show more of the melancholy valour of the Spaniard upon whom they charged-that deliberate courage which contemplation and sedentary habits breathe? Áre they often great newsmongers? I have known some few among them arrive at the dignity of speculative politicians; but that light and cheerful everyday interest in the affairs and goings-on of the world, which makes the barber such delightful company, I think is rarely observable in them. This characteristic pensiveness in them being so notorious, I wonder none of those writers who have expressly treated of melancholy should have mentioned it. Burton, whose book is an excellent abstract of all the authors in that kind who preceded him, and who treats of every species of this malady, from the hypochondriacal or windy to the heroical or love melancholy, has strangely omitted it. Shakespeare himself has overlooked it. "I have neither the scholar's melancholy (saith Jacques), which is emulation; nor the courtier's, which is pride; nor the soldier's, which is politic; nor the lover's, which is all these;"—and then, when you might expect him to have brought in, "nor the tailor's, which is so and so," he comes to an end of his enumeration, and falls to a defining of his own melancholy. Milton likewise has omitted it, where he had so fair an opportunity of bringing it in, in his "Penseroso." But the partial omissions of historians proving nothing against the existence of any well-attested fact, I shall proceed and endeavour to ascertain the causes why this pensive turn should be so predominant in people of this profession above all others. And first, may it not be that the custom of wearing apparel being derived to us from the Fall, and one of the most mortifying products of that unhappy event, a certain seriousness (to say no more of it) may in the order of things have been intended to be impressed upon the minds of that race of men to whom in all ages the care of contriving the human apparel has been intrusted,-to keep up the memory of the first institution of clothes, and serve as a standing remonstrance against those vanities which the absurd conversion of a memorial of our shame into an ornament of our persons was destined to produce? Correspondent in some sort to this, it may be remarked that the tailor, sitting over a cave or hollow place, in the cabalistic language of his order, is said to have certain melancholy regions always open under his feet. But waiving further inquiry into final causes, where the best of us can only wander in the dark, let us try to discover the efficient causes of this melancholy. 1 Having incidentally mentioned the barber, in a comparison of professional temperaments, I hope no other trade will take offence, or look upon it as an incivility to them, if I say, that in courtesy, humanity, and all the conversational and social graces which“ gladden life," I esteem no profession comparable to his. Indeed, so great is the good will which I bear to this useful and agrecable body of men, that, residing in one of the Inns of Court (where the best specimens of them are to be found, except perhaps at the Universities), there are seven of them to whom I am personally known, and who never pass me without the compliment of the hat on either side. My truly polite and urbane friend, Mr. A-m, of Flower-de-luce Court, in Fleet Street, will forgive my mention of him in particular. I can truly say that I never spent a quarter of an hour under his hands without deriving some profit from the agreeable discus Bicas which are always going on there. I think, then, that they may be reduced to two, omitting some subordinate ones, viz. :— The sedentary habits of the tailor. Something peculiar in his diet. " First, his sedentary habits. In Dr. Norris's famous narrative of the frenzy of Mr. John Dennis, the patient being questioned as to the occasion of the swelling in his legs, replies that it came "by criticism;' to which the learned doctor seeming to demur, as to a distemper which he had never heard of, Dennis (who appears not to have been mad upon all subjects) rejoins with some warmth, that it was no distemper, but a noble art! that he had sat fourteen hours a day at it; and that the other was a pretty doctor not to know that there was a communication between the brain and the legs. 66 When we consider that this sitting for fourteen hours continuously, which the critic probably practised only while he was writing his remarks," is no more than what the tailor, in the ordinary pursuance of his art, submits to daily (Sundays excepted) throughout the year, shall we wonder to find the brain affected, and in a manner overclouded, from that indissoluble sympathy between the noble and less noble parts of the body which Dennis hints at? The unnatural and painful manner of his sitting must also greatly aggravate the evil, insomuch that I have sometimes ventured to liken tailors at their boards to so many envious Junos, sitting cross-legged to hinder the birth of their own felicity. The legs transversed thus cross-wise, or decussated, was among the ancients the posture of malediction. The Turks, who practise it at this day, are noted to be a melancholy people. 66 Secondly, his diet. To which purpose I find a most remarkable passage in Burton, in his chapter entitled "Bad diet a cause of inelancholy." Amongst herbs to be eaten (he says), I find gourds, cucumbers, melons, disallowed, but especially CABBAGE. It causeth troublesome dreams and sends up black vapours to the brain. Galen, loc. affect. lib. 3, cap. 6, of all herbs condemns CABBAGE. And Isaack, lib. 2, cap. 1, animæ gravitatem facit, it brings heaviness to the soul." I could not omit so flattering a testimony from an author who, having no theory of his own to serve, has so unconsciously contributed to the confirmation of mine. It is well known that this last-named vegetable has, from the earliest periods which we can discover, constituted almost the sole food of this extraordinary race of people.-BURTON, Junior. THE LONDONER. I WAS born under the shadow of St. Dunstan's steeple, just where the conflux of the eastern and western inhabitants of this twofold city meet and jostle in friendly opposition at Temple Bar. The same day which gave me to the world saw London happy in the celebration of her great annual feast. This I cannot help looking upon as a lively omen of the future great good-will which I was destined to bear toward the city, resembling in kind that solicitude which every chief magistrate is supposed to feel for whatever concerns her interests and wellbeing. Indeed, I consider myself in some sort a speculative Lord Mayor of London; for though circumstances unhappily preclude me from the hope of ever arriving at the dignity of a gold chain and Spital sermon, yet thus much will I say of myself in truth, that Whittington with his cat (just emblem of vigilance and a furred gown) never went beyond me in affection which I bear to the citizens. I was born, as you have heard, in a crowd. This has begot in me an entire affection for that way of life, amounting to an almost insurmountable aversion from solitude and rural scenes. This aversion was never interrupted or suspended, except for a few years in the younger part of my life, during a period in which I had set my affections upon a charming young woman. Every man, while the passion is upon him, is for a time at least addicted to groves and meadows and purling streams. During this short period of my existence, I contracted just familiarity enough with rural objects to understand tolerably well ever after the poets when they declaim in such passionate terms in favour of a country life. For my own part, now the fit is past, I have no hesitation in declaring that a mob of happy faces crowding up at the pit-door of Drury Lane Theatre, just at the hour of six, gives me ten thousand sincerer pleasures than I could ever receive from all the flocks of silly sheep that ever whitened the plains of Arcadia or Epsom Downs. This passion for crowds is nowhere feasted so full as in London. The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy who can be dull in Fleet Street. I am naturally inclined to hypochondria, but in London it vanishes, like all other ills. Often, when I have felt a weariness or distaste at home, have I rushed out into her crowded Strand and fed my humour, till tears have wetted my cheek for unutterable sympathies with the multitudinous moving picture, which she never fails to present at all hours, like the scenes of a shifting pantomime. The very deformities of London, which give distaste to others, from habit do not displease me. The endless succession of shops, where fancy, miscalled folly, is supplied with perpetual gauds and toys, excite in me no puritanical aversion. I gladly behold every appetite supplied with its proper food. The obliging customer and the obliged tradesman-things which live by bowing and things which exist but for homage-do not affect me with disgust; from habit I perceive nothing but urbanity, where other men, more refined, discover meanness. I love the very smoke of London because it has been the medium most familiar to my vision. I see grand principles of honour at work in the dirty ring which encompasses two combatants with fists, and principles of no less eternal justice in the detection of a pickpocket. The salutary astonishment with which an execution is surveyed convinces me, more forcibly than a hundred volumes of abstract polity, that the universal instinct of man in all ages has leaned to order and good government. Thus an art of extracting morality from the commonest incidents of a town life is attained by the same well-natured alchemy with which the foresters of Arden, in a beautiful country Found tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Where has Spleen her food but in London? Humour, Interest, Curiosity, suck at her measureless breasts without a possibility of being satiated. Nursed amid her noise, her crowds, her beloved smoke, what have I been doing all my life, if I have not lent out my heart with usury to such scenes! THOUGHTS ON PRESENTS OF GAME, &c. "We love to have our friend in the country sitting thus at our table by proxy; to apprehend his presence (though a hundred miles may be between us) by a turkey, whose goodly aspect reflects to us his 'plump corpusculum ;' to taste him in grouse or woodcock; to feel him gliding down in the toast peculiar to the latter; to concorporate him in a slice of Canterbury brawn. This is indeed to have him within ourselves; to know him intimately; such participation is, methinks, unitive, as the old theologians phrase it."—Last Essays of Elia. ELIA presents his acknowledgments to his Correspondent Unknown" for a basket of prodigiously fine game. He takes for granted that so amiable a character must be a reader of the "Athenæum," else he had meditated a notice in the "Times." Now if this friend had consulted the Delphic oracle for a present suited to the palate of Elia, he could not have hit upon a morsel so acceptable. The birds he is barely thankful for; pheasants are poor fowls disguised in fine feathers; but a hare, roasted hard and brown, with gravy and melted butter! Old Mr. Chambers, the sensible clergyman in Warwickshire, whose son's acquaintance has made many hours happy in the life of Elia, used to allow a pound of Epping to every hare. Perhaps that was overdoing it. But, in spite of the note of Philomel, who, like some fine poets, that think no scorn to adopt plagiarisms from an humble brother, reiterates every spring her cuckoo cry of Jug, jug, jug,' Elia pro nounces that a hare, to be truly palated, must be roasted. Jugging sophisticates her. In our way it cats so "crips," as Mrs. Minikin says. Time was, when Elia was not arrived at his taste, that he preferred to all luxuries a roasted pig. But he disclaims all such green-sickness appetites in future, though he hath to acknowledge the receipt of many a delicacy in that kind from correspondents-good but mistaken men -in consequence of their erroneous supposition that he had carried up into mature life the prepossessions of childhood. From the worthy Vicar of Enfield he acknowledges a tithe contribution of extraordinary sapor. The ancients must have loved hares, else why adopt the word lepores (obviously from lepus) but for some subtle analogy between the delicate flavour of the latter and the finer relishes of wit in what we most poorly translate pleasantries? The fine madnesses of the poet are the very decoction of his diet. Thence is he hare-brained. Harumscarum is a libellous, unfounded phrase, of modern usage, 'Tis true the hare is the most circumspect of animals, sleeping with her eye open. Her ears, ever erect, keep them in that wholesome exercise which conduces them to form the very titbit of the admirers of this noble animal. Noble will I call her in spite of her detractors, who, from occasional demonstrations of the principle of self-preservation (common to all animals), infer in her a defect of heroism. Half a hundred horsemen, with thrice the number of dogs, scour the country in pursuit of puss across three counties; and because the well-flavoured beast, weighing the odds, is willing to evade the hue and cry (with her delicate ears shrinking perchance from discord), comes the grave naturalist, Linnæus perchance, or Buffon, and gravely sets down the hare as a timid animal. Why, Achilles or Bully Dawson would have declined the preposterous combat. In fact, how light of digestion we feel after a hare! How tender its processes after swallowing! What chyle it promotes! How ethereal! as if its living celerity were a type of its nimble coursing through the animal juices. The notice might be longer. It is intended less as a natural history of the hare than a cursory thanks to the country "good unknown." The hare has many friends, but none sincerer than ELIA. November 30, 1834. SATURDAY NIGHT. The "Gem," 1830. 66 THERE is a Saturday night-I speak not to the admirers of Burnserotically or theologically considered; HIS of the "Cotter's" may be a very charming picture, granting it to be but half true. Nor speak I now of the "Saturday Night at Sea," which Dibdin hath dressed up with a gusto more poignant to the mere nautical palate of un-Calvinised South Britons. Nor that it is marketing night with the pretty tripping servant-maids all over London, who, with judicious and economic eye, select the white and well-blown fillet, that the blue-aproned contunder of the calf can safely recommend as prime veal," and which they are to be sure not to over-brown on the morrow. Nor speak I of the hardhanded artisan, who on this night receives the pittance which is to furnish the neat Sabbatical dinner-not always reserved with Judaical rigour for that laudable purpose, but broken in upon, perchance, by inviting pot of ale, satisfactory to the present orifice. These are alleviatory, care-consoling. But the hebdomadal finale which I contemplate hath neither comfort nor alleviation in it; I pronounce it, from memory, altogether punitive and to be abhorred. It is-Saturday night to the schoolboy. Cleanliness, says some sage man, is next to godliness. It may be; but how it came to sit so very near is the marvel. Methinks some of the more human virtues might have put in for a place before it. |