THE TOBIAS CORRESPONDENCE. No. I. FROM NESTOR GOOSEQUILL, ESQ. TO TOBIAS FLIMSY, ESQ., ON THE GENERAL Ben Jonson's Head, Shoe Lane, Fleet Street, DEAR TOBIAS,-I have just received discreet mind. Jack Random, I spent the evening with last Saturday: he tells me that on looking over your cases, he does not see what you have to apprehend. He is really a good fellow, though an attorney, and has done every thing for you that a man could, except paying the costs out of pocket, for omitting which ceremony he had many reasons; and look after your fifteen or sixteen cases, from which he was prevented by the accident of his being on a visit in White Cross, which may be, and indeed is, a valuable seminary for learning the principles and practice of the debtor and creditor law, but is remarkably unfavourable for locomotive exertion. He is out, however, now, and will attend to your affairs as soon as he gets through a couple of dozen dinners with recently emancipated Knights of the Cross, whom he assisted, by acceptances or otherwise, in their escape from the Philistines. On the whole, he thinks that there are not more than five executions against you-there may possibly be six, for there is no knowing whether that infernal vagabond, Moses Abuddibus, has issued an Ex. for that sixty-one day bill you accepted for me last March two years, though I have promised to pay him six, ay, eight months ago, because ruffians like him are never to be trusted, as they have no notion, like gentlemen, of keeping their word: but say six exes, and that's all. There are seven or eight razor-strops-little Victorias by the grace of God-besides, but they are only serviceable-so that's not at all pressing. As for the exes First, as to paying Humphry Hocus for the wine * * [This part of the letter is so completely of a private nature, that we cannot print it. It is sufficient to say, the writer advises his correspondent on the great impropriety of wasting his money in paying debts. He says he has known it to be the ruin of many a man. It is a worse propensity than gambling, he observes, be cause gambling, though the practice is immoral, yet you may get something by it; but in paying debts, the money is assuredly lost to you and your heirs for ever, without any hope of equivalent.] I called at Charley Owen's in the Strand, and backed the tickets on your watch and waistcoats, so that they are safe for three months. As my money happened to be locked up at the time in some heavy speculations in the city, I took the liberty of selling one of your tickets to Charley, to raise the wind for keeping the rest out of danger. There was some money in your favour, on the strength of which he and I and Mac dined at Dubourg's. He behaved so civilly that I could not do any thing less with common decency; and I am sure you will approve of it. You can draw a bill upon me for the balance whenever you like, and when it is dishonoured, I will pay the three and sixpence for noting with pleasure. We had a remarkably agreeable evening, and as I was putting Owen into a cab at about three in the morning, I took the precaution of borrowing from him a ten-pound note and some loose silver, least he might be robbed by the cabman. I have observed with regret that the appointment of our mutual friend, Daniel Whittle Harvey, to the office of jarvey-general has not effected any considerable emendation in the lives and characters of the tribes entrusted to his sceptre; nor do I think that the missionary societies, so successful among Blacks, Hindoos, Jews, Quakers, and other heterodox sects, or pagans far off, have done any thing material in introducing Christianity among the cabs. I therefore deemed it no more than my duty to pay the fare for Charley beforehand, although it amounted to a shilling, (eightpence was the just fare, but I would not stand quarrelling with a swindling knave upon a trifle,) out of my own pocket. Mother Phillips has your linen, but there seems to be a difference between you, which I cannot reconcile. You say you have three shirts, five collars, and four pair of socks. She maintains that it is but two shirts, three collars, and two pair of socks, both in holes. I really cannot offer an opinion as to which is right; of course I maintain it is you, but she is positive. As to the bill, the difference there is remarkable. You sent me five and six pence to pay it, and get a receipt in full. I tendered her the money, but she refused it, saying you owed her eleven and eightpence-partly for washing, partly for quarterns which she got for you. Finding the discrepancy in your respective statements so material, I could not do you the injustice of handing over the money to her. Under such circumstances, I thought the best thing to do was to take it to Jack Lomas's, where Harry, Jack, Joe, Roe, Jemmy, and I drank it to your health. Do you intend to pay the eleven and eightpence? Perhaps you had better, as it is unpleasant to have a small balance hanging on among these low people. If you will send me eleven shillings, I think I can save you the difference; and eightpence, let me tell you, is something to save out of an account of this kind; and a man should be cautious. If you think that there has been any imposition played off, or even attempted upon you, do not think of submitting to it. Straightness in accounts is always best, even in trifles. I tumbled upon Sloman in Covent Garden by mere chance. He came up to speak to me. I was at first somewhat impressed with the idea it was upon some business of my own, but was much relieved when I found it was upon yours. He fumbled in his pocket-book, as if looking for a writ; but, fortunately, the manuscript was not discoverable. He spoke to me in the kindest manner of you, but as I perceived that he had sent his man, after a confidential whisper, in the direction of Cursitor Street, I was not anxious to detain him from his business. I told him that if he held over the writ he has against you in the case of Slapbang and Swindlebody, he might expect a sovereignand so no doubt he may. Being a very hospitable man, he asked me to take share of a bottle of champagne, at his expense, at Evans's; for he could wait, he said, until his man returned. I consented; but as I knew that it would occupy some time in swallowing the expensive wine recommended by my disinterested friend of Herne Bay, I preferred getting through a glass of gin and water with extreme rapidity, relieving Mr Sloman from the necessity of treating me, as he benevolently proposed, to a second. I passed the river Thames, by the noble bridge called after the when time was. "Caliban. I have seen thee in her, and I do adore thee. My mistress showed me thee, and thy dog and bush." The dog is an appurtenance which probably grew out of the rest of the picture, and does not always occur in it. In the Midsummer Night's Dream," it is not at first alluded to as one of the necessary properties for the performance of this "very tragical mirth." Quince says, "One must come in with a bunch of thorns and a lanthorn, and say he comes to disfigure, or to present the person of Moonshine." But when Moonshine makes his ap pearance, it seems to have been arranged as a matter of course that "his faithful dog shall bear him company.' "Moonshine.-This lantern doth the horned moon present: Myself the man i' th' moon do seem to be "Lysander.-Proceed, Moon. "Moonshine.-All that I have to say is to tell you, that the lantern is the moon; I, the man in the moon; this thorn bush, my thorn bush; and this dog my dog. "Demetrius.- Why, all these should be in the lantern; for they are in the moon. " According to the old Italian legend on the subject, the man in the moon was no other than the first murderer, bearing on his shoulders a bundle of thorns as a niggard offering to God of the meanest product of his fields. Dante alludes to this theory. In the Paradiso, 2, 50, he asks :"Che sono i segni bui, Di questo corpo, che laggiuso in terra "Cairo e le spine." Another supposition converted the man in the moon into the innocent Isaac bearing the load of wood that was to have been his own funeral pile on the mountains of Moriah.* Before passing from the mythological to the poetical personification of these luminaries, we have a word to say on the grammatical gender which has been ascribed to them. From our English and classical associations, we are accustomed to think of the sun as essentially masculine, and the moon as feminine; and looking to power as a male attribute, and softness as a female one, the distribution seems natural and appropriate. It is certain, however, that all our Teutonic ancestors originally reversed the rule; whether from regarding the more dazzling beauty of the solar orb, or from the effect of some accidental mythus, it is now difficult to discover. The story of the Edda is, that Mundilfori had two children, a son Mani, the moon, and a daughter Sol, the sun, who for their beauty were set in the sky. This distribution of the sexes, however, is not confined to the Teutonic nations. A trace of it, so far as the moon is concerned, is to be found both in Greek and in Latin. The words any and μnn, which literally agree with our moon, the English long or double o being a correct and frequent exponent of the Greek long or ", have been commonly so distinguished, that the one applies to the period of the moon's revolution, the other to the luminary itself. But a masculine moon seems to have been an idea well-known among the ancients. Selden (De Diis Syris,) refers us to a passage in Strabo, "de fano Te Mavos Dei in Asia Minori non infrequenti ;" and in some places a curious opinion was adopted, that those men who considered the moon as feminine, were doomed to be henpecked husbands, while those who took the opposite view were destined to maintain the dignity of the sex which they thus asserted. We extract the article on this subject from Facciolati. "Lunus, i. m. Deus idem qui Luna. Quamvis enim feminina voce eam appellaret, masculum tamen putabat stulta Gentilitas. Unde masculum Lunam appellat Tertull. in Apolog., c. 15, et Spartian. in Caracall., c. 7, tradit, a Carrenis præcipue, Asia populis, ita existimari, ut qui Lunam femineo nomine ac sexu putaverit nuncupandam, is addictus mulieribus semper inserviat: at vero qui marem deum esse crediderit, is dominetur uxori, neque ullas muliebres patiatur insidias. Id. ibid. c. 6. Cum hibernaret Edessæ, atque inde Carras Luni dei gratiâ venisset." Grimm, Mythol., 411, 412, from which much of our illustrations of these topics has been borrowed. orb of day a sensitive, and almost a divine existence, as any Persian or Pagan that ever worshipped him. When we gaze on the glories of sunrise or of sunset, do we remember Copernicus? We hope not: no more, if the thought may be forgiven, than we recur to the investigations of Morgagni when we behold the face of her we love. There is a poetry in the domain of science, as there is in that of fiction: but it is found only in her highest walks, and among her noblest followers: and the God of Creation has, benignantly for humbler minds, enveloped the essential forms of nature in integuments and illusions which serve at once to disguise those dry and death-like anatomies which a halfknowledge reveals, and to supply the place of that ultimate beauty of per fect truth which is reserved for the maturity of our faculties. Baseless, indeed, would have been the fictions of Greece, if the solar power out of which they fashioned the god of song, could now be regarded by the poet or the lover of poetry without ever inspiring an image or a feeling that was worthy of so noble an object. Let us see whether Helios has been so shamefully cast down from his throne as Schiller would have us believe. We are mistaken if it be not found that his glory is elevated rather than depressed by the change which has occurred, and which has enlarged and established his dominion by placing it on the broad and firm foundations of moral truth. As we watch his gradual and glittering advance in the east, does he not readily appear to our dazzled sight as a prince or potentate, surrounded by a cloudy train of followers and dependents, that reflect the lustre his glory has shed upon them? Such, at least, he seemed to Milton, when he desired to walk— "By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green, Right against the eastern gate, Where the great sun begins his state, Robed in flames and amber light, The clouds in thousand liveries dight." Or shall we rather say, with another poet, that the vicegerent of Maker has less in him of the prince begirt by courtly attendants, than of a divinity himself receiving the adoration of surrounding suppliants? "Morven belongs now wholly to the In like manner Astoreth, "Whom the Phoenicians called Astarte, Queen of Heaven, with crescent horns; To whose bright image nightly by the moon Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs," seems also to have been sometimes classed among the male deities (see Selden.) But indeed, many of the pagan divinities illustrate Milton's apposite proposition, that "Spirits when they please Can either sex assume, or both." Having detained our readers probably too long in the regions of mythology, we come now to examine some of those impersonations which imagination, unaided by belief, has bestowed upon these magnificent lights of heaven. It was the lamentation of Schiller that a glory had here departed from the earth, and that the cold correctness of science had chilled the genial current of the heart. "Wo jetzt nur, wie uns're Weise sagen, Seelenlos ein Feuerball sich dreht, Lenkte damahls seinen gold'nen Wagen Helios in stiller Majestät." "Where, as now our wise ones have decided, Lifeless rolls a fiery-ball on high, Helios once his golden chariot guided Silent and majestic through the sky." But the poet's complaint is only partially well founded. Men do not, indeed, now suppose either that the sun is a god, or that he drives a chariot; and most of us are even convinced, though few of us know why, that the Copernican system is the true one. But we have a popular belief, apart from our scientific doctrines, and an imaginative sensibility distinct from both. The power that prompted the visions of superstition is not extinct, but is merely modified in its operations. It remains still, as a smothered flame, not blazing on our hearths or consecrated on our altars, but every where lurking within its dusky embers, and ready to be fanned into a generous glow by the breath of passion or of poetry. It would be strange if an object so familiar as the "common sun" were to be often before us in an imaginative aspect. But, in conditions of the mind favourable to such impulses, we are still as ready to see in the great morn; his And morn's sole sovereign, the almighty sun, Surveys his kingdom with a regal eye, In idol-worship round the fount of light- But the caprice of fancy, in a modified aspect of the same objects, will trace the lineaments of other and less sublime meanings: "See, see, King Richard doth himself As doth the blushing discontented sun To dim his glory, and to stain the track The Hebrew poet sings that a tabernacle hath been set for the sun, "which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber." He is indeed a bridegroom, and his bride is the earth, who rejoices in all her beauty at the splendour of his coming. Glorious is the vision of their nuptials: numberless and lovely the offspring that shall adorn their bed! The life that we confer upon the orb of day, and which we intertwine with the light that is his essence, diffuses itself upon all the objects of lower creation which his presence illumes. "What soul was his, when, from the naked top Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth were touch'd And in their silent faces did he read Thus, too, the poet of the Seasons addresses the bright ruler of those fair vicissitudes which diversify his immortal song: "The very dead creation from thy touch Take yet another example of this diffusive happiness, not limited to the hour of morning :— "There was not, on that day, a speck to stain The azure heaven; the blessed Sun, alone, In unapproachable divinity, Career'd, rejoicing in his fields of light. A summer feeling: even the insect swarms Smiled in that joyful sunshine--they partook |