66 ventures in the land of the Happy BlueBottle-Flies: "At this time an elderly Fly said it was the hour for the Evening-song to be sung; and on a signal being given, all the Blue-Bottle-Flies began to buzz at once in a sumptuous and sonorous man writer has frequently attended, was also liable, out of nervousness, to contort and entangle his words in strange fashion. Thus, we have heard him speak of the imperfurities" of man, when it was quite obvious that he could not make up his mind between "imperfection" and "im-ner, the melodious and mucilaginous purities," and ended by amalgamating the sounds echoing all over the waters, and two words into one. Here we have ar- resounding across the tumultuous tops of rived at the portmanteau system pure and the transitory Titmice upon the intervensimple, and it is impossible to avoid the ing and verdant mountains, with a serene conclusion that an immense literary im- and sickly suavity only known to the truly pulse has been given to the practice by virtuous. The moon was shining slobathe writers who not only have illustrated ciously from the star-besprinkled sky, it, but in one case already mentioned, for- while her light irrigated the smooth and mulated its principles in the clearest way. shiny sides and wings and backs of the In an age where so much has to be Blue-Bottle-Flies with a peculiar and trivcrammed into a brief compass, no doubt ial splendor, while all nature cheerfully much might be said on the ground of responded to the cerulean and conspicuous economy in favor of the extension of this circumstances." "What dreadful stuff!" "oral" shorthand, a "brachylogy of some will exclaim. What delightful and which the grammarians never dreamed. unadulterated nonsense, we prefer to call It might be hard to fix the precise date at it, free from all far-fetched equivoque, and which portmanteau words were first used, needing for its comprehension no intimate or to decide to whom belongs the credit acquaintance with the latest "gag" of the of having invented them. We are in- music halls. If Mr. Lear twists words clined to think that the laureate of all into fanciful and grotesque forms, it is nonsense poets - Edward Lear was the with no malice prepense, with no ulterior initiator of the practice. "Scroobious" motive. There is hardly such a thing as and "borascible" certainly are to be found a pun from beginning to end of his books. in his first book of rhymes, and in the Since some of his critics had shown a third, when the influence of Lewis Carroll disposition to attach a symbolical meaning had doubtless begun to react upon him, to his rhymes, he published in the preface we discover an allusion to the "torrible to his third book a vehement disclaimer. zone" which is one of the most beautiful "Nonsense pure and absolute has been of portmantologisms. In calling Mr. Lear my aim throughout." And it is just for the laureate of nonsense writers, we have this reason that we are inclined to attach not scrupled to place him above Lewis such a high value to his contributions to Carroll, which will doubtless seem rank the recreative literature of the day. heresy to many of the admirers of that delightful writer. Our reason for so doing is that no nonsense is so absolutely devoid of arrière pensée as that of Mr. Lear, none so refreshingly destitute of sense or probability. Our favorite piece is the "History of the Four Little Children who went Round the World," a wonderful effort of sustained and imaginative absurdity. It does not lend itself well to quotation, for the illustrations are exceedingly comic. But two extracts will serve to defend our position: "After a time they saw some land at a distance; and when they came to it, they found it was an island made of water quite surrounded by earth. Besides that, it was bordered by evanescent isthmuses with a great gulf stream running about all over it, so that it was perfectly beautiful, and contained only a single tree, five hundred and three feet high.' Our next quotation shall be from the passage describing the children's ad 66 From The Athenæum. AN EVENING WITH CARLYLE. The University of St. Andrews, March 28, 1887. ALLOW me to comment briefly on an extract from Mr. Gilchrist's diaries which appears in your notice of Mrs. Gilchrist's life last week. The extract is as follows: 'Talking of the Leader to George Henry Lewes, Carlyle asked, 'When will those papers on Positivism come to an end?' I can assure you they are making a great impression at Oxford,' says Lewes. Ah! I never look at them, it's so much blank paper to me. I looked into Comte once; found him to be one of those men who go up in a balloon, and take a lighted candle to look at the stars.'" Now, as these words were spoken by Mr. Carlyle to Mr. Lewes in my hearing during an evening I spent at Mr. Carlyle's house in the sum- dining-room, and presently we heard Mr. mer of 1852, there must have been, I Carlyle descending from the upper rethink, some confusion in Mr. Gilchrist's gions. He gave us a cordial welcome, and memory, or at least in his entries, between sat down at a little distance on a rather his own experiences and those of others. straight-backed chair. He was dressed, Mr. Lewes had taken me to see Carlyle, so far as I recollect, in darkish clothes, and being a good deal impressed with the wore a deep black stock, and a dark-green pleasant time I spent there, I still have a tail-coat with a velvet collar. On such a vivid recollection of what occurred. In- day it was impossible to avoid the weather, deed, I have related the main points of the and that was the first subject discussed. conversation to my literary friends and Carlyle explained, with a good deal of acquaintances for more than thirty years, humorous detail and emphasis, the efforts and in this way, although I have never he had been making all day to escape the published any account of the visit, most of downpour of sultry light and heat-how the points of the conversation have be- he had sought shelter in various back come pretty well known. As one of those rooms, striving to secure some nook or points has now been published in a volume corner of deep shadow in comparative of recollections it is, perhaps, well that I coolness. His sardonic summary of the should at length formally place the narra- result indicated that the effort had proved tive on record. a failure. He then went on to speak gen Being in London during July, 1852, Ierally of the peculiar heat of London and determined to fulfil an old promise and the suburbs in the later summer months. look up Mr. Lewes, whose acquaintance I He said that when he first came to town had made in Edinburgh some time before he thought the habit of going away in on the occasion of his lecturing there at August, so common with the Londoners, the Philosophical Institution. I cannot at was a mere superstition which he, as a the moment give the exact date of my man of independent judgment and charvisit, but it was on a Monday of such acter, ought to resist. Accordingly one exceptional summer heat that it was known August he determined to remain in Lonfor some time after as the hot Monday of don, while his friends decamped to the July in that year. It would be about the country, the Continent, and the seaside. middle, or early in the second half of the At first, he said, the days, though warm, month, I fancy. In the afternoon of this were tolerable enough, the nights being sultry day I started for Bedford Gardens, fairly cool and refreshing. But as the and found Mr. Lewes at home, busy at his month went on the sultry air seemed to desk, writing notices for the Leader in his thicken and consolidate itself. A dense shirt-sleeves. Having denounced the se- mass of breathless, heated, arid mist covverity of the weather in gay and lively ered the face of the heavens. There terms, he pressed me to remain to dinner, were no cool grey clouds in the morning, suggesting that if I did we might walk no breath of refreshing air or dew at night, over to Chelsea in the cool of the evening, but the same exhausted, oven-like, stifling and pay a visit to Carlyle. I accordingly atmosphere night and day remained, and between seven and eight like Tophet," said the sage, "than anyo'clock we started on our evening walk. thing I had ever felt or imagined." "Ah!" Crossing the High Street, Kensington, a replied Lewes, lightly waving his hand little beyond the church, we struck into towards his friend, "Ah, my dear fellow, Young Street, where Lewes pointed out to you'll know more about that by-and-by.' me a house with bow windows in which The contrast between the two men at the Thackeray then lived. This led to his moment was striking enough. Lewes with giving me various recent illustrations of his light badinage was lounging back in Thackeray's skill, humor, and dexterity as an easy chair, his frock coat thrown open, a draughtsman. These were in the main and revealing the greater amplitude of admirable pencil sketches of Lewes him- shirt front from the fact that he had no self, of Mrs. Lewes, and other common waistcoat; Carlyle sitting straight up on friends, hit off by the observant Titmarsh his chair, with his deep stock and high amidst the music and talk of social even- waistcoat, absorbed in the vivid realizaing parties. Arrived at Cheyne Row we tion of the past, and with the set, almost found Mr. Carlyle at home, while Mrs. rigid air of reflective intensity and selfCarlyle, who was not in at the time, was centred strength. expected to return soon. We were shown into a comfortable room on the ground floor, which I suppose must have been the "It was more The talk then passed to the Leader, and Carlyle bitterly denounced the local newsman as well illustrating the great feature of the age in not doing, or doing in a shambling and inefficient way, the special duty he undertook to perform. He said he never folded the paper properly, or even decently, so that it could be comfortably read. "Every Saturday," groaned the sage, "I have the trouble of refolding the paper, with all the discomfort and irritation of delay from being compelled to do for myself what this wretched impostor ought to have done to my hand." He objurgated the little local man as no better than a simulacrum and charlatan like so many of his nominal superiors. He then turned on Lewes, and said rather abruptly, "Are those papers on Comte nearly come to an end?" Lewes replied that the series was not yet completed. "Ah!" said Carlyle, "in the mean time they are so much lost space to me. I generally look through most of the Leader, but I never read a line of those papers. Do you think anybody reads them? On this Lewes bridled up a little, and replied in decisive tones, "Oh, yes, they are exciting great interest in the English universities, and especially at Oxford. I have letters from Oxford that show they are attracting a good deal of attention there." "Ah!" retorted Carlyle, "I looked into Comte some years ago, and soon found he was one of those creatures that bind the universe up into bundles, and set them all in a row like stooks in a field-one of those fellows who go up in a balloon with a lantern to examine the stars. I was soon done with him." The theatre was then referred to, Carlyle having recently been taken by his friends to see "Faust" acted by a German | company. Lewes was anxious to know the result and questioned his friend on the subject. In reply Carlyle spoke well of the Mephistopheles, which he thought represented with dramatic skill and finish, and he was, if I remember, fairly satisfied with Faust, but he did not care for the play as a whole, intimating that it was unfit for acting, and could never be successfully rendered on the stage. Carlyle then referred to Dickens as an actor, having recently seen him in one of his amateur performances. He gave it as his opinion that Dickens's genius was essentially histrionic and mimetic; that with his faculty of keen and minute observation, his general alertness of mind and body, his mobile power of gesture and expression, he had all the requisites of a successful actor; and that had he lived at a great period of the drama, in the Elizabethan age for instance, his genius would have found its appropriate outlet on the stage. He would have become a popular comic actor, writing a humorous piece now and then perhaps, as was the custom of such actors in those days. But while living under different conditions and working with his pen, his books still retained and revealed the native genius of their author. They had the sustained, if rather jerky liveliness, the pleasant tricks and mannerisms of humorous portraiture on the stage. He was in short a born actor. After some further conversation Mr. Lewes referred to Helps's "Conquerors of the New World and their Bondsmen, a new edition of which had recently appeared. He spoke highly of the work. Carlyle agreed in the main, but with exceptions and limitations of his own. objected that Helps had not evinced sufficient mastery over his materials. He was too concerned to show the extent and variety of his researches, and had thus introduced into the text a good deal that ought to have been shovelled over into the universal dustbin. He Mrs. Carlyle then came in and welcomed us in a bright and cheery way. She provided us at once with cooling drinks, lemonade, soda water, and stronger elements for those who cared for them. I sat for a short time on the sofa with Mrs. Carlyle, and found her chatty and pleasant, though rather incisive in speech and manner. Presently, through a spontaneous change, Mr. Lewes engaged Mrs. Carlyle in conversation, while Mr. Carlyle came over and joined me. He inquired in the kindest manner after Sir William_Hamilton, whose assistant I then was. He gave me some interesting recollections of his intercourse with Sir William during the time he lived in Edinburgh, recalling the finished courtesy and dignity of his manner, his wide reading and solid erudition. He mentioned that in those days Sir William lived in rooms in a back street near the Register House, and added that, whenever he passed his windows at night, however late, his light was always burning, and that he believed he regularly spent the greater part of every night amongst his books. I remember the strong impression made on my mind by the interview was that Mr. Carlyle's conversation was very like his books, and much of it as good as almost anything I had ever read in them. The new impression derived from the slight personal intercourse was of his real kindness of heart, the deep latent sympathy of his nature. There was a peculiar gentleness in his tone, an accent of deep and sincere feeling in his |ical strife, in which all the lowest elements, On taking our leave Mr. Carlyle proposed to stroll out and go with us part of the way. As I was a stranger, he and Mr. Lewes kindly walked with me to Sloane Street, and saw me into an omnibus there. On the way some reference was made to politics. In order to understand what follows it must be remembered that the first Derby ministry had recently been formed, and that Disraeli had become a member of the government for the first time. In reference to this I remember that Carlyle, waving his arm toward Westminster, said that we had now a weltering chaos of parties, a reeking cauldron of anarchical polit These are the salient points of the evening's experience as they live in my memory, and, as I have said, they have often been repeated to my friends and acquaintances. It is by no means improbable, indeed, that I may have repeated them to Mr. Gilchrist himself, as I had the pleasure of spending an evening with him a year or two later at the house of the late Mr. Erasmus Darwin. During the even. ing I had some conversation with Mr. Gilchrist, and if we touched on Carlyle (which I do not remember) I must almost certainly have told him my story, as I naturally liked to add my small contribution to the discussion of the great subject. THOS. S. BAYNES. DE SENECTUTE. To most people there is | dowed with a good appetite, and a tranquil, something peculiarly fascinating in a descrip- cheerful disposition. One centenarian collier tion of the habits and constitution of persons had always drunk as much as he could, and who have lived to extreme old age; even if the expressed his intention of continuing this reader is not possessed by a secret hope that habit, but all the others were stated either to he may rival them in vitality, his imagination have been moderate or very moderate in the is stimulated by the history of men and women indulgence of this taste or to have been total who were born in the last quarter of the abstainers. The majority also did not take eighteenth century, living on to witness the tobacco in any form, but one chewed the drug, achievements, to share the sorrows, and, in and seven, of whom four were women, smoked their own persons, to afford matter for the a great deal. Perhaps the most interesting scientific speculations of the last quarter of fact which has come out of the analysis of the nineteenth century. The series of fifty- these cases is that, though centenarians, as a two cases of reputed centenarians got together rule, have not suffered much from illness by the Collective Investigation Committee has during their long lives, yet a considerable been analyzed by Professor Humphry, of Cam- number of instances were met with where even bridge, who is able to state positively that, in severe illnesses had been recovered from at an eleven cases, two males and nine females, the advanced age. Indeed, some of these old evidence left no doubt that these old people people seem to take a new lease of life, as the were really centenarians. In the large majority saying is, after passing fourscore years, and are of the cases the evidence was not conclusive, not only able to resist fresh attacks of acute but there can at least be no doubt that all had disease, but even apparently to throw off some attained to a very great age. Swift, in his of the effects of chronic maladies from which "Voyage to Laputa," has given a description they had been previously suffering. It is inof extreme old age so appalling, and yet so teresting to note that women are in a decided nearly in accordance with every-day experi- majority in Professor Humphry's list; after ence, that it is a pleasure to find Professor making every allowance for their comparative Humphry championing our common humanity, immunity from accident, exposure, and anxiety, and describing centenarians who were cheer- and their greater temperance in eating and ful, retained their faculties and their interest drinking, there still appears to be reason to in relatives and old friends, and even showed believe that woman possesses a greater ina marked liking for making new acquaintances. herent vitality than man. In conclusion, we The centenarian generally comes of a long- may be allowed to express the hope that Prolived family, and is a person of active habits, fessor Humphry may live to swell the list and both of body and mind, a good sleeper, en- improve the male percentage. British Medical Journal. 2 For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or bv post-office money-order, possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents. |