"so com'è inconstanta e vaga E qual è 'l mel temprato con l'assenzio." 1 All these things are so beautiful in Italian! but I need not have borrowed a syllable from Petrarch, for shapes of shadowy beauty, smiles of cherished loveliness, glances of reviving lustre, are coming in the mist of memory around me. I am writing "an ower true tale!" I never fell seriously in love till I was seventeen. Long before that period I had learned to talk nonsense and tell lies, and had established the important points that a delicate figure is equivalent to a thousand pounds, a pretty mouth better than the Bank of England, and a pair of bright eyes worth all Mexico. But at seventeen a more intricate branch of study awaited me. I was lounging away my June at a pretty village in Kent, with little occupation beyond my own meditations, and no company but my horse and dogs. My sisters were both in the south of France, and my uncle, at whose seat I had pitched my camp, was attending to the interests of his constituents and the wishes of his patron in parliament. I began, after the lapse of a week, to be immensely bored; I felt a considerable dislike of an agricultural life, and an incipient inclination for laudanum. I took to playing backgammon with the rector. He was more than match for me, and used to grow most unclerically hot when the dice, as was their duty, befriended the weaker side. At last, at the conclusion of a very long hit, which had kept Mrs. Penn's tea waiting full an hour, my worthy and wigged friend flung deuce-ace three times in succession, put the board in the fire, overturned Mrs. Penn's best china, and hurried to his study to compose a sermon on patience. Then I took up reading. My uncle had a delightful library where a reasonable man might have lived and died. But I confess I never could endure a long hour of lonely reading. It is a very pretty thing to take down a volume of Tasso or Racine, and study accent and cadence 1 The following is a translation of these lines:- And lovers' ways-their sighs, their songs, I know, Their broken words and sudden silences. I know the short-lived smile, the long laments- for the benefit of half-a-dozen listening belles, At last I was roused from a state of most Persian torpor by a note from an old lady, whose hall, for so an indifferent country-house was by courtesy denominated, stood at the distance of a few miles. She was about to give a ball. Such a thing had not been seen for ten years within ten miles of us. From the sensation produced by the intimation you might have deemed the world at an end. Prayers and entreaties were offered up to all the guardians and all the milliners; and the old gentlemen rose in a passion and the old lace rose in price. Everything was everywhere in a flurry; kitchen, and parlour, and boudoir, and garret-Babel all! Ackermann's Fashionable Repository, the Ladies' Magazine, the New Pocket-book, all these, and all other publications whose frontispieces presented the "fashions for 1817," personified in a thin lady with kid gloves and a formidable obliquity of vision, were in earnest and immediate requisition. Needles and pins were flying right and left; dinner was ill-dressed that dancers might be well-dressed; mutton was marred that misses might be married. There was not a school-boy who did not cut Homer and capers; nor a boarding-school beauty who did not try on a score of dancing-shoes, and talk for a fortnight of Angiolini. Every occupation was laid down, every carpet was taken up; every combination of hands-a-cross and down the middle was committed most laudably to memory; and nothing was talked, nothing was meditated, nothing was dreamed, but love and romance, fiddles and flirtation, warm negus and handsome partners, dyed | In all the pride and condescension of an "Come one, come all, Come dance in Sir Roger's great hall." And thus, by dint of civility, indolence, quotation, and antithesis, I bent up each corporal agent to the terrible feat, and "would have the honour of waiting upon her ladyship," -in due form. in, 125 -never saw such a—there, Vyvyan, look there! I will introduce you.' And so saying my companion half limped, half danced with me up to Miss Amelia Mesnil and presented me in due form. When I look back to any particular scene of of second-rate characters. I never think of my existence, I can never keep the stage clear Mr. Kean's Othello without an intrusive reflection upon the subject of Mr. Cooper's Cassio; I never call to mind a gorgeous scattering forth of roses from Mr. Canning, without a painful idea of some contemporary effusion of poppies from Mr. Hume. And thus, beautiful Margaret, it is in vain that I endeavour to separate your fascination from the group which was collected around you. Perhaps that dominion, which at this moment I feel almost revived, the forms and figures of all by whom it was recurs more vividly to my imagination when contested are associated in its renewal. First comes Amelia the magnificent, the acknowledged belle of the country, very stiff and very dumb in her unheeded and uncontested of fox-hunters, Augusta, enumerating the supremacy; and next, the most black-browed imitated them; and then the most accomplished names of her father's stud, and dancing as if she Jane, vowing that for the last month she had Olivia prodigiously fade, that her cousin Sophy endured immense ennui, that she thinks Lady is quite brillante to-night, and that Mr. Peters plays the violin à merveille. bored! the light is bad and the music abomin"I am bored, my dear Villars-positively able; there is no spring in the boards and less in the conversation; it is a lovely moonlight night, and there is nothing worth looking at in the room." garet?" said one. I went: turned my uncle's one-horse chaise into the long old avenue about an hour after the time specified, and perceived by the lights flashing from all the windows and the crash of chairs and carriages returning from the door, that the room was most punctually full and the performers most pastorally impatient. The first face I encountered on my entrance was that of my old friend Villars; I was delighted to meet him, and expressed my astonishment at finding him in a situation for which his inclination, three or four people, and was moving off. I shook hands with my friend, bowed to one would have supposed, was so little adapted. I passed to the door I met two ladies in conAs "By Mercury," he exclaimed, "I am meta-versation; "Don't you dance any more, Marmorphosed, fairly metamorphosed, my good Vyvyan; I have been detained here three months by a fall from Sir Peter, and have amused myself most indefatigably by humming tunes and reading newspapers, winding silk and guessing conundrums. I have made myself the admiration, the adoration, the very worship of all the coteries in the place; am reckoned very clever at cross-purposes, and very apt at 'what's my thought like!' The 'squires have discovered I can carve, and the matrons hold me indispensable at loo. Come! I am of little service to-night, but my popularity may be of use to you; you don't know a soul!-I thought no-read it in your face the moment you came "I am bored, my dear Lousia-positively bored; the look of a ten years' acquaintance and com- "Are you not very impertinent?" "Very; but you are very handsome. Nay: you are not to be angry; it was a fair challenge and fairly received." "And you will not even ask my pardon?" "No! it is out of my way! I never do those things; it would embarrass me beyond measure. Pray let us accomplish an introduction; not altogether a usual one; but that matters little. Vyvyan Joyeuse—rather impertinent and very fortunate at your service.' "Margaret Orleans-very handsome and rather foolish-at your service!" Margaret danced like an angel. I knew she would. I could not conceive by what blindness I had passed four hours without being struck. We talked of all things that are, and a few beside. She was something of a botanist, so we began with flowers; a digression upon China roses carried us to China-the mandarins with little brains, and the ladies with little feet-the emperor-the Orphan of China-VoltaireZayre-criticism-Dr. Johnson-the great bear the system of Copernicus-stars-ribbons-garters-the order of the Bath-seabathing-Dawlish-Sidmouth - Lord Sid mouth-Cicero-Rome-Italy-Alfieri-Metastasio-fountains-groves-gardens-and so, as the dancing concluded, we contrived to end as we began, with Margaret Orleans and botany. Margaret talked well on all subjects and wittily on many. I had expected to find nothing but a romping girl, somewhat amusing and very vain. But I was out of my latitude in the first five minutes, and out of my senses in the next. She left the room very early and I drove home, more astonished than I had been for many years. Several weeks passed away, and I was about to leave England to join my sisters on the Continent. I determined to look once more on that enslaving smile, whose recollection had haunted me more than once. I had ascertained that she resided with an old lady who took two pupils, and taught French and Italian, and music and manners, at an establishment called Vine House. Two days before I left the country I had been till a late hour shooting at a mark with a duelling pistol, an entertainment of which, perhaps from a lurking presentiment, I was very fond. I was returning alone when I perceived, by the light of an enormous lamp, a board by the wayside bearing the welcome inscription, "Vine House." Enough! I exclaimed, "enough! one more scene before the curtain drops,-Romeo and Juliet by lamplight!"-I roamed about the dwelling place of all I held dear, till I saw a figure at one of the windows in the back of the And thy dark eye's remembered ray And thy young forehead's clear expanse, Are far too warm, and far too fair, To mix with aught of earthly care, But the vision shall come when my day is done, And if the many boldly gaze On that bright brow of thine, On countless coxcombs shine, I heed not this, ye are fickle things, I gaze, and if thousands share the bliss In sooth I am a wayward youth, And very apt to speak the truth, I am no lover, yet, as long An image, sweet, of thee "Are they your own verses?" said my idol at the window. And "They are yours, Margaret! I was only the versifier; you were the muse herself." "The muse herself is obliged to you. now what is your errand? for it grows late, and you must be sensible-no, that you never will be-but you must be aware that this is very indecorous." "I am come to see you, dear Margaret;which I cannot without candles;-to see you, and to tell you that it is impossible I can forget""Bless me! what a memory you have. you must take another opportunity for your tale! for " But "Alas! I leave England immediately!" "A pleasant voyage to you! there, not a word more: I must run down to coffee." "Now may I never laugh more," I said, "if I am baffled thus;" so I strolled back to the front of the house and proceeded to reconnoitre. A bay-window was half open, and in a small, neat drawing-room I perceived a group assembled:-an old lady, with a high muslin cap and red ribbons, was pouring out the coffee; -her nephew, a tall, awkward young gentleman, sitting on one chair and resting his legs on another, was occupied in the study of Sir Charles Grandison;-and my fair Margaret was leaning on a sofa and laughing immoderately. "Indeed, miss," said the matron, "you should learn to govern your mirth; people will think you came out of Bedlam." I lifted the window gently, and stepped into the room. "Bedlam, madam!" quoth I, "I bring intelligence from Bedlam, I arrived last week.' The tall awkward young gentleman stared: and the aunt half said, half shrieked,-"What in the name of wonder are you?" "Mad, madam! very particularly mad! mad as a hare in March, or a Cheapside blood on Sunday morning. Look at me! do I not foam' listen to me! do I not rave?-Coffee, my dear madam, coffee; there is no animal so thirsty as your madman in the dog-days." "Eh! really!" said the tall awkward young gentleman. him," she said when she recovered. "I wish you had shot him: he is a sad fool.' "Do not talk of him; I am speaking to you, beautiful Margaret, possibly for the last time! Will you ever think of me? perhaps you will. But let me receive from you some token that I may dote upon in other years; something that may be a hope to me in my happiness, and a consolation in calamity. Something--nay! I never could talk romance; but give me one lock of your hair, and I will leave England with resignation." "You have earned it like a true knight," said Margaret; and she severed from her head a long glossy ringlet. "Look," she continued; "you must to horse, the country has risen for your apprehension.' I turned towards the window. The country had indeed risen. Nothing was to be seen but gossoons in the van, and gossips in the rear, red faces and white jackets, gallants in smock frocks, and gay damsels in grogram. Bludgeons were waving, and torches were flashing, as far as the gaze could reach. All the chivalry of the "My good sir," I began;-but my original insanity began to fail me, and I drew forth-place was arming and chafing, and loading for with upon Ossian's,-"Fly! receive the wind a volley of pebbles and oaths together. and fly; the blasts are in the hollow of my hand, the course of the storm is mine!" I kneeled down and kissed her hand. It was the happiest moment of my life! "Now," "Eh! really!" said the tall awkward young said I, "au revoir, my sweet Margaret," and gentleman. "I look on the nations and they vanish: my nostrils pour the blast of death: I come abroad on the winds: the tempest is before my face; but my dwelling is calm, above the clouds; the fields of my rest are pleasant." "Do you mean to insult us?" said the old lady. "Ay! do you mean to insult my aunt really!" said the tall awkward young gentle man. "I shall call in my servants," said the old lady. "I am the humblest of them," said I, bowing. "I shall teach you a different tune," said the tall awkward young gentleman, "really!" "Very well, my dear sir; my instrument is the barrel-organ;" and I cocked my sweet little pocket companion in his face. "Vanish, little Kastril; for by Hannibal, Heliogabalus, and Holophernes! time is valuable; madness is precipitate, and hair-triggers are the word: vanish!" "Eh! really!" said the tall awkward young gentleman, and performed an entrechat which carried him to the door: the old lady had disappeared at the first note of the barrel-organ. I locked the door, and found Margaret in a paroxysm of laughter. "I wish you had shot in a moment I was in the lane. "Gentlemen, be pleased to fall back!farther yet,-a few paces farther! Stalwart Kern, in buckskin, be pleased to lay down your cat-o'-nine-tails!-Old knight of the plush jerkin, ground your poker!-So, fair damsel with the pitchfork, you are too pretty for so rude an encounter!-Most miraculous Magog, with the sledge-hammer, flit!-Sooty Cupid, with the link, light me from Paphos.-Ha! tall friend of the barrel-organ, have you turned staff-officer? Etna and Vesuvius!-wild fire and wit!-blunderbusses and steam!-fly. Ha! have I not burgundy in my brain, murder in my plot, and a whole train of artillery in my coat-pocket." Right and left the ranks opened for my egress, and in a few minutes I was alone on the road, and whistling "lillibullero." This was my first folly. I looked at the lock of hair often, but I never saw Margaret again. She has become the wife of a young clergyman, and resides with him on a small living in Staffordshire. I believe she is very happy, and I have forgotten the colour of her eyes. WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED.1 1 From Knight's Quarterly Magazine. KATHARINE AND BAPTISTA. Bap. What, in my sight? Bianca, get thee in. [Exit Bianca. Kath. What, will you not suffer me? Nay, now I see She is your treasure, she must have a husband; [Of all Shakspeare's comedies, that of the Taming of I must dance bare-foot on her wedding-day the Shrew is most frequently presented on the stage. It is a favourite with players and playgoers because of its humour, and the diversity of moods in which the heroine appears. The heroine "Katharine the curst! A title for a maid of all titles the worst," is, after all, mischievous rather than vicious; but her spirit of mischief and fits of passion earn for her the reputation of being "an irksome, brawling scold," "a shrew," "a wild cat," and she is as famous for a scolding tongue as is her sister, Bianca, for beauteous modesty. The father, Baptista Minola, distressed by the ill condition of his elder daughter, resolves that until she has found a husband, his youngest shall not wed, although many suitors seek her. He thereupon offers Katharine to either of two friends who may be bold enough to win her. Katharine, vexed by this indignity, as she deems her father's anxiety to dispose of her, and somewhat envious of her sister's favour, torments the meek Bianca to confess which of the suitors has won her heart. She ties her hands, and endeavours to compel her to reveal the lover's name. Bian. Good sister, wrong me not, nor wrong yourself, Kath. Of all thy suitors, here I charge thee, tell Kath. Minion, thou liest. Is't not Hortensio? Bian. Is it for him you do envy me so? Enter BAPTISTA. [Strikes her. Bap. Why, how now, dame! whence grows this insolence? Bianca, stand aside. Poor girl! she weeps. For shame, thou hilding' of a devilish spirit, And for your love to her lead apes in hell." Bap. Was ever gentleman thus grieved as I? [Brit. The artist has selected the foregoing scene for illustration, and the positions of the father and daughters are admirably suggestive of their different characters.] THE TAMING OF THE SHREW.3 [Charles Lamb, born in Crown Office Row, Temple, London, 18th February, 1775; died at Edmonton, 27th December, 1834. At the age of eight years he was placed in the school of Christ's Hospital, where Coleridge was his companion. On leaving school he obtained a situation in the India House, where he remained for thirty-six years, and then retired on a pension. Meanwhile he had earned popularity as a poet, a critic, and a humourist. His first verses were issued in 1797, in a volume which he published in conjunction with his friends Coleridge and Charles Lloyd. The first series of the famous essays of Elia appeared in the London Magazine between 1820-22; and the second series, between 182325. Although he enjoyed the privilege of frequent communion with the most gifted spirits of his age, his life was a sad one, and he describes himself as "writing a playful essay with tears trickling down his cheeks." His sister, Mary Anne Lamb, was subject to occasional attacks of insanity, and in one of these fits she destroyed the life of her mother. Charles Lamb was appointed her guardian, and he faithfully discharged the trust. His sister survived him twelve years. He had an enthusiastic love for his native city; believing that its human interests presented greater charms than any the country could offer; and all his inspiration and pleasures were drawn from its associations.] Katharine, the Shrew, was the eldest daughter of Baptista, a rich gentleman of Padua. She was a lady of such an ungovernable spirit and fiery temper, such a loud-tongued scold, that she was known in Padua by no other name than Katharine the Shrew. It seemed very unlikely, indeed impossible, that any gentleman would ever be found who would venture to marry this lady, and therefore Baptista was much blamed for deferring his consent to many excellent offers that were made to her gentle sister Bianca, putting off all Bianca's suitors with this excuse, that when the eldest sister was fairly off his hands, they should have free leave to address young Bianca. 2 A proverbial expression applied to old maids. From Lamb's Tales from Shakspeare. |