I am a poor nameless egotist, who have no vanity to consult by these Confessions. I know not whether I shall be laughed at, or heard seriously. Such as they are, I com mend them to the reader's attention, if he find his own case any way touched. I have told him what I am come to. Let him stop in time. POPULAR FALLACIES. 1.-THAT A BULLY IS ALWAYS A COWARD. eminence :-" Bully Dawson kicked by half the town, and half the town kicked by Bully Dawson." This was true distributive II. THAT ILL-GOTTEN GAIN NEVER PROSPERS. THIS axiom contains a principle of compensation, which disposes us to admit the truth of it. But there is no safe trusting to justice. dictionaries and definitions. We should more willingly fall in with this popular language, if we did not find brutality sometimes awkwardly coupled with valour in the THE weakest part of mankind have this same vocabulary. The comic writers, with saying commonest in their mouth. It is the their poetical justice, have contributed not a trite consolation administered to the easy little to mislead us upon this point. To see dupe, when he has been tricked out of his a hectoring fellow exposed and beaten upon money or estate, that the acquisition of it the stage, has something in it wonderfully will do the owner no good. But the rogues diverting. Some people's share of animal of this world-the prudenter part of them, spirits is notoriously low and defective. It at least,-know better; and if the obserhas not strength to raise a vapour, or furnish vation had been as true as it is old, would out the wind of a tolerable bluster. These not have failed by this time to have love to be told that huffing is no part of discovered it. They have pretty sharp valour. The truest courage with them is distinctions of the fluctuating and the that which is the least noisy and obtrusive. permanent. "Lightly come, lightly go," is But confront one of these silent heroes with a proverb, which they can very well afford the swaggerer of real life, and his confidence to leave, when they leave little else, to the in the theory quickly vanishes. Pretensions losers. They do not always find manors, got do not uniformly bespeak non-performance. by rapine or chicanery, insensibly to melt A modest, inoffensive deportment does not away, as the poets will have it; or that all necessarily imply valour; neither does the gold glides, like thawing snow, from the absence of it justify us in denying that thief's hand that grasps it. Church land, quality. Hickman wanted modesty-we do alienated to lay uses, was formerly denounced not mean him of Clarissa-but who ever to have this slippery quality. doubted his courage ? Even the poets-portions of it somehow always stuck so fast, upon whom this equitable distribution of that the denunciators have been fain to qualities should be most binding-have postpone the prophecy of refundment to a thought it agreeable to nature to depart late posterity. from the rule upon occasion. Harapha, in the "Agonistes," is indeed a bully upon the received notions. Milton has made him at once a blusterer, a giant, and a dastard. But THE severest exaction surely ever invented Almanzor, in Dryden, talks of driving armies upon the self-denial of poor human nature! singly before him-and does it. Tom Brown This is to expect a gentleman to give a treat had a shrewder insight into this kind of without partaking of it; to sit esurient at character than either of his predecessors. his own table, and commend the flavour of He divides the palm more equably, and his venison upon the absurd strength of his allows his hero a sort of dimidiate pre- never touching it himself. On the contrary, But some III. THAT A MAN MUST NOT LAUGH AT HIS we love to see a wag taste his own joke to IV. THAT SUCH A ONE SHOWS HIS BREEDING. NO GENTLEMAN. from the pews lined with satin. It is twice sitting upon velvet to a foolish squire to be told, that he—and not perverse nature, as the homilies would make us imagine, is the true cause of all the irregularities in his parish. This is striking at the root of free-will indeed, and denying the originality of sin in any sense. But men are not such implicit sheep as this comes to. If the abstinence from evil on the part of the upper classes is to derive itself from no higher principle than the apprehension of setting ill patterns to the lower, we beg leave to discharge them from all squeamishness on that score: they may even take their fill of pleasures, where they can find them. The Genius of Poverty, hampered and straitened as it is, is not so barren of invention, but it can trade upon the staple of its own vice, without drawing upon their capital. The poor are not quite such servile imitators as they take them for. Some of them are very clever artists in their way. Here and there we find an original. A SPEECH from the poorest sort of people, Who taught the poor to steal, to pilfer? which always indicates that the party They did not go to the great for schoolmasvituperated is a gentleman. The very fact ters in these faculties surely. It is well if in which they deny is that which galls and some vices they allow us to be-no copyists. exasperates them to use this language. The In no other sense is it true that the poor forbearance with which it is usually received copy them, than as servants may be said to is a proof what interpretation the by-stander take after their masters and mistresses, when sets upon it. Of a kin to this, and still less they succeed to their reversionary cold meats. politic, are the phrases with which, in their If the master, from indisposition or some street rhetoric, they ply one another more other cause, neglect his food, the servant grossly;-He is a poor creature.-He has not dines notwithstanding. a rag to cover — &c.; though this last, we confess, is more frequently applied by females to females. They do not perceive that the satire glances upon themselves. A poor man, of all things in the world, should not upbraid an antagonist with poverty. Are there no other topics-as, to tell him his father was hanged-his sister, &c. without exposing a secret which should be kept snug between them; and doing an affront to the order to which they have the honour equally to belong? All this while they do not see how the wealthier man stands by and laughs in his sleeve at both. V.-THAT THE POOR COPY THE VICES OF A SMOOTH text to the letter; and, preached from the pulpit, is sure of a docile audience "O, but (some will say) the force of example is great." We knew a lady who was so scrupulous on this head, that she would put up with the calls of the most impertinent visitor, rather than let her servant say she was not at home, for fear of teaching her maid to tell an untruth; and this in the very face of the fact, which she knew well enough, that the wench was one of the greatest liars upon the earth without teaching; so much so, that her mistress possibly never heard two words of consecutive truth from her in her life. But nature must go for nothing: example must be everything. This liar in grain, who never opened her mouth without a lie, must be guarded against a remote inference, which she (pretty casuist) might possibly draw from a form of words literally false, but essentially deceiving no one-that under some circum stances a fib might not be so exceedingly sinful-a fiction, too, not at all in her own way, or one that she could be suspected of adopting, for few servant-wenches care to be denied to visitors. This word example reminds us of another fine word which is in use upon these occasions-encouragement. "People in our sphere must not be thought to give encouragement to such proceedings." To such a frantic height is this principle capable of being carried, that we have known individuals who have thought it within the scope of their influence to sanction despair, and give éclat to-suicide. A domestic in the family of a county member lately deceased, from love, or some unknown cause, cut his throat, but not successfully. The poor fellow was otherwise much loved and respected; and great interest was used in his behalf, upon his recovery, that he might be permitted to retain his place; his word being first pledged, not without some substantial sponsors to promise for him, that the like should never happen again. His master was inclinable to keep him, but his mistress thought otherwise; and John in the end was dismissed, her ladyship declaring that she "could not think of encouraging any such doings in the county." VI. THAT ENOUGH IS AS GOOD AS A FEAST. Nor a man, woman, or child, in ten miles round Guildhall, who really believes this saying. The inventor of it did not believe it himself. It was made in revenge by somebody, who was disappointed of a regale. It is a vile cold-scrag-of-mutton sophism; a lie palmed upon the palate, which knows better things. If nothing else could be said for a feast, this is sufficient, that from the superflux there is usually something left for the next day. Morally interpreted, it belongs to a class of proverbs which have a tendency to make us undervalue money. Of this cast are those notable observations, that money is not health; riches cannot purchase everything: the metaphor which makes gold to be mere muck, with the morality which traces fine clothing to the sheep's back, and denounces pearl as the unhandsome excretion of an oyster. Hence, too, the phrase which imputes dirt to acres―a sophistry so barefaced, that even the literal sense of it is true only in a wet season. This, and abundance of similar sage saws assuming to inculcate content, we verily believe to have been the invention of some cunning borrower, who had designs upon the purse of his wealthier neighbour, which he could only hope to carry by force of these verbal jugglings. Translate any one of these sayings out of the artful metonymy which envelopes it, and the trick is apparent. Goodly legs and shoulders of mutton, exhilarating cordials, books, pictures, the opportunities of seeing foreign countries, independence, heart's ease, a man's own time to himself, are not muck-however we may be pleased to scandalise with that appellation the faithful metal that provides them for us. VII. OF TWO DISPUTANTS THE WARMEST IS GENERALLY IN THE WRONG. OUR experience would lead us to quite an opposite conclusion. Temper, indeed, is no test of truth; but warmth and earnestness are a proof at least of a man's own conviction of the rectitude of that which he maintains. Coolness is as often the result of an unprincipled indifference to truth or falsehood, as of a sober confidence in a man's own side in a dispute. Nothing is more insulting sometimes than the appearance of this philosophic temper. There is little Titubus, the stammering law-stationer in Lincoln's-innwe have seldom known this shrewd little fellow engaged in an argument where we were not convinced he had the best of it, if his tongue would but fairly have seconded him. When he has been spluttering excellent broken sense for an hour together, writhing and labouring to be delivered of the point of dispute the very gist of the controversy knocking at his teeth, which like some obstinate iron-grating still obstructed its deliverance-his puny frame convulsed, and face reddening all over at an unfairness in the logic which he wanted articulation to expose, it has moved our gall to see a smooth portly fellow of an adversary, that cared not a button for the merits of the question, by merely laying his hand upon the head of the stationer, and desiring him to be calm (your tall disputants have always the advantage), with a provoking sneer carry the argument clean from him in the opinion of all the by-standers, who have gone away clearly convinced that Titubus must have been in the wrong, because he was in a passion; and that Mr. —, meaning his opponent, is one of the fairest and at the same time one of the most dispassionate arguers breathing. Who has not at one time or other been at a party of professors (himself perhaps an old offender in that line), where, after ringing a round of the most ingenious conceits, every man contributing his shot, and some there the most expert shooters of the day; after making a poor word run the gauntlet till it is ready to drop; after hunting and winding it through all the possible ambages of similar VIII.—THAT VERBAL ALLUSIONS ARE NOT WIT, sounds; after squeezing, and hauling, and BECAUSE THEY WILL NOT BEAR A TRANS- tugging at it, till the very milk of it will not yield a drop further,―suddenly some obscure, unthought-of fellow in a corner, who was never 'prentice to the trade, whom the company for very pity passed over, as we do by a known poor man when a money-subscription is going round, no one calling upon him for his quota-has all at once come out with something so whimsical, yet so pertinent; so brazen in its pretensions, yet so impossible THE same might be said of the wittiest local allusions. A custom is sometimes as difficult to explain to a foreigner as a pun. What would become of a great part of the wit of the last age, if it were tried by this test? How would certain topics, as aldermanity, cuckoldry, have sounded to a Terentian auditory, though Terence himself had been alive to translate them? Senator to be denied; so exquisitely good, and so urbanus with Curruca to boot for a synonyme, would but faintly have done the business. Words, involving notions, are hard enough to render; it is too much to expect us to translate a sound, and give an elegant version to a jingle. The Virgilian harmony is not translatable, but by substituting harmonious sounds in another language for it. To Latinise a pun, we must seek a pun in Latin, that will answer to it; as, to give an idea of the double endings in Hudibras, we must have recourse to a similar practice in the old monkish doggrel. Dennis, the fiercest oppugner of puns in ancient or modern times, professes himself highly tickled with the a stick," chiming to "ecclesiastic." Yet what is this but a species of pun, a verbal consonance? IX.-THAT THE WORST PUNS ARE THE BEST. deplorably bad, at the same time, that it has proved a Robin Hood's shot; anything ulterior to that is despaired of; and the party breaks up, unanimously voting it to be the very worst (that is, best) pun of the evening. This species of wit is the better for not being perfect in all its parts. What it gains in completeness, it loses in naturalness. The more exactly it satisfies the critical, the less hold it has upon some other faculties. The puns which are most entertaining are those which will least bear an analysis. Of this kind is the following, recorded with a sort of stigma, in one of Swift's Miscellanies. An Oxford scholar, meeting a porter who was carrying a hare through the streets, accosts him with this extraordinary question : "Prithee, friend, is that thy own hare, or a wig?" There is no excusing this, and no resisting IF by worst be only meant the most far- it. A man might blur ten sides of paper fetched and startling, we agree to it. A pun in attempting a defence of it against a critic is not bound by the laws which limit nicer who should be laughter-proof. The quibble wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear; not a in itself is not considerable. It is only a feather to tickle the intellect. It is an antic new turn given by a little false pronunciation, which does not stand upon manners, but to a very common, though not very courteous comes bounding into the presence, and does inquiry. Put by one gentleman to another at not show the less comic for being dragged a dinner-party, it would have been vapid; to in sometimes by the head and shoulders. the mistress of the house it would have What though it limp a little, or prove de-shown much less wit than rudeness. We fective in one leg ?-all the better. A pun must take in the totality of time, place, and may easily be too curious and artificial. person; the pert look of the inquiring X.-THAT HANDSOME IS THAT HANDSOME DOES. THOSE who use this proverb can never have seen Mrs. Conrady. scholar, the desponding looks of the puzzled impression, to be forcible, must be simultaporter: the one stopping at leisure, the other neous and undivided. hurrying on with his burden; the innocent though rather abrupt tendency of the first member of the question, with the utter and inextricable irrelevancy of the second; the place a public street, not favourable to frivolous investigations; the affrontive quality of the primitive inquiry (the common question) invidiously transferred to the derivative (the new turn given to it) in the implied satire; namely, that few of that tribe are expected to eat of the good things which they carry, they being in most countries considered rather as the temporary trustees than owners of such dainties, which the fellow was beginning to understand; but then the wig again comes in, and he can make nothing of it; all put together constitute a picture: Hogarth could have made it intelligible on canvass. Yet nine out of ten critics will pronounce this a very bad pun, because of the defectiveness in the concluding member, which is its very beauty, and constitutes the surprise. The same person shall cry up for admirable the cold quibble from Virgil about the broken Cremona ;* because it is made out in all its parts, and leaves nothing to the imagination. We venture to call it cold; because, of thousands who have admired it, it would be difficult to find one who has heartily chuckled at it. As appealing to the judgment merely (setting the risible faculty aside), we must pronounce it a monument of curious felicity. But as some stories are said to be too good to be true, it may with equal truth be asserted of this biverbal allusion, that it is too good to be natural. One cannot help suspecting that the incident was invented to fit the line. It would have been better had it been less perfect. Like some Virgilian hemistichs, it has suffered by filling up. The nimium Vicina was enough in conscience; the Cremona afterwards loads it. It is, in fact, a double pun; and we have always observed that a superfotation in this sort of wit is dangerous. When a man has said a good thing, it is seldom politic to follow it up. We do not care to be cheated a second time; or, perhaps the mind of man (with reverence be it spoken) is not capacious enough to lodge two puns at a time. The • Swift. The soul, if we may believe Plotinus, is a ray from the celestial beauty. As she partakes more or less of this heavenly light, she informs, with corresponding characters, the fleshly tenement which she chooses, and frames to herself a suitable mansion. All which only proves that the soul of Mrs. Conrady, in her pre-existent state, was no great judge of architecture. of To the same effect, in a Hymn in honour sings: Every spirit as it is more pure, But Spenser, it is clear, never saw Mrs. Conrady. These poets, we find, are no safe guides in philosophy; for here, in his very next stanza all out again, and leaves us as much to seek but one, is a saving clause, which throws us as ever: Yet oft it falls, that many a gentle mind From which it would follow, that Spenser had seen somebody like Mrs. Conrady. The spirit of this good lady-her previous anima-must have stumbled upon one of these untoward tabernacles which he speaks of. A more rebellious commodity of clay for a ground, as the poet calls it, no gentle mind and sure hers is one of the gentlest-ever had to deal with Pondering upon her inexplicable visageinexplicable, we mean, but by this modification of the theory-we have come to a conclusion that, if one must be plain, it is better to be plain all over, than amidst a tolerable residue of features to hang out one that shall |