Sketches by Seymour Part 21

"Sitting like patience on a monument,"

and selling the remnant of his life below cost price in the pursuit of angling,--that "art of ingeniously tormenting,"--a feeling,

"More in sorrow than in anger,"

is excited at his profitless inhumanity.

Vainly do all the disciples of honest Izaak Walton discourse, in eulogistic strains, of the pleasure of the sport. I can imagine neither pleasure nor sport derivable from the infliction of pain upon the meanest thing endowed with life.

This may be deemed Brahminical, but I doubt that man's humanity who can indulge in the cruel recreation and murder while he smiles.

"What, heretical sentiments," exclaims some brother of the angle, (now I am an angle, but no angler.) "This fellow hath never trudged at early dawn along the verdant banks of the 'sedgy lea,' and drunk in the dewy freshness of the morning air. His lines have never fallen in pleasant places. He has never performed a pilgrimage to Waltham Cross. He is, in truth, one of those vulgar minds who take more delight in the simple than the--gentle!--and every line of his deserves a rod!"

PRACTICE.

"Sweet is the breath of morn when she ascends With charm of earliest birds."---MILTON.

"Well, this is a morning!" emphatically exclaimed a stripling, with a mouth and eyes formed by Nature of that peculiar width and power of distension, so admirably calculated for the expression of stupid wonder or surprise; while his companion, elevating his nasal organ and projecting his chin, sniffed the fresh morning breeze, as they trudged through the dewy meadows, and declared that it was exactly for all the world similar-like to reading Thomson's Seasons! In which apt and appropriate simile the other concurred.

"Tom's a good fellow to lend us his gun," continued he--"I only hope it ain't given to tricking, that's all. I say, Sugarlips, keep your powder dry."

"Leave me alone for that," replied Sugarlips; "I know a thing or two, although this is the first time that ever I have been out. What a scuffling the birds do make"--added he, peeping into the cage which they had, as a precautionary measure, stocked with sparrows, in order that they might not be disappointed in their sport--"How they long to be on the wing!"

"I'll wing 'em, presently!" cried his comrade, with a vaunting air--"and look if here ain't the very identical spot for a display of my skill.

Pick out one of the best and biggest, and tie up a-top of yonder stile, and you shall soon have a specimen of my execution." Sugarlips quickly did his bidding.

"Now--come forward and stand back! What do ye think o' that, ey?" said the sportsman--levelling his gun, throwing back his head, closing his sinister ocular, and stretching out his legs after the manner of the Colossus of Rhodes--"Don't you admire my style?"

"Excellent!" said Sugarlips--"But I think I could hit it."

"What?"

"Why, the stile to be sure."

"Keep quiet, can't you--Now for it--" and, trembling with eagerness, his hand pulled the trigger, but no report followed. "The deuce is in the gun," cried he, lowering it, and examining the lock; "What can ail it?"

"Why, I'll be shot if that ain't prime," exclaimed Sugarlips, laughing outright.

"What do you mean?"

"I've only forgot the priming--that's all."

"There's a pretty fellow, you are, for a sportsman."

"Well, it's no matter as it happens; for, though 'Time and tide wait for no man,' a sparrow tied must, you know. There! that will do."

"Sure you put the shot in now?"

"If you put the shot into d.i.c.ky as surely, he'll never peck groundsel again, depend on it."

Again the "murderous tube" was levelled; Sugarlips backed against an adjoining wall, with a nervous adhesiveness that evidently proved him less fearful of a little mortar than a great gun!

"That's right; out of the way, Sugarlips; I am sure I shall hit him this time." And no sooner had he uttered this self-congratulatory a.s.surance (alas! not life-a.s.surance!) than a report (most injurious to the innocent c.o.c.k-sparrow) was heard in the neighbourhood!

"Murder!--mur-der!" roared a stentorian voice, which made the criniferous coverings of their craniums stand on end.

"Like quills upon the fretful porcupine."

In an instant the sportsman let fall his gun, and Sugarlips ran affrighted towards the stile. He found it really "vox et preterea nihil;" for a few feathers of the bird alone were visible: he had been blown to nothing; and, peeping cautiously round the angle of the wall, he beheld a portly gentleman in black running along with the unwieldy gait of a chased elephant.

"Old Flank'em, of the Finishing Academy, by jingo!" exclaimed Sugarlips.

"It's a mercy we didn't finish him! Why, he must actually have been on the point of turning the corner. I think we had better be off; for, if the old dominie catches us, he will certainly liberate our sparrows, and --put us in the cage!"

But, where's the spoil?"

"Spoil, indeed!" cried Sugarlips; "you've spoiled him nicely. I've an idea, Tom, you were too near, as the spendthrift nephew said of his miserly uncle. If you can't get an aim at a greater distance, you'd never get a name as a long shot--that's my mind."

PRECEPT.

Uncle Samson was a six-bottle man. His capacity was certainly great, whatever might be said of his intellect; for I have seen him rise without the least appearance of elevation, after having swallowed the customary half dozen. He laughed to scorn all modern potations of wishy-washy French and Rhine wines--deeming them unfit for the palate of a true-born Englishman. Port, Sherry, and Madeira were his only tipple--the rest, he would a.s.sert, were only fit for finger-gla.s.ses!

--He was of a bulky figure, indeed a perfect Magnum among men, with a very apoplectic brevity of neck, and a logwood complexion,--and though a staunch Church-of-England-man, he might have been mistaken, from his predilection for the Port, to be a true Mussulman. To hear him discourse upon the age of his wines--the 'pinhole,' the 'crust,' the 'bees'-wing,'

etc., was perfectly edifying--and every man who could not imbibe the prescribed quantum, became his b.u.t.t. To temperance and tea-total societies he attributed the rapid growth of radicalism and dissent.

"Water," he would say, with a sort of hydrophobic shudder, "is only a fit beverage for a.s.ses!"--"To say a man could drink like a fish, was once the greatest encomium that a bon-vivant could bestow upon a brother Baccha.n.a.lian--but, alas! in this matter-of-fact and degenerate age, men do so literally--washing their gills with unadulterated water!--Dropsy and water on the chest must be the infallible result! If such an order of things continue, all the puppies in the kingdom, who would perhaps have become jolly dogs in their time, will be drowned! Yes, they'll inevitably founder, like a water-logged vessel, in sight of port. These water-drinkers will not have a long reign. They would feign persuade us that 'Truth lies at the bottom of a well,'--lies, indeed! I tell you Horace knew better, and that his a.s.sertion of 'There is truth in wine,'

was founded on experience--his draughts had no water-mark in 'em, depend on it."

He was a great buyer of choice "Pieces," and his cellar contained one of the best stocks in the kingdom, both in the wood and bottle. Poor Uncle!--he has now been some years "in the wood" himself, and snugly stowed in the family vault!

Having been attacked with a severe cold, he was compelled to call in the Doctor, who sent him a sudorific in three Lilliputian bottles; but although he received the advice of his medical friend, he followed Shakspeare's,

"Throw physic to the dogs,"

and prescribed for himself a bowl of wine-whey as a febrifuge. His housekeeper remonstrated, but he would have his 'whey,' and he died!

leaving a handsome fortune, and two good-looking nephews to follow him to the grave.

Myself and Cousin (the two nephews aforesaid) were vast favourites with the old gentleman, and strenuously did he endeavour to initiate us in the art of drinking, recounting the feats of his youth, and his drinking-bouts with my father, adding, with a smile, "But you'll never be a par with, your Uncle, Ned, till you can carry the six bottles under your waistcoat."

My head was certainly stronger than my Cousin's; he went as far as the third bottle--the next drop was on the floor! Now I did once manage the fourth bottle--but then--I must confess I was obliged to give it up!