Roundabout Papers

es to remember very much more than to prophesy, and though he can’t help being carried onward, and downward, perhaps, on the hill of life, the swift milestones marking their forties, fifties — how man

ven’s merciful will) overcome, the pauses, the faintings, the weakness, the lost way, perhaps, the bitter weather, the dreadful partings, the lonely night, the passionate grief — towards these I turn my thoughts as I sit and think in my hobby-coach under Time, the silver-wigged charioteer. The young folks in the same carriage

sashed windows as you please, quite common and square, and tiles, windows, chimney-pots, quite like others; or suppose, in driving over such and such a common, he sees an ordinary tree, and an ordinary donkey browsing under it, if you like — wife

seen, at a certain hour, somebody in a certain cloak and bonnet, who happened to be coming from a village yonder, and whose image has flickered in that pool. In that pool, near the thorn? Yes, in that goose-pool, never mind how long ago, when there were reflected

icked you: here the ground where you had to fag out on holidays, and so forth. In a word, my dear sir, YOU are the most interesting subject to yourself, of any that can occupy your worship’s thoughts. I have no doubt, a Crimean soldier, reading a history of that siege, and how Jones and the gallant 99th were ordered to charge or what not, thinks, “Ah, yes, we of the 100th were placed so and so, I perfectly remember.” So

Thomas Hood. Mox

dy. Who cared about his birthplace, his parentage, or the color of his hair? To-day, by some single achievement, or by a series of great actions to which his genius accustoms us, he is famous, and antiquarians are busy finding out under what schoolmaster’s ferule he was educated, where his grandmother was vaccinated, and so forth. If half a dozen washing-bills of Goldsmith’s were to be found tomorrow, would they not inspire a general interest, and be printed in a hundred papers? I lighted upon Oliver, not very long since, in an old Town and Country Magazine, at the Pantheon masquerade “in an old English habit.” Straightway my imagination ran out to meet him, to look at him, to follow him about. I forgot the names of scores of fine gentlemen of the past age, who were mentioned besides. We want to see this man who has amused and charmed us; who has been our friend, and given us hours o

ith the portraits of very large Royal Freemasons, now unsubstantial ghosts. There at the end of the room was Hood. Some publishers, I think, were our companions. I quite remember his pale face; he was thin and deaf, and very silent; he scarcely opened his lips during the dinner, and he made one pun. Some gentleman missed his snuff-box, and Hood said — (the Freemasons’ Tavern was kept, you must remember, by Mr. CUFF in t

can’t be a fair critic about them. I always think of that sovereign, that rapture of raspberry-tarts, which made my young days happy. Those old sovereign-contributors may tell stories ever so old, and I shall laugh; they may commit murder, and I shall believe it was justifiable homicide. There is my friend Baggs, who goes about abusing me, and of course our dear mutual friends tell me. Abuse away, mon bon! You wer

that in punning and broad-grinning lay his chief strength. Is not there something touching in that simplicity and humility of faith? “To make laugh is my calling,” says he; “I must jump, I must grin, I must tumble, I must turn language head over heels, and leap through grammar;” and he goes to his work humbly and courageously, and what he has to do that does he with all his might, through sickness, through sorrow, through exile, poverty, fever, depression — there he is, always ready to his work, and with a jewel of genius in his pocket! Why, when he laid down his puns and pranks, put the motley off, and spoke out of his heart, all England

his illness, not of his imminent danger, wrote to him a noble an

satisfaction which I have had in doing that for which

and merriment into writings correcting folly and exposing absurdities, and yet never trespassing beyond those limits within which wit and facetiousness are not very often confined. You may write on with the consciousness of independence, as free and unfettered, as if no communication had ever passed between us. I am not conferring a private obligation upon you, but am fulfilling the

— that you will give me the opportunit

, I should not have it till today. So he sent his servant with the enclosed on SATURDAY NIGHT; another mark of considerate attention.” He is frightfully unwell, he continues: his wife sa

t full of natural gratitude towards his noble benefactor, must turn to him and say —“If it be well to be remembered by a Minister, it is better still not to be forgotten by him in a ‘hurly Burleigh!’” Can you laugh? Is not the joke horribly pathetic from the poo

record of his most pure, modest, honorable life, and living along with him, you come to trust him thoroughly, and feel that here is a most loyal, affectionate, and upright soul, with whom you have been brought into comm

hrimps; the good wife making the pie; details about the maid, and criticisms on her conduct; wonderful tricks played with the plum-pudding — all the pleasures centring round the little humble home. One of the first men of his time, he i

itty, so full of trading stuff, that it really seemed to have been not composed, but manufactured. Jerdan, as Jerdanish as usual on such occasions — you know how paradoxically he is QUITE AT HOME in DINING OUT. As to myself, I had to make my SECOND MAIDEN SPEECH, for Mr. Monckton Milnes proposed my health in terms my modesty might allow me to repeat to YOU, but my memory won’t. However, I ascribed the toast to my notoriously bad health, and assured them that their wishes had already improved it — that I felt a brisker circulation — a more genial warmth about the heart, and explained that a certain trembling of my hand was not from palsy, or my old ague, but an i

by so many illustrious men! The little feast dates back only eighteen years, and y

azine: then a new Magazine projected and produced: then illness and the last scene, and the kind Peel by the dying

ous help) you would pray and strive to give them such an endowment of love, as should last certainly for all their lives, and perhaps be transmitted to their children. You would (by the same aid and blessing) keep your honor pure, and transmit a name unstained to those who have a right to bear it. You would — though this faculty of giving is one of the easiest of the literary man’s qualities — you would, out of your earnings, small or great, be able to help a poor brother in need, to dress his wounds, and, if it were but twopence, to give him succor. Is the money which the

land, and which have multiplied so astonishingly of late years at our dealers’ in old silverware. Along the stem of the spoon are written the words: “Anno 1609, Bin ick aldus ghekledt gheghaen”—“In the year 1609 I went thus

an illustrated e

s Smollett, and his life, how hard, and how poorly rewarded; of Goldsmith, and the physician whispering, “Have you something on your mind?” and the wild dying eyes answering, “Yes.” Notice how Boswell speaks of Goldsmith, and the splendid contempt with which he regard

. Galley-slave, forsooth! If you are sent to prison for some error for which the law awards that sort of laborious seclusion, so much the more shame for you. If you are chained to the oar a prisoner of war, like Cervantes, you have the pain, but not the shame, and the friendly compassion of mankind to reward you. Galley-slaves, indeed! What man has not his oar to pull? There is that wonderful old stroke-oar in the Queen’s galley. How many years has he pulled? Day and night, in rough water or smooth, with what invincible vigor and surprising gayety he plies his arms. There is in the same Galere Capitaine, that well-known, trim figure, the bow-oar; how he tugs, and with what a will! How both of them have been abused in their time! Take the Lawyer’s galley, and that dauntless octogenarian in command; when has HE ever complained or repined abo