I had the good fortune to rescue from a stall in Barbican, not three days ago, and found thee terse, fresh, epigrammatic, as alive. Thy wit is a little gone by in these fastidious days -thy topics are staled by the "new-born gauds" of the time-but great thou used to be in Public Ledgers, and in Chronicles, upon Chatham, and Shelburne, and Rockingham, and Howe, and Burgoyne, and Clinton, and the war which ended in the tearing from Great Britain her rebellious colonies, -and Keppel, and Wilkes, and Sawbridge, and Bull, and Dunning, and Pratt, and Richmond,--and such small politics. A little less facetious, and a great deal more obstreperous, was fine rattling, rattleheaded Plumer. He was descended,not in a right line, reader, (for his lineal pretensions, like his personal, favoured a little of the sinister bend) from the Plumers of Hertfordshire. So tradition gave him out; and certain family features not a little sanctioned the opinion. Certainly old Walter Plumer (his reputed author) had been a rake in his days, and visited much in Italy, and had seen the world. He was uncle, bachelor-uncle, to the fine old whig still living, who has represented the county in so many successive parliaments, and has a fine old mansion near Ware. Walter flourished in George the Second's days, and was the same who was summoned before the House of Commons about a business of franks, with the old Duchess of Marlborough. You may read of it in Johnson's Life of Cave. Cave came off cleverly in that business. It is certain our Plumer did nothing to discountenance the rumour. He rather seemed pleased whenever it was, with all gentleness, insinuated. But, besides his family pretensions, Plumer was an engaging fellow, and sang gloriously. Not so sweetly sang Plumer as thou sangest, mild, childlike, pastoral M— ; a flute's breathing less divinely whispering than thy Arcadian melodies, when, in tones worthy of Arden, thou didst chant that song sung by Amiens to the banished Duke, which proclaims the winter wind more lenient than for a man to be ungrateful. Thy sire was old surly M—, the unapproachable church-warden of Bishopsgate. He knew not what he did, when he begat thee, like spring, gentle offspring of blustering winter :-only unfortunate in thy ending, which should have been mild, conciliatory, swan-like.-- Much remains to sing. Many fantastic shapes rise up, but they must be mine in private:-already I have fooled the reader to the top of his bent ;-else could I omit that strange creature Woollett, who existed in trying the question, and bought litigations?—and still stranger, inimitable, solemn Hepworth, from whose gravity Newton might have deduced the law of gravitation. How profoundly would he nib a pen with what deliberation would he wet a wafer! But it is time to close-night's wheels are rattling fast over me-it is proper to have done with this solemn mockery. Reader, what if I have been playing with thee all this while-peradventure the very names, which I have summoned up before thee, are fantastic-insubstantial-like Henry Pimpernel, and old John Naps of Greece : Be satisfied that something answering to them has had a being. Their importance is from the past. OXFORD IN THE VACATION ASTING a preparatory glance at the bottom of this article-as the wary connoisseur in prints, with cursory eye (which, while it reads, seems as though it read not,) never fails to consult the quis sculpsit in the corner, before he pronounces some rare piece to be a Vivares, or a Woollet-methinks I hear you exclaim, Reader, Who is Elia? Because in my last I tried to divert thee with some halfforgotten humours of some old clerks defunct, in an old house of business, long since gone to decay, doubtless you have already set me down in your mind as one of the selfsame college-a votary of the desk-a notched and cropt scrivener-one that sucks his sustenance, as certain sick people are said to do, through a quill. Well, I do agnize something of the sort. I confess that it is my humour, my fancy-in the forepart of the day, when the mind of your man of letters requires some relaxation(and none better than such as at first sight seems most abhorrent from his beloved studies)-to while away some good hours of my time in the contemplation of indigos, cottons, place * * * * * * * raw silks, piece-goods, flowered or otherwise. In the first and then it sends you home with such increased appetite to your books * * not to say, that your outside sheets, and waste wrappers of foolscap, do receive into them, most kindly and naturally, the impression of sonnets, epigrams, essays-so that the very parings of a counting-house are, in some sort, the settings up of an author. The enfranchised quill, that has plodded all the morning among the cart-rucks of figures and cyphers, frisks and curvets so at its ease over the flowery carpet-ground of a midnight dissertation.-It feels its promotion. that you see, upon the whole, the literary dignity of Elia very little, if at all, compromised in the condescension. is * *** # So Not that, in my anxious detail of the many commodities incidental to the life of a public office, I would be thought blind to certain flaws, which a cunning carper might be able to pick in this Joseph's vest. And here I must have leave, in the fulness of my soul, to regret the abolition, and doingaway-with altogether, of those consolatory interstices, and sprinklings of freedom, through the four seasons,—the redletter days, now become, to all intents and purposes, deadletter days. There was Paul, and Stephen, and Barnabas Andrew and John, men famous in old times -we were used to keep all their days holy, as long back as I was at school at Christ's. I remember their effigies, by the same token, in the old Baskett Prayer Book. There hung Peter in his uneasy posture-holy Bartlemy in the troublesome act of flaying, after the famous Marsyas by Spagnoletti. -I honoured them all, and could almost have wept the defalcation of Iscariot-so much did we love to keep holy 、 memories sacred:-only methought I a little grudged at the coalition of the better Jude with Simon-clubbing (as it were) their sanctities together, to make up one poor gaudyday between them-as an economy unworthy of the dispensation. These were bright visitations in a scholar's and a clerk's life-"far off their coming shone.". -I was as good as an almanac in those days. I could have told you such a saint'sday falls out next week, or the week after. Peradventure the Epiphany, by some periodical infelicity, would, once in six - years, merge in a Sabbath. Now am I little better than one of the profane. Let me not be thought to arraign the wisdom of my civil superiors, who have judged the further observation of these holy tides to be papistical, superstitious. Only in a custom of such long standing, methinks, if their Holinesses the Bishops had, in decency, been first sounded -but I am wading out of my depths. I am not the man to decide the limits of civil and ecclesiastical authority-I am plain Elia-no Selden, nor Archbishop Usher-though at present in the thick of their books, here in the heart of learning, under the shadow of the mighty Bodley. I can here play the gentleman, enact the student. Το such a one as myself, who has been defrauded in his young years of the sweet food of academic institution, nowhere is so pleasant, to while away a few idle weeks at, as one or other of the Universities. Their vacation, too, at this time of the year, falls in so pat with ours. Here I can take my walks unmolested, and fancy myself of what degree or standing I please. I seem admitted ad eundem. I fetch up past opportunities. I can rise at the chapel-bell, and dream that it rings for me. In moods of humility I can be a Sizar, or a Servitor. When the peacock vein rises, I strut a Gentleman Commoner. In graver moments, I proceed Master of Arts. Indeed I do not think I am much unlike that respectable character. have seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed-makers in spectacles, drop a bow or curtsy, as I pass, wisely mistaking me for something of the sort. I go about in black, which favours the notion. Only in Christ Church reverend quadrangle, I can be content to pass for nothing short of a Seraphic Doctor. I The walks at these times are so much one's own,-the tall trees of Christ's, the groves of Magdalen! The halls deserted, and with open doors, inviting one to slip in unperceived, and pay a devoir to some Founder, or noble or royal Benefactress (that should have been ours) whose portrait seems to smile upon their over-looked beadsman, and to adopt me for their own. Then, to take a peep in by the way at the butteries, and sculleries, redolent of antique hospitality : the immense caves of kitchens, kitchen fire-places, cordia! recesses; ovens whose first pies were baked four centuries ago; and spits which have cooked for Chaucer! Not the meanest minister among the dishes but is hallowed to me through his imagination, and the Cook goes forth a Manciple. 2 Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what art thou? that, being nothing, art every thing! When thou wert, thou wert not antiquity-then thou wert nothing, but hadst a remoter antiquity, as thou called'st it, to look back to with blind veneration; thou thyself being to thyself flat, jejune, modern! What mystery lurks in this retroversion? or what half Januses are we, that cannot look forward with the same idolatry with which we for ever revert ! The mighty future is as nothing, being every thing! the past is every thing, being nothing! 1 What were thy dark ages? Surely the sun rose as brightly then as now, and man got him to his work in the morning. Why is it that we can never hear mention of them without an accompanying feeling, as though a palpable obscure had dimmed the face of things, and that our ancestors wandered to and fro groping! Above all thy rarities, old Oxenford, what do most arride and solace me, are thy repositories of mouldering learning, thy shelves- What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the writers, that have bequeathed their labours to these Bodleians, were reposing here, as in some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odour of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard. Still less have I curiosity to disturb the elder repose of MSS. Those varia lectiones, so tempting to the more erudite palates, do but disturb and unsettle my faith. I am no Herculanean raker. The credit of the three witnesses might have slept unimpeached for me. I leave these curiosities to Porson, and to G. D.-whom, by the way, I found busy as a moth over some rotten archive, rummaged out of some seldomexplored press, in a nook at Oriel. With long poring, he is grown almost into a book. He stood as passive as one by the side of the old shelves. I longed to new-coat him in Russia, and assign him his place. He might have mustered for a tall Scapula. D. is assiduous in his visits to these seats of learning. No 1 |