resides in Wood Road 5, St. John's Forest; worth abode of a
miscreant fit for the Forest of Bondy!  He is a man bald, stout,
fair, and paying well in countenance (il paie de mine), conceiving
himself to resemble the great Napoleon.  At the first sight you
would say a philanthrope, a friend of man.  On his right arm he
bears a small red mark, round, the brand of a society of the most
dangerous.  Dear Sir, you will not miss him?  When once he is in
our hands, faith of Lecoq, you shall tell us your news as to
whether France can be grateful.  Of more words there is no need.--I
remain, all to you, with the assurance of my most distinguished
consideration,

LECOQ.


From Inspector Bucket to M. Lecoq.
May 22.


Dear Sir,--Your polite favour to hand, and contents noted.  You are
a man of the world; I am a man of the world, and proud to deal with
you as between man and man.  The little irregularity shall be no
consideration, all shall be squared, and the man wanted run in with
punctuality and despatch.  Expect him at Calais on the 26th
current,--Faithfully yours,

C. BUCKET.


From Count Fosco to Samuel Pickwick, Esq., G.C.M.P.C., Goswell
Road.
5 Forest Road, St. John's Wood, May 23.


Dear Sir,--When we met lately at the hospitable board of our common
friend, Benjamin Allen, Esq., lately elected Professor of Chemistry
in the University of London, our conversation turned (if you can
pass me the intoxicating favour of remembering it) on the glorious
science of chemistry.  For me this knowledge has ever possessed
irresistible attractions, from the enormous power which it confers
of heaping benefits on the suffering race of mankind.  Others may
rejoice in the advantages which a knowledge of it bestows--the
power which can reduce a Hannibal to the level of a drummer boy, or
an all-pervading Shakspeare to the intellectual estate of a
vestryman, though it cannot at present reverse those processes.
The consideration of the destructive as compared with the
constructive forces of chemistry was present, as I recollect, to
your powerful intellect on the festive occasion to which I refer.
"Yes!" you said (permit me to repeat your very words)--"Yes, Count
Fosco, Alexander's morning draught shall make Alexander run for his
life at the first sound of the enemy's trumpet.  So much chemistry
can achieve; but can she help as well as harm?  Nay, can she answer
for it that the lemon which Professor Allen, from the best and
purest of motives, has blended with this milk-punch, shall not
disagree with me to-morrow morning?  Can chemistry, Count Fosco,
thus thwart malign constitutional tendency?"

These were your words, sir, and I am now ready to answer your deep-
searching question in the affirmative.  Prolonged assiduous
application to my Art has shown me how to preserve the lemon in
Milk Punch, and yet destroy, or disengage, the deleterious
elements.  Will you so greatly honour science, and Fosco her
servant, as to sup with me on the night of the twenty-fifth, at
nine o'clock, and prove (you need not dread the test) whether a
true follower of knowledge or a vain babbler signs--in exile--the
name of

ISIDOR OTTAVIO BALDASSARE FOSCO?


From Mr. Pickwick to the Count Fosco.
May 24.


My Dear Sir,--Many thanks for your very kind invitation.  Apart
from the interests of science, the pleasure of your company alone
would be more than enough to make me gladly accept it.  I shall
have the enjoyment of testing your milk-punch to-morrow night at
nine, with the confident expectation that your admirable studies
will have overcome a tendency which for many years has prevented me
from relishing, as I could wish, one of the best things in this
good world.  Lemon, in fact, has always disagreed with me, as
Professor Allen or Sir Robert Sawyer will be able to assure you; so
your valuable experiment can be put, in my case, to a crucial
test.--Very faithfully yours,

SAMUEL PICKWICK.


From Inspector Bucket to M. Lecoq.
May 26, 1 A.M.


My Dear Sir,--We have taken your man without difficulty.  Bald,
benevolent-looking, stout, perhaps fancies himself like Napoleon;
if so, is deceived.  We nabbed him asleep over his liquor and
alone, at the address you meant to give, 5 Forest Road, St. John's
Wood.  The house was empty, servants out, not a soul but him at
home.  He speaks English well for a foreigner, and tries to make
out he is a British subject.  Was rather confused when took, and
kept ejaculating "Cold Punch," apparently with the hope of
persuading us that such was his name or alias.  He also called for
one Sam--probably an accomplice.  He travels to Calais to-day as a
lunatic patient in a strait-waistcoat, under charge of four
"keepers" belonging to the force; and I trust that you have made
preparations for receiving your prisoner, and that our management
of the case has given satisfaction.  What I like is doing business
with a man like you.  We may not be so smart nor so clever at
disguises as the French profession, but we flatter ourselves we are
punctual and cautious.--Faithfully yours,

C. BUCKET.


From Mr. Pickwick to Mr. Perker, Solicitor, Gray's Inn.
Sainte Pelagie, May 28.


Dear Perker,--For heaven's sake come over here at once, bringing
some one who can speak French, and bail me out, or whatever the
process of their law may be.  I have been arrested, illegally and
without warrant, at the house of a scientific friend, Count Fosco,
where I had been supping.  As far as I can understand, I am accused
of a plot against the life of the Emperor of the French; but the
whole proceedings have been unintelligible and arbitrary to a
degree.  I cannot think that an English citizen will be allowed to
perish by the guillotine--innocent and practically unheard!  Please
bring linen and brushes, &c., but not Sam, who would be certain to
embroil himself with the French police.  I am writing to the Times
and Lord Palmerston.--Sincerely yours,

SAMUEL PICKWICK.


From Monsieur Lecoq to Inspector Bucket.
May 27.


Sir,--There has arrived a frightful misunderstanding.  The man you
have sent us is not Fosco.  Of Fosco he has only the baldness, the
air benevolent, and the girth.  The brand on his right arm is no
more than the mark of vaccination.  Brought before the Commissary
of Police, the prisoner, who has not one word of French, was heard
through an interpreter.  He gives himself the name of Piquouique,
rentier, English; and he appeals to his Ambassador.  Of papers he
had letters bearing the name Samuel Pickwick, and, on his buttons,
the letters P.C., which we suspect are the badge of a secret
society.  But this is not to the point; for it is certain that,
whatever the crimes of this brigand, he is NOT Fosco, but an
Englishman.  That he should be found in the domicile of Fosco when
that droll had evaded is suspicious (louche), and his explanation
does not permit itself to be understood.  I have fear that we enjoy
bad luck, and that M. Palmerston will make himself to be heard on
this matter.

Accept, Monsieur, the assurance of my high consideration.

LECOQ.

P.S.--Our comrade, the Count Smorltork, of the Police of Manners
(police des moeurs), has come to present himself.  Confronted with
the bandit, he gives him reason, and offers his faith that the man
is Piquouique, with whom he encountered himself when on a mission
of secrecy to England it is now some years.  What to do?  (Que
faire?)



LETTER:  From Mr. Allan Quatermain to Sir Henry Curtis.



Mr. Quatermain offers the correct account of two celebrated right
and left shots, also an adventure of the stranger in the Story of
an African Farm.


Dear Curtis,--You ask me to give you the true account, in writing,
of those right and left shots of mine at the two lions, the
crocodile, and the eagle.  The brutes are stuffed now, in the hall
at home--the lions each on a pedestal, and the alligator on the
floor with the eagle in his jaws--much as they were when I settled
them and saved the Stranger.  All sorts of stories have got into
the papers about the business, which was simple enough; so, though
no hand with a pen, I may as well write it all out.

I was up on the Knobkerry River, prospecting for diamonds, in
Omomborombunga's country.  I had nobody with me but poor Jim-jim,
who afterwards met with an awful death, otherwise he would have
been glad to corroborate my tale, if it needed it.  One night I had
come back tired to camp, when I found a stranger sitting by the
fire.  He was a dark, fat, Frenchified little chap, and you won't
believe me, but it is a fact that he wore gloves.  I asked him to
stay the night, of course, and inspanned the waggons in laager, for
Omomborombunga's impis were out, swearing to wash their spears in
the blood of The Great White Liar--a Portuguese traveller probably;
if not, I don't know who he can have been; perhaps this stranger:
he gave no name.  Well, we had our biltong together, and the
Stranger put himself outside a good deal of the very little brandy
I had left.  We got yarning, so to speak, and I told him a few of
the curious adventures that naturally fall to the lot of a man in
those wild countries.  The Stranger did not say much, but kept
playing with a huge carved walking-stick that he had.  Presently he
said, "Look at this stick; I bought it from a boy on a South
African Farm.  Do you understand what the carvings mean?"

"Hanged if I do!" I said, after turning it about.

"Well, do you see that figure?" and he touched a thing like a Noah
out of a child's ark.  "That was a hunter like you, my friend, but
not in all respects.  That hunter pursued a vast white bird with
silver wings, sailing in the everlasting blue."

"Everlasting bosh!" said I; "there is no bird of the kind on the
veldt."

"That bird was Truth," says the Stranger, "and, judging from the
anecdote you tell me about the Babyan woman and the Zulu medicine-
man, it is a bird YOU don't trouble yourself with much, my friend."

This was a pretty cool thing to say to a man whose veracity is
known like a proverb from Sheba's Breasts to the Zambesi.

Foide Macumazahn, the Zulus say, meaning as true as a yarn of Allan
Quatermain's.  Well, my blood was up; no man shall call Allan
Quatermain a liar.  The fellow was going on with a prodigious
palaver about a white feather of Truth, and Mount Sinai, and the
Land of Absolute Negation, and I don't know what, but I signified
to him that if he did not believe my yarns I did not want his
company.  "I'm sorry to turn you out," I said, "for there are lions
around"--indeed they were roaring to each other--"and you will have
a parroty time.  But you apologise, or you go!"

He laughed his short thick laugh.  "I am a man who hopes nothing,
feels nothing, fears nothing, and believes nothing that you tell
me!"

I got up and went for him with my fists, and whether he feared
nothing or not I don't know; but he scooted, dropping a yellow
French novel, by one Catulle Mendes, that I could make neither head
nor tail of.  I afterwards heard that there was something about
this stranger in a book called "The Story of an African Farm,"
which I once began, but never finished, not being able to
understand most of it, and being vexed by the gross improbability
of the girl not marrying the baby's father, he being ready and
willing to make her an honest woman.  However, I am no critic, but
a plain man who tells a plain tale, and I believe persons of soul
admire the book very much.  Any way, it does not say who the
Stranger was--an allegorical kind of bagman I fancy; but I am not
done with him yet.

Out he went into the dark, where hundreds of lions could be plainly
seen making love (at which season they are very dangerous) by the
flashes of lightning.

It was a terrific yet beautiful spectacle, and one which I can
never forget.  The black of night would suddenly open like a huge
silver flower, deep within deep, till you almost fancied you could
see within the gates of heaven.  The hills stood out dark against
the illimitable splendour, and on every koppie you saw the huge
lions, like kittens at play, roaring till you could scarcely hear
the thunder.  The rain was rushing like a river, all glittering
like diamonds, and then, in the twinkling of an eye, all was black
as a wolf's mouth till the next flash.  The lightning, coming from
all quarters, appeared to meet above me, and now was red, now
golden, now silver again, while the great cat-like beasts, as they
leaped or lay, looked like gold, red, and silver lions, reminding
me of the signs of public-houses in old England, far away.
Meantime the donga beneath roared with the flooded torrent that the
rain was bringing down from the heights of Umbopobekatanktshiu.

I stood watching the grand spectacle for some time, rather pitying
the Stranger who was out in it, by no fault of mine.  Then I
knocked the ashes out of my pipe, ate a mealy or two, and crept
into my kartel, {22} and slept the sleep of the just.

About dawn I woke.  The thunder had rolled away like a bad dream.
The long level silver shafts of the dawn were flooding the heights,
raindrops glittered like diamonds on every kopje and karroo bush,
leaving the deep donga bathed in the solemn pall of mysterious
night.

My thoughts went rapidly over the millions of leagues of land and
sea, where life, that perpetual problem, was now awaking to another
day of struggle and temptation.  Then the golden arrows of the day
followed fast.  The silver and blue sky grew roseate with that wide
wild blush which testifies to the modest delight of nature,
satisfied and grateful for her silent existence and her amorous
repose.  I breakfasted, went down into the donga with a black boy,
poor Jim-jim, who was afterwards, as I said, to perish by an awful
fate, otherwise he would testify to the truth of my plain story.  I
began poking among the rocks in the dry basin of the donga, {23}
and had just picked up a pebble--I knew it by the soapy feel for a
diamond.  Uncut it was about three times the size of the koh-i-
noor, say 1,000 carats, and I was rejoicing in my luck when I heard
the scream of a human being in the last agony of terror.  Looking
up, I saw that on either side of the donga, which was about twenty
feet wide, a great black lion and lioness were standing with open
jaws, while some fifty yards in front of me an alligator, in a deep
pool of the flooded donga, was stretching his open snout and
gleaming teeth greedily upwards.  Over head flew an eagle, and IN
MID-AIR BETWEEN, as I am a living and honourable man, a human being
was leaping the chasm.  He had been pursued by the lion on my left,
and had been driven to attempt the terrible leap; but if he crossed
he was certain to fall into the jaws of the lion on my right, while
if he fell short in his jump, do you see, the alligator was ready
for him below, and the great golden eagle watched the business from
above, in case he attempted to escape THAT way.

All this takes long to tell, though it was passing in a flash of
time.  Dropping the diamond (which must have rolled into a crevice
of the rock, for I never saw it again), I caught up my double-
barrelled rifle (one of Wesson & Smith's), aimed at the lion on the
right hand of the donga with my right barrel, and then hastily
fired my left at the alligator.  When the smoke cleared away, the
man had reached the right side of the donga safe and sound.  Seeing
that the alligator was dying, I loaded again, bowled over the
lioness on the left, settled the eagle's business (he fell dead
into the jaws of the dying alligator, which closed on him with a
snap).  I then climbed the wall of the donga, and there lay,
fainting, the Stranger of last night--the man who feared nothing--
the blood of the dead lion trickling over him.  His celebrated
allegorical walking-stick from the African Farm had been broken
into two pieces by the bullet after it (the bullet) had passed
through the head of the lion.  And, as the "Ingoldsby Legends" say,
"nobody was one penny the worse," except the wild beasts.  The man,
however, had had a parroty time, and it was a good hour before I
could bring him round, during which he finished my brandy.  He
still wore gloves.  What he was doing in Omuborumbunga's country I
do not know to this day.  I never found the diamond again, though I
hunted long.  But I must say that two better right and left shots,
considering that I had no time to aim, and that they were really
snapshots, I never remember to have made in my long experience.

This is the short and the long of the matter, which was talked of a
good deal in the Colony, and about which, I am told, some
inaccurate accounts have got into the newspapers.  I hate writing,
as you know, and don't pretend to give a literary colour to this
little business of the shots, but merely tell a "plain, unvarnished
tale," as the "Ingoldsby Legends" say.

As to the Stranger, what he was doing there, or who he was, or
where he is now, I can tell you nothing.  He told me he was bound
for "the almighty mountains of Dry-facts and Realities," which he
kindly pointed out to me among the carvings of his walking-stick.
He then sighed wearily, very wearily, and scooted.  I think he came
to no good; but he never came in my way again.

And now you know the yarn of the two stuffed lions and the
alligator with the eagle in his jaws.

Ever yours,
ALLAN QUATERMAIN.



LETTER:  From the Baron Bradwardine to Edward Waverley, Esq., of
Waverley Honour.



The Baron explains the mysterious circumstances of his affair with
his third cousin, Sir Hew Halbert.--"Waverley," chap. xiv.


Tully Veolan, May 17, 1747.

Son Edward,--Touching my quarrel with Sir Hew Halbert, anent which
I told you no more than that it was "settled in a fitting manner,"
you have long teased me for an ampler explanation.  This I have
withheld, as conceiving that it tended rather to vain quolibets and
jesting, than to that respect in which the duello, or single
combat, should be regarded by gentlemen of name and coat armour.
But Sir Hew being dead, and buried with his fathers, the matter may
be broached as among friends and persons of honour.  The ground of
our dispute, as ye know, was an unthinking scoff of Sir Hew's, he
being my own third cousin by the mother's side, Anderson of Ettrick
Hall having intermarried, about the time of the Solemn League and
Covenant, with Anderson of Tushielaw, both of which houses are
connected with the Halberts of Dinniewuddie and with the
Bradwardines.  But stemmata quid faciunt?  Sir Hew, being a young
man, and the maut, as the vulgar say, above the meal, after a
funeral of one of our kin in the Cathedral Kirkyard of St. Andrews,
we met at Glass's Inn, where, in the presence of many gentlemen,
occurred our unfortunate dissension.

We encountered betimes next morning, on a secluded spot of the
sands hard by the town, at the Eden-mouth. {24}  The weapons were
pistols, Sir Hew, by a slight passing infirmity, being disabled
from the use of the sword.  Inchgrabbit was my second, and
Strathtyrum did the same office for my kinsman, Sir Hew.  The
pistols being charged and primed, and we aligned forenent each
other at the convenient distance of twelve paces, the word was
given to fire, and both weapons having been discharged, and the
smoke having cleared away, Sir Hew was discovered fallen to the
ground, procumbus humi, and exanimate.  The blood was flowing
freely from a face-wound, and my unhappy kinsman was senseless.  At
this moment we heard a voice, as of one clamantis in eremo, cry
"Fore!" to which paying no heed in the natural agitation of our
spirits, we hurried to lift my fallen opponent and examine his
wound.  Upon a closer search it proved to be no shot-wound, but a
mere clour, or bruise, whereof the reason was now apparent, he
having been struck by the ball of a golfer (from us concealed by
the dunes, or bunkers, of sand) and not by the discharge of my
weapon.  At this moment a plebeian fellow appeared with his arma
campestria, or clubs, cleeks, irons, and the like, under his arm,
who, without paying any attention to our situation, struck the ball
wherewith he had felled my kinsman in the direction of the hole.
Reflection directed us to the conclusion that both pistols had
missed their aim, and that Sir Hew had fallen beneath a chance blow
from this fellow's golf-ball.  But as my kinsman was still hors de
combat, and incapable of further action, being unwitting, too, of
the real cause of his disaster, Inchgrabbit and Strathtyrum, in
their discretion as seconds, or belli judices, deemed it better
that we should keep a still sough, and that Sir Hew should never be
informed concerning the cause of his discomfiture.  This resolution
we kept, and Sir Hew wore, till the day of his late lamented
decease, a bullet among the seals of his watch, he being persuaded
by Strathtyrum that it had been extracted from his brain-pan, which
certainly was of the thickest.  But this was all a bam, or bite,
among young men, and a splore to laugh over by our three selves,
nor would I have it to go abroad now that Sir Hew is dead, as being
prejudicial to the memory of a worthy man, and an honourable family
connected with our own.  Wherefore I pray you keep a still sough
hereanent, as you love me, who remain--Your loving good father,

BRADWARDINE.



APPENDIX



Note on Letter of Mr. Surtees to Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck, p. 64.


No literary forgeries were ever much better done than the sham
ballads which Surtees of Mainsforth imposed on Sir Walter Scott.
The poems were spirited and good of their kind; and though we
wonder now that some of them could take in an expert, it is by no
means assured that we are even to-day acquainted with the whole of
Surtees' frauds.  Why a man otherwise honourable, kindly,
charitable, and learned, exercised his ingenuity so cruelly upon a
trusting correspondent and a staunch friend, it is hardly possible
to guess.  The biographers of Surtees maintain that he wanted to
try his skill on Scott, then only known to him by correspondence;
and that, having succeeded, he was afraid to risk Scott's
friendship by a confession.  This is plausible; and if good may
come out of evil, we may remember that two picturesque parts of
"Marmion" are due to one confessed and another certain supercherie
of Surtees.  It cannot be said in his defence that he had no
conception of the mischief of literary frauds; in more than one
passage of his correspondence he mentions Ritson's detestation of
these practices.  "To literary imposition, as tending to obscure
the path of inquiry, Ritson gave no quarter," says this arch
literary impostor.

A brief account of Surtees' labour in the field of sham ballad
writing may be fresh to many people who merely know him as the real
author of "Barthram's Dirge" and of "The Slaying of Anthony
Featherstonhaugh."  In an undated letter of 1806, Scott, writing
from Ashestiel, thanks Surtees for his "obliging communications."
Surtees manifestly began the correspondence, being attracted by the
"Border Minstrelsy."  Thus it appears that Surtees did NOT forge
"Hobbie Noble" in the first edition of the "Minstrelsy"; for he
makes some suggestions as to the "Earl of Whitfield," dreaded by
the hero of that ballad, which Scott had already published.  But he
was already deceiving Scott, who writes to him about "Ralph Eure,"
or "Lord Eure," and about a "Goth, who melted Lord Eure's gold
chain."  This Lord Eure is doubtless the "Lord Eurie" of the ballad
in the later editions of the "Border Minstrelsy," a ballad actually
composed by Surtees.  That wily person immediately sent Scott a
ballad on "The Feud between the Ridleys and Featherstones," in
which Scott believed to the day of his death.  He introduced it in
"Marmion."


The whiles a Northern harper rude
Chaunted a rhyme of deadly feud,
How the fierce Thirlwalls and Ridleys all, &c.


In his note ("Border Minstrelsy," second edition, 1808, p. xxi.)
Scott says the ballad was taken down from an old woman's recitation
at the Alston Moor lead-mines "by the agent there," and sent by him
to Surtees.  Consequently, when Surtees saw "Marmion" in print he
had to ask Scott not to print "THE agent," as he does not know even
the name of Colonel Beaumont's chief agent there, but "an agent."
Thus he hedged himself from a not impossible disclaimer by the
agent at the mines.

Readers of "Marmion" will remember how


Once, near Norham, there did fight
A spectre fell, of fiendish might,
In likeness of a Scottish knight,
With Brian Bulmer bold,
And trained him nigh to disallow
The aid of his baptismal vow.


This legend is more of Surtees' fun.  "The most singular tale of
this kind," says Sir Walter, "is contained in an extract
communicated to me by my friend Mr. Surtees, of Mainsforth, who
copied it from a MS. note in a copy of Burthogge "On the Nature of
Spirits, 1694, 8vo," which had been the property of the late Mr.
Gill.  It was not in Mr. Gill's own hand:  but probably an hundred
years older, and was said to be "E libro Convent.  Dunelm. per T.
C. extract.;" this T. C. being Thomas Cradocke, Esq.  Scott adds,
that the passage, which he gives in the Latin, suggested the
introduction of the tourney with the Fairy Knight in "Marmion."
Well, WHERE is Cradocke's extract?  The original was "lost" before
Surtees sent his "copy" to Sir Walter.  "The notes had been
carelessly or injudiciously shaken out of the book."  Surtees adds,
another editor confirms it, that no such story exists in any MS. of
the Dean and Chapter of Durham.  No doubt he invented the whole
story, and wrote it himself in mediaeval Latin.

Not content with two "whoppers," as Mr. Jo Gargery might call them,
Surtees goes on to invent a perfectly incredible heraldic bearing.
He found it in a MS. note in the "Gwillim's Heraldry" of Mr. Gyll
or Gill--the name is written both ways.  "He beareth per pale or
and arg., over all a spectre passant, SHROUDED SABLE"--"he" being
Newton, of Beverley, in Yorkshire.  Sir Walter actually swallowed
this amazing fib, and alludes to it in "Rob Roy" (1818).  But Mr.
Raine, the editor of Surtees' Life, inherited or bought his copy of
Gwillim, that of Mr. Gill or Gyll; "and I find in it no trace of
such an entry."  "Lord Derwentwater's Good-Night" is probably
entirely by Surtees.  "A friend of Mr. Taylor's" gave him a
Tynedale ballad, "Hey, Willy Ridley, winna you stay?" which is also
"aut Diabolus aut Robertus."  As to "Barthram's Dirge," "from Ann
Douglas, a withered crone who weeds my garden," copies with various
tentative verses in Surtees' hand have been found.  Oddly enough,
Sir Walter had once discovered a small sepulchral cross, upset, in
Liddesdale, near the "Nine Stane Rig;" and this probably made him
more easily deceived.  Surtees very cleverly put some lines, which
COULD not have been original, in brackets, as his own attempt to
fill up lacunae.  Such are


[When the dew fell cold and still,
When the aspen grey forget to play,
And the mist clung to the hill.]


Any one reading the piece would say, "It must be genuine, for the
CONFESSED interpolations are not in the ballad style, which the
interpolator, therefore, could not write."  An attempt which
Surtees made when composing the song, and which he wisely rejected,
could not have failed to excite Scott's suspicions.  It ran -


They buried him when the bonny may
Was on the flow'ring thorn;
And she waked him till the forest grey
Of every leaf was lorn;

Till the rowan tree of gramarye
Its scarlet clusters shed,
And the hollin green alone was seen
With its berries glistening red.


Whether Surtees' "Brown Man of the Muirs," to which Scott also gave
a place in his own poetry, was a true legend or not, the reader may
decide for himself.

Concerning another ballad in the "Minstrelsy"--"Auld Maitland"--
Professor Child has expressed a suspicion which most readers feel.
What Scott told Ellis about it (Autumn, 1802) was, that he got it
in the Forest, "copied down from the recitation of an old shepherd
by a country farmer."  Who was the farmer?  Will Laidlaw had
employed James Hogg, as shepherd.  Hogg's mother chanted "Auld
Maitland."  Hogg first met Scott in the summer of 1801.  The
shepherd had already seen the first volume of the "Minstrelsy."
Did he, thereupon, write "Auld Maitland," teach his mother it, and
induce Laidlaw to take it down from her recitation?  The old lady
said she got it from Andrew Moir, who had it "frae auld Baby
Mettlin, who was said to have been another nor a gude ane."  But we
have Hogg's own statement that "aiblins ma gran'-mither was an unco
leear," and this quality may have been hereditary.  On the other
side, Hogg could hardly have held his tongue about the forgery, if
forgery it was, when he wrote his "Domestic Manners and Private
Life of Sir Walter Scott" (1834).  The whole investigation is a
little depressing, and makes one very shy of unauthenticated
ballads.



Footnotes:

{1}  Who knows what may happen?  I may die before he sees the
light; so I will add among my friends SKALAGRIM LAMB'S-TAIL.

{2}  Can Mrs. Gamp mean "dial"?

{3}  1887.

{4}  In his familiar correspondence, it will be observed, Herodotus
does not trouble himself to maintain the dignity of history.

{5}  Mr. Flinders Petrie has just discovered and sent to Mr. Holly,
of Trinity, Cambridge, the well-known traveller, a wall-painting of
a beautiful woman, excavated by the Egypt Exploration Society, from
the ruined site of the Temple of Aphrodite in Naucratis.  Mr.
Holly, in an affecting letter to the ACADEMY, states that he
recognises in this picture "an admirable though somewhat archaic
portrait of SHE."  There can thus be little or no doubt that SHE
was Rhodopis, and therefore several hundred years older than she
said.  But few will blame her for being anxious not to claim her
full age.

This unexpected revelation appears to throw light on some
fascinating peculiarities in the behaviour of SHE.

{6}  The great intimacy between Mrs. Proudie and Mrs. Quiverful,
indicated by Mrs. Proudie's use of the Bishop's Christian name--and
that abbreviated--has amazed the discoverer and editor of her
correspondence.

{7}  This signature of Mrs. Proudie's is so unusual an assumption
of the episcopal style, that it might well cast a doubt on the
authenticity of her letter.  But experts pronounce it genuine.
"Barnum," of course, is "Baronum Castrum," the rather odd Roman
name of Barchester.

{8}  It has been seen that Mrs. Quiverful did not obey this
injunction.

{9}  This man was well known to Sir Walter Scott, who speaks of his
curious habits in an unpublished manuscript.

{10}  Mr. Forth, we are sure, is quite wrong, and none of the
scholars he quotes has said anything of the kind.

{11}  "He" clearly means, not Addison, but Professor Forth, the
lady's husband.

{12}  It was not Asiatics, but Aztecs; not Pittites, but Hittites!
Woman cares little for these studies!--A.L.

{13}  The editor has no doubt that some one was--Miss Watson.  Cf.
'Belinda.'

{14}  Owing to the sudden decease of the Dean in well-known and
melancholy circumstances, this letter was not delivered.

{15}  Alas, not wisely!  But any careful reader of "The Silence of
Dean Maitland" will see that the Baby was an anachronism.--ED.

{16}  This appears to have been a favourite remark of Mr.
Skimpole's.  It will be noticed that, quite without intending it,
Mr. Skimpole was the founder of our New Cyrenaic School.

{17}  Mr. Skimpole's recollections of classical ritual are a little
mixed hereabouts.  He refers to Mr. Honeyman's projected union with
the widow of Mr. Bromley, the famous hatter.

{18}  Colonel Newcome, indeed.

{19}  Non, Monsieur, je ne cite ni "Woodsworth" ni "le vieux
Williams."

{20}  Mr. Potts ought to have consulted the edition of 1833, where
he would have found the verse as quoted by Mr. Gandish.

{21}  And a nice mixture it must have been!--A. L.

{22}  The wooden bed fastened in an ox-waggon.

{23}  Mr. Quatermain has just said that the donga was filled by a
roaring torrent.  Is there not some inconsistency here?

{24}  At the HIGH HOLE, indeed.--A. L.