The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Part 23

Even where boys have gone through a laborious education, superinducing habits of steady attention, accompanied with the entire conviction that the business which they learn is to be the source of their future distinction, may it not be affirmed that the persevering industry required to accomplish this desirable end causes many a hard struggle in the minds of young men, even of the most hopeful disposition? What then must be the disadvantages under which a very young woman is placed who is required to learn a trade, from which she can never expect to reap any profit, but at the expence of losing that place in society, to the possession of which she may reasonably look forward, inasmuch as it is by far the most _common lot_, namely, the condition of a _happy_ English wife?

As I desire to offer nothing to the consideration of your readers but what, at least as far as my own observation goes, I consider as truths confirmed by experience, I will only say that, were I to follow the bent of my own speculative opinion, I should be inclined to persuade every female over whom I hoped to have any influence to contribute all the a.s.sistance in her power to those of her own s.e.x who may need it, in the employments they at present occupy, rather than to force them into situations now filled wholly by men. With the mere exception of the profits which they have a right to derive from their needle, I would take nothing from the industry of man which he already possesses.

"A penny saved is a penny earned," is a maxim not true, unless the penny be saved in the same time in which it might have been earned. I, who have known what it is to work for _money earned_, have since had much experience in working for _money saved_; and I consider, from the closest calculation I can make, that a _penny saved_ in that way bears about a true proportion to a _farthing earned_. I am no advocate for women, who do not depend on themselves for a subsistence, proposing to themselves to _earn money_. My reasons for thinking it not advisable are too numerous to state--reasons deduced from authentic facts, and strict observations on domestic life in its various shades of comfort. But, if the females of a family, _nominally_ supported by the other s.e.x, find it necessary to add something to the common stock, why not endeavour to do something by which they may produce money _in its true shape_?

It would be an excellent plan, attended with very little trouble, to calculate every evening how much money has been saved by needle-work _done in the family_, and compare the result with the daily portion of the yearly income. Nor would it be amiss to make a memorandum of the time pa.s.sed in this way, adding also a guess as to what share it has taken up in the thoughts and conversation. This would be an easy mode of forming a true notion, and getting at the exact worth of this species of _home_ industry, and perhaps might place it in a different light from any in which it has. .h.i.therto been the fashion to consider it.

Needle-work, taken up as an amus.e.m.e.nt, may not be altogether unamusing.

We are all pretty good judges of what entertains ourselves, but it is not so easy to p.r.o.nounce upon what may contribute to the entertainment of others. At all events, let us not confuse the motives of economy with those of simple pastime. If _saving_ be no object, and long habit have rendered needle-work so delightful an avocation that we cannot think of relinquishing it, there are the good old contrivances in which our grand-dames were used to beguile and lose their time--knitting, knotting, netting, carpet working, and the like ingenious pursuits--those so-often-praised but tedious works, which are so long in the operation, that purchasing the labour has seldom been thought good economy, yet, by a certain fascination, they have been found to chain down the great to a self-imposed slavery, from which they considerately, or haughtily, excuse the needy. These may be esteemed lawful and lady-like amus.e.m.e.nts. But, if those works, more usually denominated useful, yield greater satisfaction, it might be a laudable scruple of conscience, and no bad test to herself of her own motive, if a lady, who had no absolute need, were to give the money so saved to poor needle-women belonging to those branches of employment from which she has borrowed these shares of pleasurable labour.

SEMp.r.o.nIA.

ON THE POETICAL WORKS OF GEORGE WITHER

(? 1815. TEXT OF 1818)

The poems of G. Wither are distinguished by a hearty homeliness of manner, and a plain moral speaking. He seems to have pa.s.sed his life in one continued act of an innocent self-pleasing. That which he calls his _Motto_ is a continued self-eulogy of two thousand lines, yet we read it to the end without any feeling of distaste, almost without a consciousness that we have been listening all the while to a man praising himself. There are none of the cold particles in it, the hardness and self-ends which render vanity and egotism hateful. He seems to be praising another person, under the mask of self; or rather we feel that it was indifferent to him where he found the virtue which he celebrates; whether another's bosom, or his own, were its chosen receptacle. His poems are full, and this in particular is one downright confession, of a generous self-seeking. But by self he sometimes means a great deal,--his friends, his principles, his country, the human race.

Whoever expects to find in the satirical pieces of this writer any of those peculiarities which pleased him in the satires of Dryden or Pope, will be grievously disappointed. Here are no high-finished characters, no nice traits of individual nature, few or no personalities. The game run down is coa.r.s.e general vice, or folly as it appears in cla.s.ses. A liar, a drunkard, a c.o.xcomb, is _stript and whipt_; no Shaftesbury, no Villiers, or Wharton, is curiously anatomized, and read upon. But to a well-natured mind there is a charm of moral sensibility running through them which amply compensates the want of those luxuries. Wither seems every where bursting with a love of goodness and a hatred of all low and base actions.--At this day it is hard to discover what parts in the poem here particularly alluded to, _Abuses Stript and Whipt_, could have occasioned the imprisonment of the author. Was Vice in High Places more suspicious than now? had she more power; or more leisure to listen after ill reports? That a man should be convicted of a libel when he named no names but Hate, and Envy, and l.u.s.t, and Avarice, is like one of the indictments in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, where Faithful is arraigned for having "railed on our n.o.ble Prince Beelzebub, and spoken contemptibly of his honourable friends, the Lord Old Man, the Lord Carnal Delight, and the Lord Luxurious." What unlucky jealousy could have tempted the great men of those days to appropriate such innocent abstractions to themselves!

Wither seems to have contemplated to a degree of idolatry his own possible virtue. He is for ever antic.i.p.ating persecution and martyrdom; fingering, as it were, the flames, to try how he can bear them. Perhaps his premature defiance sometimes made him obnoxious to censures, which he would otherwise have slipped by.

The homely versification of these Satires is not likely to attract in the present day. It is certainly not such as we should expect from a poet "soaring in the high region of his fancies with his garland and his singing robes about him;"[34] nor is it such as he has shown in his _Philarete_, and in some parts in his _Shepherds Hunting_. He seems to have adopted this dress with voluntary humility, as fittest for a moral teacher, as our divines chuse sober grey or black; but in their humility consists their sweetness. The deepest tone of moral feeling in them, (though all throughout is weighty, earnest and pa.s.sionate) is in those pathetic injunctions against shedding of blood in quarrels, in the chapter ent.i.tled _Revenge_. The story of his own forbearance, which follows, is highly interesting. While the Christian sings his own victory over Anger, the Man of Courage cannot help peeping out to let you know, that it was some higher principle than _fear_ which counselled his forbearance.

[34] Milton.

Whether encaged, or roaming at liberty, Wither never seems to have abated a jot of that free spirit, which sets its mark upon his writings, as much as a predominant feature of independence impresses every page of our late glorious Burns; but the elder poet wraps his proof-armour closer about him, the other wears his too much outwards; he is thinking too much of annoying the foe, to be quite easy within; the spiritual defences of Wither are a perpetual source of inward sunshine, the magnanimity of the modern is not without its alloy of soreness, and a sense of injustice, which seems perpetually to gall and irritate. Wither was better skilled in the "sweet uses of adversity," he knew how to extract the "precious jewel" from the head of the "toad," without drawing any of the "ugly venom" along with it.--The prison notes of Wither are finer than the wood notes of most of his poetical brethren.

The description in the Fourth Eglogue of his _Shepherds Hunting_ (which was composed during his imprisonment in the Marshalsea) of the power of the Muse to extract pleasure from common objects, has been oftener quoted, and is more known, than any part of his writings. Indeed the whole Eglogue is in a strain so much above not only what himself, but almost what any other poet has written, that he himself could not help noticing it; he remarks, that his spirits had been raised higher than they were wont "through the love of poesy."--The praises of Poetry have been often sung in ancient and in modern times; strange powers have been ascribed to it of influence over animate and inanimate auditors; its force over fascinated crowds has been acknowledged; but, before Wither, no one ever celebrated its power _at home_, the wealth and the strength which this divine gift confers upon its possessor. Fame, and that too after death, was all which hitherto the poets had promised themselves from their art. It seems to have been left to Wither to discover, that poetry was a present possession, as well as a rich reversion; and that the Muse had promise of both lives, of this, and of that which was to come.

The _Mistress of Philarete_ is in substance a panegyric protracted through several thousand lines in the mouth of a single speaker, but diversified, so as to produce an almost dramatic effect, by the artful introduction of some ladies, who are rather auditors than interlocutors in the scene; and of a boy, whose singing furnishes pretence for an occasional change of metre: though the seven syllable line, in which the main part of it is written, is that in which Wither has shown himself so great a master, that I do not know that I am always thankful to him for the exchange.

Wither has chosen to bestow upon the lady whom he commends, the name of Arete, or Virtue; and, a.s.suming to himself the character of Philarete, or Lover of Virtue, there is a sort of propriety in that heaped measure of perfections, which he attributes to this partly real, partly allegorical, personage. Drayton before him had shadowed his mistress under the name of Idea, or Perfect Pattern, and some of the old Italian love-strains are couched in such religious terms as to make it doubtful, whether it be a mistress, or Divine Grace, which the poet is addressing.

In this poem (full of beauties) there are two pa.s.sages of pre-eminent merit. The first is where the lover, after a flight of rapturous commendation, expresses his wonder why all men that are about his mistress, even to her very servants, do not view her with the same eyes that he does.

Sometime I do admire, All men burn not with desire; Nay I muse her servants are not Pleading love; but O! they dare not.

And I therefore wonder, why They do not grow sick and die.

Sure they would do so, but that, By the ordinance of fate, There is some concealed thing So each gazer limiting, He can see no more of merit Than beseems his worth and spirit, For in her a grace there shines, That o'er-daring thoughts confines; Making worthless men despair To be lov'd of one so fair.

Yea the destinies agree, Some _good judgments_ blind should be, And not gain the power of knowing Those rare beauties in her growing.

Reason doth as much imply: For if every judging eye, Which beholdeth her, should there Find what excellencies are; All, o'ercome by those perfections, Would be captive to affections.

So in happiness unblest, She for lovers should not rest.

The other is, where he has been comparing her beauties to gold, and stars, and the most excellent things in nature; and, fearing to be accused of hyperbole, the common charge against poets, vindicates himself by boldly taking upon him, that these comparisons are no hyperboles; but that the best things in nature do, in a lover's eye, fall short of those excellencies which he adores in her.

What pearls, what rubies can Seem so lovely fair to man, As her lips whom he doth love, When in sweet discourse they move, Or her lovelier teeth, the while She doth bless him with a smile?

Stars indeed fair creatures be; Yet amongst us where is he Joys not more the whilst he lies Sunning in his mistress' eyes.

Than in all the glimmering light Of a starry winter's night?

Note the beauty of an eye-- And if aught you praise it by Leave such pa.s.sion in your mind, Let my reason's eye be blind.

Mark if ever red or white Any where gave such delight, As when they have taken place In a worthy woman's face.

I must praise her as I may, Which I do mine own rude way; Sometime setting forth her glories By unheard of allegories--&c.

To the measure in which these lines are written, the wits of Queen Anne's days contemptuously gave the name of Namby Pamby, in ridicule of Ambrose Philips, who has used it in some instances, as in the lines on Cuzzoni, to my feeling at least, very deliciously; but Wither, whose darling measure it seems to have been, may shew, that in skilful hands it is capable of expressing the subtilest movements of pa.s.sion. So true it is, which Drayton seems to have felt, that it is the poet who modifies the metre, not the metre the poet; in his own words, that

It's possible to climb; To kindle, or to slake; Altho' in Skelton's rhime.[35]

[35] "A long line is a line we are long repeating. In the _Shepherds Hunting_ take the following--

"If thy verse doth bravely tower, _As she makes wing, she gets power_; Yet the higher she doth soar, She's affronted still the more, 'Till she to the high'st hath past, Then she rests with fame at last.

what longer measure can go beyond the majesty of this! what Alexandrine is half so long in p.r.o.nouncing or expresses _labor slowly but strongly surmounting difficulty_ with the life with which it is done in the second of these lines? or what metre could go beyond these, from _Philarete_--

"Her true beauty leaves behind Apprehensions in my mind Of more sweetness, than all art Or inventions can impart.

_Thoughts too deep to be express'd, And too strong to be suppress'd._"

FIVE DRAMATIC CRITICISMS

I.--MRS. GOULD (MISS BURRELL) IN "DON GIOVANNI IN LONDON"

OLYMPIC THEATRE

(1818)

This Theatre, fitted up with new and tasteful decorations, opened on Monday with a burletta founded upon a pleasant extravagance recorded of Wilmot the "mad Lord" of Rochester. The house, in its renovated condition, is just what play-houses should be, and once were, from its size admirably adapted for seeing and hearing, and only perhaps rather too well lit up. Light is a good thing, but to preserve the eyes is still better. Elliston and Mrs. Edwin personated a reigning wit and beauty of the Court of Charles the Second to the life. But the charm of the evening to us, we confess, was the acting of Mrs. T. Gould (late Miss Burrell) in the burlesque _Don Giovanni_ which followed. This admirable piece of foolery takes up our hero just where the legitimate drama leaves him, on the "burning marl." We are presented with a fair map of Tartarus, the triple-headed cur, the Furies, the Tormentors, and the Don, prostrate, thunder-smitten. But there is an elasticity in the original make of this _strange man_, as Richardson would have called him. He is not one of those who change with the change of climate. He brings with him to his new habitation _ardours_ as glowing and constant as any which he finds there. No sooner is he recovered from his first surprise, than he falls to his old trade, is caught "ogling _Proserpine_," and coquets with two she devils at once, till he makes the house _too hot to hold him_; and _Pluto_ (in whom a wise jealousy seems to produce the effects of kindness) turns him neck and heels out of his dominions,--much to the satisfaction of _Giovanni_, who stealing a boat from Charon, and a pair of light heels from _Mercury_, or (as he familiarly terms him) _Murky_, sets off with flying colours, conveying to the world above the souls of three damsels, just eloped from Styx, to comfort his tender and new-born spiritualities on the journey. Arrived upon earth (with a new body, we are to suppose, but his old habits) he lights a-propos upon a tavern in London, at the door of which three merry weavers, widowers, are trouling a catch in triumph over their deceased spouses--

They lie in yonder church-yard At rest--and so are we.

Their departed partners prove to be the identical lady ghosts who have accompanied the Don in his flight, whom he now delivers up in perfect health and good plight, not a jot the worse for their journey, to the infinite surprise, and consternation ill-dissembled, of their ill-fated, twice-yoked mates. The gallantries of the Don in his second state of probation, his meeting with _Leporello_, with _Donna Anna_, and a countless host of injured virgins besides, doing penance in the humble occupation of apple-women, fishwives and sausage-fryers, in the purlieus of Billinsgate and Covent-garden, down to the period of his complete reformation, and being made an honest man of, by marrying into a sober English citizen's family, although infinitely pleasant in the exhibition, would be somewhat tedious in the recital: but something must be said of his representative.

We have seen Mrs. Jordan in male characters, and more ladies beside than we would wish to recollect--but never any that so completely answered the purpose for which they were so trans.m.u.ted, as the Lady who enacts the mock _Giovanni_. This part, as it is played at the Great House in the Haymarket (Shade of Mozart, and ye living admirers of Ambrogetti, pardon the barbarity) had always something repulsive and distasteful to us.--We cannot sympathize with _Leporello's_ brutal display of the _list_, and were shocked (no strait-laced moralists either) with the applauses, with the _endurance_ we ought rather to say, which fashion and beauty bestowed upon that disgustful insult to feminine unhappiness.

The _Leporello_ of the Olympic Theatre is not one of the most refined order, but we can bear with an English blackguard better than with the hard Italian. But _Giovanni_--free, fine, frank-spirited, single-hearted creature, turning all the mischief into fun as harmless as toys, or children's _make-believe_, what praise can we repay to you, adequate to the pleasure which you have given us? We had better be silent, for you have no name, and our mention will but be thought fantastical. You have taken out the sting from the evil thing, by what magic we know not, for there are actresses of greater mark and attribute than you. With you and your _Giovanni_ our spirits will hold communion, whenever sorrow or suffering shall be our lot. We have seen you triumph over the infernal powers; and pain, and Erebus, and the powers of darkness, are henceforth "shapes of a dream."

II.--MISS KELLY AT BATH

(1819)

Dear G.---- I was thinking yesterday of our old play-going days, of your and my partiality to Mrs. Jordan; of our disputes as to the relative merits of Dodd and Parsons; and whether Smith or Jack Palmer, were the most of a Gentleman. The occasion of my falling into this train of thinking was my learning from the newspapers that Miss Kelly is paying the Bath Theatre a visit. (Your own Theatre, I am sorry to find, is shut up, either from parsimonious feelings, or through the influence of ---- principles.[36]) This lady has long ranked among the most considerable of our London performers. If there are one or two of greater name, I must impute it to the circ.u.mstance, that she has never burst upon the town at once in the maturity of her power; which is a great advantage to debutantes, who have pa.s.sed their probationary years in Provincial Theatres. We do not hear them tuning their instruments. But she has been winning her patient way from the humblest gradations to the eminence which she has now attained, on the self same boards which supported her first in the slender pretensions of chorus-singer. I very much wish that you would go and see her. You will not see Mrs. Jordan, but something else; something on the whole very little, if at all, inferior to that lady, in her best days. I cannot hope that you will think so; I do not even wish that you should. Our longest remembrances are the most sacred; and I shall revere the prejudice, that shall prevent you from thinking quite so favorably of her as I do.--I do not well know how to draw a parallel between their distinct manners of acting. I seem to recognize the same pleasantness and nature in both: but Mrs. Jordan's was the carelessness of a child; her child-like spirit shook off the load of years from her spectators; she seemed one whom care could not come near; a privileged being, sent to teach mankind what it most wants, joyousness. Hence, if we had more unmixed pleasure from her performances, we had, perhaps, less sympathy with them than with those of her successor. This latter lady's is the joy of a freed spirit, escaping from care, as a bird that had been limed; her smiles, if I may use the expression, seemed saved out of the fire, relics which a good and innocent heart had s.n.a.t.c.hed up as most portable; her contents are visitors, not inmates: she can lay them by altogether; and when she does so, I am not sure that she is not greatest. She is, in truth, no ordinary tragedian. Her Yarico is the most intense piece of acting which I ever witnessed, the most heart-rending spectacle. To see her leaning upon that wretched reed, her lover--the very exhibition of whose character would be a moral offence, but for her clinging and n.o.ble credulity--to see her lean upon that flint, and by the strong workings of pa.s.sion imagine it a G.o.d--is one of the most afflicting lessons of the yearnings of the human heart and its sad mistakes, that ever was read upon a stage. The whole performance is every where _African_, fervid, glowing. Nor is this any thing more than the wonderful force of imagination in this performer; for turn but the scene, and you shall have her come forward in some kindly home-drawn character of an English rustic, a Phbe, or a Dinah Cropley, where you would swear that her thoughts had never strayed beyond the precincts of the dairy, or the farm; or her mind known less tranquil pa.s.sions than she might have learned among the flock, her out-of-door companions. See her again in parts of pure fun, such as the House-maid in the Merry Mourners, where the suspension of the broom in her hand, which she had been delightfully twirling, on unexpectedly encountering her sweetheart in the character of a fellow-servant, is quite equal to Mrs. Jordan's cordial inebriation in Nell.--I do not know whether I am not speaking it to her honor, that she does not succeed in what are called fine lady parts. Our friend C.

once observed, that no man of genius ever figured as a gentleman.