Part 22

The haste and hurry of modern English civilization, it has been elsewhere observed, ever increasing and carrying us more impetuously forward, tend to deaden all capacity for simpler enjoyments, and all sense of the worth of a tranquil life on which the eyes of all the world are not fixed. And whenever, as a reflective discourser remarks, people set their heads to constant work, we may be perfectly certain that they are losing more than they gain, and are sinking in the scale at once of meditative and social beings. The accomplished author of an essay on Leisure—the cultivation of which as an art is thought to be in danger of dying out amongst us—says of that activity which never relaxes sufficiently to allow time for a calm and more or less passive contemplation of life as a whole, that it is “apt to degenerate into mere hand-to-mouth fussiness or drudgery, and can be justified only by necessity.” The very repose of leisure is accordingly pronounced a by no means purely selfish enjoyment—it being one of the most communicable, nay, contagious, of pleasures; for there are people, we are reminded, whose company is as restful as sleep, in whose presence hurry seems like a bad dream when it is past, and whom one leaves with a sense of refreshment and renewed energy such as is produced by a good night’s rest. And this writer contends that to afford such refreshment to others may often be turning time to better account than to crowd it with self-chosen business. Not that the fact is not duly insisted upon that too little work is as fatal as too much to that lightness and alacrity of spirit which are needed for the conversion of spare time into hours of leisure worthy to be so called. Some natures, indeed, and they are of a high order, sometimes of the highest, find one leisure hour at a time as much as they can away with, and anon

“The hour of rest is gone, And urgent voices round them cry, ‘Ho, lingerer, hasten on!’

“And has the soul, then, only gained, From this brief time of ease, A moment’s rest, when overstrained, One hurried glimpse of peace?”

Nay something better and more abiding than that.

But to conclude. The notion, as expounded by an essayist on “Short Cuts,” that if a thing is to be done at all, “then ’twere well it were done quickly,” admirable as it may be on the Exchange, is justly said to rub the delicacy and bloom off life when it is made the ruling maxim in all other relations and positions: a life with leisure hours in it for watching and examining all that we pass being a much more enviable and rational lot than a swift rushing from one goal to another, from one sort of fame or power or opulence to another and more remote. When the ambitious hero in Sir Henry Taylor’s dramatic poem declares in the storm and stress of his career,

“We have not time to mourn,”

“The worse for us!” is his good counsellor’s rejoinder:

“_He that lacks time to mourn lacks time to mend._ _Eternity mourns that._ ’Tis an ill cure For life’s worst ills, to have no time to feel them. Where sorrow’s held intrusive and turn’d out, There wisdom will not enter, nor true power, Nor aught that dignifies humanity. Yet such the barrenness of busy life! From shelf to shelf Ambition clambers up To reach the naked’st pinnacle of all, While Magnanimity, absolved from toil, Reposes self-included at the base.”

_A PROPHYLACTIC KNIFE TO THE THROAT._

PROVERBS xxiii. 2.

King Solomon’s discreet counsel to him that feasts with royalty, to put a knife to his throat, if he be a man given to appetite, may be advantageously enlarged in its application to diners-out, or for the matter of that, to diners at home, all and sundry. Sitting to eat with a ruler, the guest is admonished to consider diligently what is before him; and at the same time to be not desirous of the great man’s dainties, for they are deceitful meat. Any and every man given to appetite will do well to chew the cud of this bitter fancy; and the prophylactic application of a knife to the throat, forbidding rash ingress and intemperate speed of swallow, is wholesome for all estates and degrees of men among us, and might beneficially be a standing order for all times.

Adam Smith, in his “Theory of the Moral Sentiments,” calls it “indecent” to express any strong degree of those passions which arise from a certain situation or disposition of the body; because the company, not being in the same disposition, cannot be expected to sympathize with them; and he mentions violent hunger as being, though upon many occasions not only natural, but unavoidable, yet “always indecent; and to eat voraciously is universally regarded as a piece of ill manners.” There is, however, he allows, some degree of sympathy, even with hunger, and we may add, even on the part of a ruler at whose table sits the man given to appetite. Lewis the Fourteenth, himself a gourmand, and, which is different, an enormous eater, liked to see a dinner guest disposing wholesale of the royal cates, if only by way of keeping himself in countenance, while achieving the like result. Royalty has, indeed, again and again been addicted to surfeiting, and sometimes of a memorably fatal sort. Alexander Jannæus died of gluttony, during the siege of Ragaba. Soliman, the seventh khalif of the race of the Ommiyades, died of a surfeit at Chalcis, in Syria, while preparing to lead an army to Constantinople.[29] Of the emperor Jovian, we read in Gibbon, that one night, at the obscure town Dadastana, after indulging himself with a redundant supper, he retired to rest, and was next morning found dead in his bed—an event ascribed by some, though not by all, to the quality of the mushrooms, _plus_ the quantity of wine, which he had swallowed in the evening. The same historian rather more than suspects that the mortal disease of Athanaric the Goth “was contracted amidst the pleasures of the imperial banquets,” by Theodosius provided. Pope Benedict XI. is said to have died of a surfeit of fruit—some beautiful fresh figs, of which he was very fond, being offered to him in a silver basin by a veiled novice, as if from the abbess of the convent of St. Petronilla, in Perugia: “The pope, not suspecting a gift from such a hand, ate them eagerly, and without having them previously tasted.” That he died of poison, few in that age, as Milman says, would venture to doubt, but the poisoning power of arrears of undigested food has never been quite rated at its full value. The same hesitation between fruit surfeit and poison, obtains in the case of King John, whose death, by one account due to the fatal drug administered by a Cistercian monk, by another is attributed to an intemperate indulgence at supper in fruit and new cider. The Emperor Frederick III. contracted his last illness, some say, by a surfeit of melons. And is there not, in the case of our Henry I., what has been called that tale of royal excess so concisely and pathetically told in nursery history? “He never smiled again, and died of a surfeit of lampreys.” The _regicide_ lampreys, Moore calls them in one place; and in another, after citing Hume’s remark on them, as “a food which always agreed better with his [Henry’s] palate than his constitution,” a dish so indigestible, that a late novelist, at the end of his book, could imagine no more summary mode of getting rid of all his heroes and heroines than by a hearty supper of stewed lampreys. In yet another the same squib-writer has a cruel simile, “just as honest King Stephen his beaver might doff to the fishes that carried his kind uncle off.” To a surfeit of red herrings is ascribed the death of Robert Greene, the dramatist. The trap for the life of the Emperor Antoninus Pius was baited, as De Quincey expresses it, with toasted cheese. Kaiser Karl VI. was the victim of a voracious repast on mushrooms stewed in oil.

When Hadrian found his illness on the increase, and his end approaching, he removed to Baiæ, where, “in spite of the prescriptions [or proscriptions?] of his physicians, he began to eat and drink according to his pleasure.” The excesses of Charles V. in the same way are exceptionally notorious. Of that “little, spare, aguish, peevish, supper-eating” sovereign, Frederick the Great, who loved his dishes the more they tormented him, it is on record, that on the approach of death, “this warrior full of courage and sage speculation,” could not resist the customary pepper and sauce piquante, though he knew it would inevitably result in a nightmare, “turning his bed into a nest of monsters.” So with the Duke Augustus commemorated by Perthes: “All medical skill was in vain, for this half crazy prince could not deny himself the stimulus of the hottest spices.” Mr. Tennyson’s dying Northern Farmer is only too true a type of his kind:—

“What atta stannin’ theer for, an’ doesn bring ma the yaäle? Doctor’s a’tottler, lass, an a’s hallus i’ the owd taäle; I weänt breäk rules for doctor, a knaws naw more nor a floy; Git ma my yaäle I tell tha, an’ gin I mun doy I mun doy.”

Swift is giving Pope a significant and not uncalled-for hint, when he writes to express his uneasiness at ever hearing of the poet’s being out to dinner: “For the least transgression of yours, if it be only two bits and one sup more than your stint, is a great debauch; for which you certainly pay more than those sots who are carried dead drunk to bed.” An entry in Mrs. Trench’s diary begins, “Dined at the Duke of Queensberry’s. He is very ill—has a violent cough, but _will_ eat an immense dinner, and then complains of a _digestion pénible_.” Another of his quality has been described as taking all sorts of pains to get a little enjoyment which must produce for him a world of misery. “One of his passions which he _will_ not resist, is for a particular dish, pungent, savoury, and multifarious, which sends him almost every night into Tartarus.” Mr. Thackeray’s moribund old Madame Bernstein _will_ have her supper luxurious, “nor could any injunction of ours or the doctor’s teach her abstinence.” The Sir Miles St. John of another popular fiction does himself to death after the same manner: “He would have his own way; and he contrived to coax or to force his doctor into an authority on his side.” For doctors are not all of the kind that Sancho Panza had to deal with when governor of Barataria. _The Doctor_ cites the case of an eminent member of “the faculty,” who could never refrain from eating toasted cheese, though he was subject to an alarming pulmonary complaint which was uniformly aggravated by it, and which terminated fatally at an age by no means advanced. Another he relates, of a physician who, at an autumnal dessert never ceased eating all the filberts he could lay his hands upon, while candidly acknowledging what indigestible and hurtful things they were.

Not a doctor apparently of medicine, but (_proh pudor!_) of divinity, was that Cambridge don of whose end Gray makes memorable mention, as having gone to his grave with five fine mackarel (large and full of roe) in his inside. “He ate them all off at one dinner; but his fate was a turbot on Trinity Sunday, of which he left little for the company besides bones. He had not been hearty all the week; but after this sixth fish he never held up his head more.” Like Milton’s Eve, in one sense at least:—

“Greedily he ingorged without restraint, And knew not eating death.”

Dr. Johnson’s friend, Thrale, is a noteworthy example, or warning, of the man of appetite, who _will not_ restrain it; will not put a knife to his throat, but prefers sending a full laden fork in that direction. His wife describes his natural disposition to conviviality as degenerating into a preternatural desire for food. “No one could control his appetite.” “Burney and I and Queeney tease him every meal he eats, and Mrs. Montagu is quite serious with him; but what _can_ one do? He will eat, I think; and if he does eat, I know he will not live.” The lampreys that were one too many for Henry the king, were one too many for Thrale the brewer. He begged some of an old friend, and the old friend complied, despite the frowns and negative signals of the ladies of the house—whom following out of the room, the too compliant visitor thus made his apology to Mrs. Thrale, “I understand you, Madam, but _must_ disobey. A friend I have known thirty-six years shall not ask a favour of me in his last stage of life and be refused. What difference can it make?” Tears stood in _his_ eyes, and Mrs. Thrale’s own—_les larmes dans la voix_—prevented all reply. What difference did it make? That day was Mr. Thrale’s last. The tone of the apology reminds us of General Paoli’s answer to Boswell, when whispering his fear lest Johnson, very aged and very ailing, might be hurt by the amount and variety of what he was despatching at the general’s table, “where he loved to dine.” Boswell begged Paoli not to press him. Why urge a too willing horse? “Alas!” said the host, “see how very ill he looks: he can live but a very short time. Would you refuse a slight gratification to a man under sentence of death?” And the general cited approvingly the “humane custom” in Italy, by which those in Johnson’s position were indulged with having whatever they liked best to eat and drink, even with expensive delicacies. A parallel case we have in Sir Walter Scott, during his melancholy sojourn in Italy, as Sir W. Gell describes his dining at a Roman palace, and his own fears lest, from the hospitality of the Torlonia family, and “with servants on all sides pressing him to eat and drink, as is their custom at Rome,” Sir Walter might be induced to eat more than was safe for his malady. “Colonel Blair, who sat next him, was requested to take care that this should not happen. Whenever I observed him, however, Sir Walter appeared always to be eating; while the duchess, who had discovered the nature of the office imposed on the colonel, was by no means satisfied, and after dinner observed that it was an odd sort of friendship which consisted in starving one’s neighbour to death, when he had a good appetite, and there was dinner enough.”

The selfish club-man _par excellence_ has been depicted as earthing himself from pursuit in the sanctuary of his club, there to eat his fill unmolested, with no remonstrant at hand to remind him of the gout when enjoying his turtle, or to talk of cupping when the glass of champagne is at his lips. “There he may eat his asparagus _tout à l’huile_—there he may pepper his cream-tart,” and none to say him nay. Drawn with pitiless realism from the life is Acton Bell (Anne Brontè)’s picture of the dying master of Wildfell Hall, whose extreme dread of death, when and while it seems imminent, renders easy his wife’s task of curbing his unruly greed, but who becomes intractable as the danger to dear life seems receding. “I watch and restrain him,” she writes, “as well as I can, and often get bitterly abused for my rigid severity; and sometimes he contrives to elude my vigilance, and sometimes acts in opposition to my will.” William Collins, the painter, notes in his diary a certain “dinner at C⸺’s,” where he “sat next to H⸺, who took some highly seasoned omelet. I asked him how he could venture on such stuff; he said he could not resist it, though he knew how much he should suffer from it. He took a great deal of wine, to overcome the effects of the omelet, and assured me he should be ill for four days after such a dinner, and that he always suffered in the same way after dining with C⸺! How absurd such weakness appears, and yet how common it is!” George Herbert’s counsel is never out of date, any more than King Solomon’s, in the matter of putting a knife to one’s throat, if edacious and a diner-out:—

“Look to thy mouth: diseases enter there.... ... Carve, or discourse; do not a famine fear. Who carves is kind to two, who talks to all. Look on meat, think it dirt, then eat a bit; Then say withal, Earth to earth I commit.”

_HAZAEL’S ABHORRENT REPUDIATION OF HIS FUTURE SELF._

2 KINGS viii. 13.

Why wept Elisha in the presence of Hazael, when that envoy from the sick king of Syria courted the man of God, in his sovereign’s behalf, with a consignment of every good thing of Damascus, forty camels’ burden? Courteous and gentle was Benhadad’s messenger who came to inquire of the Lord of Elisha, if the royal Syrian should recover of the disease which had brought him so low. Why wept the prophet, when his prophecy had been uttered, ominously vague? “Go, say unto him [Benhadad], Thou mayest certainly recover. Howbeit the Lord hath showed me that he shall certainly die.” And he settled his countenance stedfastly, until he was ashamed.

“And Hazael said, Why weepeth my lord? And he answered, Because I know the evil that thou wilt do unto the children of Israel; their strongholds wilt thou set on fire, and their young men wilt thou slay with the sword, and wilt dash their children,” etc. And Hazael said, “But what! is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?”

Yet Hazael went home, and on the very morrow commenced his justification of the seer’s previsionary tears, by spreading a thick wet cloth on the face of his master, so that Benhadad, who else would have recovered, died, and Hazael reigned in his stead.

Well might the man of God weep, nor could anything be more natural, or at least naturally assumed, than the shuddering repudiation, the deprecating protest, of the envoy that now was, the king—and dog—that to-morrow should be.

“Lui-même, à son portrait forcé de rendre hommage, Il frémira d’horreur devant sa propre image.”

The man who is weak, observes Miss Lee in the “Canterbury Tales,” is always in danger of becoming a villain; and she exemplifies this liability in the instance of Villars, who, by indulging a passion calculated to enfeeble his understanding and corrupt his heart, is soon to be found touching that point which his high tone of romantic refinement had once induced him to believe it impossible he should even approach. But he protests too much who strenuously protests, with protestation heaped on protestation, against any such possible lapse and collapse on his part; and there are cases of this kind, of which one may say with Molière—

“Que c’est être à demi ce que l’on vient de dire, Que de vouloir jurer qu’on ne le sera pas.”

Martial is in the right in answering the inquiry of Priscus, how would he live if he became rich and great all at once, with another query, Who can say beforehand what his future conduct will be? _Quemquam posse putas mores narrare futuros?_ If Priscus were to become a lion, what sort of one would he turn out to be? Perhaps like Hazael, a dog.

In sight of a corpse suspended to a tree, the “miserable remnant of a wretch that was hanged there for murder,” Robert, in one of Tobin’s dramas, protests to his mother that, robber though he be, _he_ is no murderer; she replies:—

“You are a robber; And he who robs, by sharp resistance pressed, Will end the deed in blood: ’twas so with him; He once possessed a soul quick as your own To mercy, and would quake, as you do now, At the bare apprehension of the act That has consigned him to yon blasted tree.”

Dr. Hamilton somewhere adverts to a sort of gambling in our large cities which does not look particularly repulsive—not being carried on in “hells,” and pleading the sanction of some titled names; the results, however, of which are hanging like a millstone round the neck of many a once promising young man; while, to say nothing of those whom it has reduced to beggary or blackguardism, numbers of its victims must be sought in the Portland hulks or Dartmoor prison. “They went to the race-course, or, without going there, they laid wagers on horses, and sooner or later they lost more than they could pay, and in dread of dishonour they took means to get the money at the very suggestion of which, once upon a time, they would indignantly have exclaimed, ‘Is thy servant a dog?’ and after a few miserable makeshifts, only adding sin to sin, there came detection and ruin and disgrace.” It is of the riotous living of prodigal sons that the same preacher is treating, when he shows, in his graphic way, how speedily riot, whether coarse or refined, wastes the reveller’s substance—not only sapping the constitution, and softening the brain, and shattering the nerves, and enfeebling the mind, but exhausting the estate, and soon bringing the spendthrift to poverty. And, as the discourser goes on to say, if the passion still urges, and the fear of God has departed, wild methods will be used to meet the demand and assuage the frantic craving. “Keepsakes will be sold or pledged, to part with which would, once upon a time, have looked like sacrilege.” Perhaps money will be taken from the till, and so on and on, or rather downwards and downwards, deeper and deeper, till the lowest deep is sounded, and darkness is the burier of the dead.

It has been remarked by one of the most reflective of our popular authors, that there is a terrible coercion in our deeds which may first turn the honest man into a deceiver, and then reconcile him to the change, for this reason—that the second wrong presents itself to him in the guise of the only practicable right. “The action which before commission has been seen with that blended common-sense and fresh untarnished feeling which is the healthy eye of the soul, is looked at afterwards with the lens of apologetic ingenuity, through which all things that men call beautiful and ugly are seen to be made up of textures very much alike.” Europe, it is suggestively added, adjusts itself to a _fait accompli_; and so does an individual character—until the placid adjustment is disturbed by a convulsive retribution.

Recording the appointment of Bonaparte to succeed Scherer in command of the French forces on Genoese territory, Southey observes that although the former had given indications of his military talents at Toulon, and of his remorseless nature at Paris, “the extent either of his ability or his wickedness was at this time known to none, and perhaps not even suspected by himself.” Of all the lessons derived from the history of human passion, says Lavalette, the most important is the utter impossibility which even the best men will always experience of stopping, if they are once led into the path of error. If, a few years before they were perpetrated, the crimes of the first French Revolution, he goes on to surmise, could have been portrayed to those who committed them, “even Robespierre himself would have recoiled with horror.” Men, in the case suggested, are seduced at first by plausible theories, which their heated imaginations represent as beneficial and easy of execution: “they advance unconsciously from errors to faults, and from faults to crimes, till sensibility is destroyed by the habitual spectacle of guilt, and the most savage atrocities come to be dignified by the name of state policy.”

The world, and the spirit of the world, observes Sir Fowell Buxton in one of his letters, are very insidious; “and more than once I have seen a person who, as a youth, was single-eyed and single-hearted, and who, to any one who supposed he might glide into laxity of zeal, would have said, ‘Am I a dog?’ in maturer age become, if not a lover of the vices of the world, at least a tolerator of its vanities.” But as M. de Sainte-Beuve sententiously puts it, in one of his maxims after the manner of La Rochefoucauld, “La plupart des défauts qui éclatent dans la seconde moitié de la vie existaient en nous tout formés bien auparavant; mais ils étaient masqués, en quelque sorte, par la pudeur de la jeunesse.” The faults of after-life were there, and only the modest reserve and self-restraint of youth kept them under cover. With riper years comes less regard for others, and the cover is taken off.