Part 8 (2/2)
”Yes, to my cost. He borrowed a s.h.i.+lling of me for a chair. Hang this weather, it costs me seven s.h.i.+llings a day for coach-fare, besides my paying the fares of all my poor brother parsons, who come over from Ireland to solicit my patronage for a bishopric, and end by borrowing half-a-crown in the meanwhile. But Matt Prior will pay me again, I suppose, out of the public money?”
”To be sure, if Chloe does not ruin him first.”
”Hang the s.l.u.t: don't talk of her. How Prior rails against his place!* He says the excise spoils his wit, and that the only rhymes he ever dreams of now-a-days are 'docket and c.o.c.ket.'”
* In the Customs.
”Ha, ha! we must do something better for Matt,-make him a bishop or an amba.s.sador. But pardon me, Count, I have not yet made known to you the most courted, authoritative, impertinent, clever, independent, haughty, delightful, troublesome parson of the age: do homage to Dr. Swift. Doctor, be merciful to my particular friend, Count Devereux.”
Drawing himself up, with a manner which contrasted his previous one strongly enough, Dr. Swift saluted me with a dignity which might even be called polished, and which certainly showed that however he might prefer, as his usual demeanour, an air of negligence and semi-rudeness, he had profited sufficiently by his acquaintance with the great to equal them in the external graces, supposed to be peculiar to their order, whenever it suited his inclination. In person Swift is much above the middle height, strongly built, and with a remarkably fine outline of throat and chest; his front face is certainly displeasing, though far from uncomely; but the clear chiselling of the nose, the curved upper lip, the full, round Roman chin, the hanging brow, and the resolute decision, stamped upon the whole expression of the large forehead, and the clear blue eye, make his profile one of the most striking I ever saw. He honoured me, to my great surprise, with a fine speech and a compliment; and then, with a look, which menaced to St. John the retort that ensued, he added: ”And I shall always be glad to think that I owe your acquaintance to Mr. Secretary St. John, who, if he talked less about operas and singers,-thought less about Alcibiades and Pericles,-if he never complained of the load of business not being suited to his temper, at the very moment he had been working, like Gumdragon, to get the said load upon his shoulders; and if he persuaded one of his sincerity being as great as his genius,-would appear to all time as adorned with the choicest gifts that Heaven has yet thought fit to bestow on the children of men. Prithee now, Mr. Sec., when shall we have the oysters? Will you be merry to-night, Count?”
”Certainly; if one may find absolution for the champagne.”
”I'll absolve you, with a vengeance, on condition that you'll walk home with me, and protect the poor parson from the Mohawks. Faith, they ran young Davenant's chair through with a sword, t' other night. I hear they have sworn to make daylight through my Tory ca.s.sock,-all Whigs you know, Count Devereux, nasty, dangerous animals, how I hate them! they cost me five-and-sixpence a week in chairs to avoid them.”
”Never mind, Doctor, I'll send my servants home with you,” said St. John.
”Ay, a nice way of mending the matter-that's curing the itch by scratching the skin off. I could not give your tall fellows less than a crown a-piece, and I could buy off the bloodiest Mohawk in the kingdom, if he's a Whig, for half that sum. But, thank Heaven, the supper is ready.”
And to supper we went. The oysters and champagne seemed to exhilarate, if it did not refine, the Doctor's wit. St. John was unusually brilliant. I myself caught the infection of their humour, and contributed my quota to the common stock of jest and repartee; and that evening, spent with the two most extraordinary men of the age, had in it more of broad and familiar mirth than any I have ever wasted in the company of the youngest and noisiest disciples of the bowl and its concomitants. Even amidst all the coa.r.s.e ore of Swift's conversation, the diamond perpetually broke out; his vulgarity was never that of a vulgar mind. Pity that, while he condemned St. John's over affectation of the grace of life, he never perceived that his own affectation of coa.r.s.eness and brutality was to the full as unworthy of the simplicity of intellect;* and that the aversion to cant, which was the strongest characteristic of his mind, led him into the very faults he despised, only through a more displeasing and offensive road. That same aversion to cant is, by the way, the greatest and most prevalent enemy to the reputation of high and of strong minds; and in judging Swift's character in especial, we should always bear it in recollection. This aversion-the very antipodes to hypocrisy-leads men not only to disclaim the virtues they have, but to pretend to the vices they have not. Foolish trick of disguised vanity! the world, alas, readily believes them! Like Justice Overdo, in the garb of poor Arthur of Bradley, they may deem it a virtue to have a.s.sumed the disguise; but they must not wonder if the sham Arthur is taken for the real, beaten as a vagabond, and set in the stocks as a rogue!
* It has been said that Swift was only coa.r.s.e in his later years, and, with a curious ignorance both of fact and of character, that Pope was the cause of the Dean's grossness of taste. There is no doubt that he grew coa.r.s.er with age; but there is also no doubt that, graceful and dignified as that great genius could be when he pleased, he affected at a period earlier than the one in which he is now introduced, to be coa.r.s.e both in speech and manner. I seize upon this opportunity, mal a propos as it is, to observe that Swift's preference of Harley to St. John is by no means so certain as writers have been pleased generally to a.s.sert. Warton has already noted a pa.s.sage in one of Swift's letters to Bolingbroke, to which I will beg to call the reader's attention.
”It is you were my hero, but the other (Lord Oxford) never was; yet if he were, it was your own fault, who taught me to love him, and often vindicated him, in the beginning of your ministry, from my accusations. But I granted he had the greatest inequalities of any man alive; and his whole scene was fifty times more a what-d'ye-call-it than yours; for I declare yours was unie, and I wish you would so order it that the world may be as wise as I upon that article.”
I have to apologize for introducing this quotation, which I have done because (and I entreat the reader to remember this) I observe that Count Devereux always speaks of Lord Bolingbroke as he was spoken of by the eminent men of that day,-not as he is now rated by the judgment of posterity.-ED.
CHAPTER VIII.
LIGHTLY WON, LIGHTLY LOST.-A DIALOGUE OF EQUAL INSTRUCTION AND AMUs.e.m.e.nT.-A VISIT TO SIR G.o.dFREY KNELLER.
ONE morning Tarleton breakfasted with me. ”I don't see the little page,” said he, ”who was always in attendance in your anteroom; what the deuce has become of him?”
”You must ask his mistress; she has quarrelled with me, and withdrawn both her favour and her messenger.”
”What! the Lady Ha.s.selton quarrelled with you! Diable! Wherefore?”
”Because I am not enough of the 'pretty fellow;' am tired of carrying hood and scarf, and sitting behind her chair through five long acts of a dull play; because I disappointed her in not searching for her at every drum and quadrille party; because I admired not her monkey; and because I broke a teapot with a toad for a cover.”
”And is not that enough?” cried Tarleton. ”Heavens! what a black bead-roll of offences; Mrs. Merton would have discarded me for one of them. However, thy account has removed my surprise; I heard her praise thee the other day; now, as long as she loved thee, she always abused thee like a pickpocket.”
”Ha! ha! ha!-and what said she in my favour?”
”Why, that you were certainly very handsome, though you were small; that you were certainly a great genius, though every one would not discover it; and that you certainly had the air of high birth, though you were not nearly so well dressed as Beau Tippetly. But entre nous, Devereux, I think she hates you, and would play you a trick of spite-revenge is too strong a word-if she could find an opportunity.”
”Likely enough, Tarleton; but a coquette's lover is always on his guard; so she will not take me unawares.”
”So be it. But tell me, Devereux, who is to be your next mistress, Mrs. Denton or Lady Clancathcart? the world gives them both to you.”
”The world is always as generous with what is worthless as the bishop in the fable was with his blessing. However, I promise thee, Tarleton, that I will not interfere with thy claims either upon Mrs. Denton or Lady Clancathcart.”
”Nay,” said Tarleton, ”I will own that you are a very Scipio; but it must be confessed, even by you, satirist as you are, that Lady Clancathcart has a beautiful set of features.”
”A handsome face, but so vilely made. She would make a splendid picture if, like the G.o.ddess Laverna, she could be painted as a head without a body.”
”Ha! ha! ha!-you have a bitter tongue, Count; but Mrs. Denton, what have you to say against her?”
”Nothing; she has no pretensions for me to contradict. She has a green eye and a sharp voice; a mincing gait and a broad foot. What friend of Mrs. Denton would not, therefore, counsel her to a prudent obscurity?”
”She never had but one lover in the world,” said Tarleton, ”who was old, blind, lame, and poor; she accepted him, and became Mrs. Denton.”
”Yes,” said I, ”she was like the magnet, and received her name from the very first person* sensible of her attraction.”
*Magnes.
”Well, you have a shrewd way of saying sweet things,” said Tarleton; ”but I must own that you rarely or never direct it towards women individually. What makes you break through your ordinary custom?”
”Because I am angry with women collectively; and must pour my spleen through whatever channel presents itself.”
”Astonis.h.i.+ng,” said Tarleton; ”I despise women myself. I always did; but you were their most enthusiastic and chivalrous defender a month or two ago. What makes thee change, my Sir Amadis?”
”Disappointment! they weary, vex, disgust me; selfish, frivolous, mean, heartless: out on them! 'tis a disgrace to have their love!”
”O Ciel! What a sensation the news of thy misogyny will cause; the young, gay, rich Count Devereux, whose wit, vivacity, splendour of appearance, in equipage and dress, in the course of one season have thrown all the most established beaux and pretty fellows into the shade; to whom dedications and odes and billet-doux are so much waste paper; who has carried off the most general envy and dislike that any man ever was blest with, since St. John turned politician; what! thou all of a sudden to become a railer against the divine s.e.x that made thee what thou art! Fly, fly, unhappy apostate, or expect the fate of Orpheus, at least!”
”None of your raileries, Tarleton, or I shall speak to you of plebeians and the canaille!”
”Sacre! my teeth are on edge already! Oh, the base, base canaille, how I loathe them! Nay, Devereux, joking apart, I love you twice as well for your humour. I despise the s.e.x heartily. Indeed, sub rosa be it spoken, there are few things that breathe that I do not despise. Human nature seems to me a most pitiful bundle of rags and sc.r.a.ps, which the G.o.ds threw out of Heaven, as the dust and rubbish there.”
”A pleasant view of thy species,” said I.
”By my soul it is. Contempt is to me a luxury. I would not lose the privilege of loathing for all the objects which fools ever admired. What does old Persius say on the subject?
”'Hoc ridere meum, tam nil, nulla tibi vendo Iliade.'”*
* ”This privilege of mine, to laugh,-such a nothing as it seems,-I would not barter to thee for an Iliad.”
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