1860.]

Madeira and Music.

MR. FALCONER.

611

There is this difference, that though both audiences may be equally amused, the Athenians felt they had something to be proud of in the poet, which our audiences can scarcely feel, as far as novelties are concerned. And as to the atrocious outrages on taste and feeling perpetrated under the name of burlesques, I should be astonished if even those who laugh at them could look back on their amusement with any other feeling than that of being most heartily ashamed of the author, the theatre, and themselves.

When the dinner was over, and a bottle of claret had been placed by the side of the Doctor, and a bottle of Madeira by the side of his host, the latter, who had not been sparing during dinner of his favourite beverage, which had been to him for some days, like ale to the Captain and his friends in Beaumont

and Fletcher, almost 'his eating and his drinking solely,' the Doctor said, 'I am glad to perceive that you keep up your practice of having a good dinner; though I am at the same time sorry to see that you have not done your old justice to it.'

MR. FALCONER.

A great philosopher had seven friends, one of whom dined with him in succession on each day of the week. He directed, amongst his last dispositions, that during six months after his death the establishment of his house should be kept on the same footing, and that a dinner should be daily provided for himself and his single guest of the day, who was to be entreated to dine there in memory of him, with one of his executors (both philosophers) to represent him in doing the honours of the table alternately.

THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.

I am happy to see that the honours of your table are done by yourself, and not by an executor, administrator, or assign. The honours are done admirably, but the old justice on your side is wanting. I do not, however, clearly see what the feralis cœna of guest and executor has to do with the dinner of two living men.

MR. FALCONER.

Ah, Doctor, you should say one living man and a ghost. I am only the ghost of myself. I do the honours of my departed conviviality.

THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.

I thought something was wrong; but whatever it may be, take Horace's advice-'Alleviate every ill with wine and song, the sweet consolations of deforming anxiety.'t

MR. FALCONER.

I do, Doctor. Madeira, and the music of the Seven Sisters, are my consolations, and great ones; but they do not go down to the hidden care that gnaws at the deepest fibres of the heart, like Ratatosk at the roots of the Ash of Ygdrasil.

THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.

In the Scandinavian mythology: one of the most poetical of all mythologies. I have a great respect for Odin and Thor. Their adven

* Ale is their eating and their drinking solely.

Scornful Lady, Act iv. Scene ii.

Illic omne malum vino cantuque levato,
Deformis ægrimoniæ dulcibus alloquiis.

Epod. 13.

tures have always delighted me; and the system was admirably adapted to foster the high spirit of a military people. Lucan has a fine passage on the subject.*

The Doctor repeated the passage of Lucan with great emphasis. This was not what Mr. Falconer wanted. He had wished that the Doctor should inquire into the cause of his trouble; but indepenIdently of the Doctor's determination to ask no questions, and to let his young friend originate his own disclosures, his unlucky metaphor had carried the Doctor into one of his old fields, and if it had not been that he awaited the confidence, which he felt sure his host

would spontaneously repose in him, the Scandinavian mythology would have formed his subject for the evening. He paused, therefore, and went on quietly sipping his claret.

Mr. Falconer could restrain himself no longer, and without preface or note of preparation, he communicated to the Doctor all that had passed between Miss Gryll and himself, not omitting a single word of the passages of Bojardo, which were indelibly impressed on his

memory.

THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.

I cannot see what there is to afflict you in all this. You are in love with Miss Gryll. She is disposed to receive you favourably. What more would you wish in that quarter?

MR. FALCONER.

No more in that quarter, but the seven sisters are as sisters to me. If I had seven real sisters, the relationship would subsist, and marriage would not interfere with it; but, be a woman as amiable, as liberal, as indulgent, as confiding as she may, she could not treat the unreal, as she would the real tie.

THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.

I admit it is not to be expected. Still there is one way out of the difficulty. And that is by seeing all the seven happily married.

MR. FALCONER.

All the seven married! Surely that is impossible.

THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.

Not so impossible as you apprehend. The Doctor thought it a favourable opportunity to tell the story of the seven suitors, and was especially panegyrical on Harry Hedgerow, observing, that if the maxim Noscitur à sociis might be reversed, and a man's companions judged by himself, it would be a sufficient recommendation of the other six; whom, moreover, the result of his inquiries had given him ample reason to think well of. Mr. Falconer received with pleasure at Christmas, a communication which, at the midsummer preceding, would have given him infinite pain. It

struck him all at once, that, as he had dined so ill, he would have some partridges for supper, his larder being always well stocked with game; and when they were presented, after the usual music in the drawing-room, the Doctor, though he had dined well, considered himself bound in courtesy to assist in their disposal; when recollecting how he had wound up the night of the ball, he volunteered to brew a bowl of punch, over which they sate till a late hour, discoursing of many things, but chiefly of Morgana.

* Pharsalia, 1. i. vv. 458–462.

613

HUNTING AND HUNTERS.*

Now there is nothing gives a man such spirits,
Leavening his blood as cayenne doth a curry,
As going at full speed-no matter where its

Direction be, so 't is but in a hurry,
And merely for the sake of its own merits:

For the less cause there is for all this flurry,
The greater is the pleasure in arriving
At the great end of hunting-which is, riding.

* Reminiscences of the late Thomas Assheton Smith, Esquire; or, The Pursuits of an English Country Gentleman. By Sir John E. Eardley-Wilmot, Bart. Second Edition. London: John Murray. 1860.

not make hunting the great object of life; if he does, he is either as much a child in mind as his little boy who rides a cockhorse; or else

he is a little crazy, and hunting is his mania.

Of the accomplished Don Juan, his biographer, Byron, says :

Yet I must own-although in this I yield
To patriot sympathy a Briton's blushes-
He thought at heart, like courtly Chesterfield;
Who after a long chase o'er hills, dales, bushes,
And what not, though he rode beyond all price,
Ask'd next day if men ever hunted twice?

Mr. Smith, however, hunted six days in the week, and cut off one thousand five hundred foxes' tails with the same knife. And on this point of continual hunting turns a controversy concerning Mr. Smith. The writer in the Times asks, ought a man of large property and large responsibilities, and abundantly able to take his part in the serious business of life, ought such a man to live for fox-hunting? Sir John E. Eardley-Wilmot has published the Reminiscences to controvert the statement that Mr. Smith lived for fox-hunting. That Mr. Smith rode his hobby rather hard, Sir John will scarcely deny. Sir John says, "We see Mr. Smith, year after year, following the same pursuit, in the highest degree animating, but having no great degree of novelty or variety to recommend it, with unabating ardour and almost increasing zest.' This enthusiasm, Sir

John thinks in Mr. Smith's favour. Sir John thinks that the reason we have so few great men in the Senate, the forum, or the camp, is, there is no enthusiasm. An ardent or enthusiastic man is held out as a madman; and yet that it might be said of Tom Smith, as it was of the heroic admiral, 'I wish I had five hundred men as mad as he,'-that is to say, five hundred squires, each hunting six days a week, or three thousand hunts a week! No doubt it is well to have enthusiastic men in all departments of human pursuits, by no means excluding amusements; of which Sir Joshua Reynolds goes so far as to declare that the great and ultimate end of all the employments of mankind is to produce amusement. By all means let us have Taglioni for dancing, Grisi for singing, Grimaldi for pantomime, Day for racing, and Tom

Smith for hunting, all these take their place in the Temple of Fame for what they are worth, but no more. If a gentleman is very 'enthusiastic' about turning, or drumming, or knife-grinding, or hunting, the world is apt to translate enthusiasm' intomania,' as Sir William Miles does; speaking of Mr. Assheton Smith, he says, ‘if hunting had not been his mania, he would, I think, have succeeded in anything he undertook.' People exclusively devoted to books have been termed bibliomaniacs; those passionately addicted to hunting may fairly be called hippomaniacs.

The advantages of hunting, beyond being a healthy, animating amusement, are that it acts as a corrective to lazy, luxurious habits, though riding without the fox would do that: it demands some degree of hardihood, nerve, and even intrepidity, to risk life and limb. It maintains the influence of the upper ranks-that is, the rich-over that class of the community who are fond of horses, not always the most reputable; it tends in some degree to improve the breed of a particular description of horse, and old hunters make very useful carriage-horses for medical men. It brings the 'many' into contact with the hunting portion of the upper ten thousand.' This is good for both parties. It maintains the influence of the upper class, and is especially charming to those who have no other opportunity of mixing on terms of temporary equality with the hunting aristocracy. I rode out with the king (George III.) to-day, and his Majesty spoke to me,' said a cockney. Aye, indeed!' replied his envious friend, 'did he, though! What did he say?' 'Say! Oh, say!

Different Species of Fox-hunters.