Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

TO JULIA SWINGING

WHAT gleams of white are those-now swift, now slow-
Among the avenue's cool shadows yonder?
A cloud of butterflies, that to and fro

Delight to wander ?

The interweaving boughs are thick with leaves,
Whose screen all closer observation fences;
And every fleeting glimpse the more deceives
My puzzled senses.

Is it some rare bird flitting through the trees-
An angel o'er the earth its bright course winging-
A merry fay? 'Tis all, yet none of these:
'Tis Julia swinging!

O, sweet coquette! the swing's a fitting type

Of those coy arts and wanton wiles that won me; For now you fly to me, in beauty ripe,

And now you shun me.

Ah, why thus torture me with fleeting charms,
That set my heart tumultuously beating-
Advancing thus almost into my arms,
And then retreating?

You seem to rush to me-O maddening bliss!-
As if to mingle into one our two souls;
And after all but offer me to kiss

Your tiny shoe-soles.

Now flinging all your beauty at me, now
Withdrawing it as quickly, you but fool me;
Just as your white robe, fluttering, fans my brow,
But doesn't cool me.

Of earth am I, alas, and you're of sky;

I feel it while you fly so far above me. When I so lowly am, and you're so high, How can you love me?

But, after all, where is your need of swings?

First give me that white rosebud as a relic, And then renounce the cheat, reveal your wings, And be angelic!

TOM HOOD.

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][merged small]

THE PORTRAIT OF MR. PICKWICK

BY GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA

[ocr errors]

On the second Saturday in July 1870 there were sold at Christie's rooms in King-street a number of choice pictures, and a quantity of china and miscellaneous nicknacks, which had been the property of CHARLES DICKENS, and had adorned the houses which the great English writer successively occupied in Devonshire-terrace, in Tavistock-square, and at Gadshill. Some of these objects even might have come from his still earlier residence in Doughty-street. Among the miscellanea, and the last items in the catalogue, were a set of ladles in silver-gilt, the stems ornamented with little figures, beautifully modelled, of the principal characters in the chief comic epic of our age-The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. These curious travesties of the Apostle Spoons,' with which you meet in cabinets of medieval art, had been a gift to the successful young author from his publishers, Messrs. Chapman and Hall, at the termination of the work by which they made so much money, and he such an immensity of fame. The prices brought on the 9th of July by the sale of these droll trifles were enormous; and, in the result of the respective biddings, curiously marked the delicate gradations of affection and admiration in which the public held the various personages of the Pickwickian epopoa as effigied on the ladles. Thus, the immortal Mr. Pickwick himself bore away, as in duty bound, the bell. He was knocked down at the prodigious price of sixty-nine pounds to a perfervid Scotch gentleman, who had only barely missed acquiring, with a bid of one hundred and fifteen guineas, a stuffed raven in a glass case, which was supposed to be the original Grip' celebrated in Barnaby Rudge. The bird (which intrinsically, perhaps, was worth about three-and-sixpence) brought a hundred and twenty guineas; just five guineas more than the perfervid Scotch gentleman's desperate maximum. Sam Weller was next in favour; he produced sixty-four pounds. Next in rank was the elder Mr. Weller, who was finally appraised at fifty-one pounds; the Fat Boy and Mr. Alfred Jingle paired at thirty pounds a-piece; while the comparatively uninteresting Mr. Winkle brought only twenty-three pounds. The principles of poetic justice were surely fully vindicated in this oddest of auctions. Let me imagine a parallel, and assume that such a set of ladles had been presented by some platersque patron to Don Miguel de Cervantes of Saavedra, and had been sold, SECOND SERIES, VOL. II. F.S. VOL. XII.

M

after his death, in the Plaza Mayor, the chosen haunt of the Spanish pregoneros de almoneda. I am afraid that, in reality, the poor fellow's goods and chattels would not have fetched a dozen ducats; but the assumption will serve. How much would the Don Quixote' ladle have brought ? Say a thousand doubloons. How much Sancho Pança? Say eight hundred. And the Curate? Well, two. And the Barber? Not more than one, perchance; while so much as two hundred and fifty might have been given for dear meek Dorothea, and fifty for that most unsatisfactory heroine, the Señorita Dulcinea del Toboso, whom I look upon as the 'Miss Harris' of fiction; for may not Mrs. Gamp's friend have had a daughter who nearly brought her gray hairs with sorrow to the grave by rampaging about the Ventra de Cardenas on the back of a donkey, and ing on' with a landed proprietor in La Mancha, who was quite the gentleman, but not quite in his right mind?

carry

Wishing the perfervid Scotch gentleman all joy of his purchase, and hoping that he might never be forced to ascertain the hypothecatory or Attenborough' value of his spoon, I came home, and spent my Saturday night in re-reading Pickwick through. Yes, he was the English Don Quixote; and the inartistic but thoroughly human change which comes over his character as the story progresses is wonderfully analogous to the mutation of the Don in Cervantes' novel. That novel is professedly and avowedly a burlesque, and its intent is to turn the romances of chivalry into ridicule. The novelist designedly surrounds the sham knight with sordid and humiliating accessories. He mounts him on a sorry screw fit only for the knacker's yard. As a squire he gives him an ignorant peasant, reeking of garlic and bestriding a jackass. The adventures into which he leads the errant pair are of a nature to make us ridicule and despise them. Don Quixote tilts at windmills, defies wild-beast showmen, strives to rescue galley-slaves, makes love to unkempt wenches with bare feet, and is disgracefully hoodwinked by the Duke and Duchess. Sancho shares the misadventures of his master, and is tossed in blankets, kicked, cuffed, and made a fool of to the end of the chapter. Yet with the development of the story a surprising alteration takes place in both characters. We dare to laugh at the Don; we dare to contemn Sancho. The knight becomes a courteous, single-minded, self-denying gentleman; and in nobility of heart and spirit he takes very high rank indeed above the Duke and Duchess, who amuse themselves by hoaxing him. The squire undergoes an analogous transformation. He becomes as faithful as Achates, as prudent as Ulysses, as wise as Nestor. He is honest and sage and true; and when at last the Don dies, we weep; and when we think of honest Sancho, we say, 'God bless him!' The secret of all this is, that Humanity triumphed over Cervantes' burlesque. The man was stronger than the caricaturist. He grew to love the imaginary

« ZurückWeiter »