ance: I shall not trouble you with an account of the improvements that have been made in the seats we saw, according to the modern taste, but proceed to give you some reflections which occurred to us in observing several country churches, and the behaviour of their congregations. The ruinous condition of some of these edifices gave me great offence, and I could not help | wishing that the honest vicar, instead of indulging his genius for improvements, by enclosing his gooseberry-bushes with a Chinese rail, and converting half an acre of his glebe land into a bowling-green, would have applied part of his income to the more laudable purpose of sheltering his parishioners from the weather during their attendance on divine service. It is no uncommon thing to see the parsonage-house well thatched, and in exceeding good repair, while the church, perhaps, has scarce any other roof than the ivy that grows over it. The noise of owls, bats, and magpies, makes the principal part of the church musie in many of these ancient edifices; and the walls, like a large map, seem to be portioned out into capes, seas, and promontories, by the various colours by which the damps have stained them. Sometimes, the foundation being too weak to support the steeple any longer, it has been found expedient to pull down that part of the building, and to hang the bells under a wooden shed on the ground beside it. This is the case in a parish in Norfolk, through which I lately passed, and where the clerk and the sexton, like the two figures of St Dunstan's, serve the bells in the capacity of clappers, by striking them alternately with a hammer. the aisle, might be told that their time would be better employed in attending to the sermon than in fumbling over their tattered Testaments till they have found the text, by which time the discourse is near drawing to a conclusion; while a word or two of instruction might not be thrown away upon the younger part of the congregation, to teach them that making posies in summertime, and cracking nuts in autumn, is no part of the religious ceremony. The good old practice of psalm-singing is indeed wonderfully improved in many country churches since the days of Sternhold and Hopkins; and there is scarce a parish clerk who has so little taste as not to pick his staves out of the new version. This has occasioned great complaints in some places, where the clerk has been forced to bawl by himself, because the rest of the congregation cannot find the psalm at the end of their prayer-books; while others are highly disgusted at the innovation, and stick as obstinately to the old version as to the old style. The tunes themselves have also been new set to jiggish measures, and the sober drawl which used to accompany the two first staves of the hundredth psalm, with the "Gloria Patri," is now split into as many quavers as an Italian air. For this purpose there is in every county an itinerant band of vocal musicians, who make it their business to go round to all the churches in their turns, and, after a prelude with a pitchpipe, astonish the audience with hymns set to the new Winchester measure, and anthems of their own composing. As these new-fashioned psalmodists are necessarily made up of young men and maids, we may naturally suppose that there is a perfect concord and symphony between them, and indeed I have known it happen that these sweet singers have more than once been brought into disgrace by too close a unison between the thorough-base and the treble. In other churches, I have observed that nothing unseemly or ruinous is to be found, except in the clergyman, and the appendages of his person. The squire of the parish, or his ancestors, perhaps to testify their devotion and leave a lasting monument of their magnificence, have adorned the altar-piece with the richest crimson It is a difficult matter to decide which is looked velvet, embroidered with vine-leaves and ears of upon as the greatest man in a country church, wheat; and have dressed up the pulpit with the the parson or his clerk. The latter is most cersame splendour and expense; while the gentle-tainly held in the higher veneration where the man who fills it is exalted in the midst of all this finery, with a surplice as dirty as a farmer's frock, and a periwig that seems to have transferred its faculty of curling to the band which appears in full buckle beneath it. But if I was concerned to see several distressed pastors, as well as many of our country churches in a tottering condition, I was more offended with the indecency of worship in others. I could wish that the clergy would inform their congregations that there is no occasion to scream themselves hoarse in making their responses; that the town-crier is not the only person qualified to pray with true devotion; and that he who bawls the loudest may nevertheless be the wickedest fellow in the parish. The old women, too, in former happens to be only a poor curate, who rides post every Sabbath from village to village, and mounts and dismounts at the church-door. The clerk's office is not only to tag the prayers with an amen, or usher in the sermon with a stave, but he is also the universal father to give away the brides, and the standing godfather to all the new-born bantlings. But in many places there is still a greater man belonging to the church than either the parson or the clerk himself. The person I mean is the squire, who, like the king, may be styled the head of the church in his own parish. If the benefice be in his own gift, the vicar is his creature, and of consequence entirely at his devotion; or if the care of the church be left to a curate, the Sunday fees, roast-beef and plum-pudding, and the liberty to shoot in the manor, will bring him as much under the squire's command as his dogs and horses. For this reason the bell is often kept tolling, and the people waiting in the churchyard an hour longer than the usual time; nor must the service begin till the squire has strutted up the aisle, and seated himself in the great pew in the chancel. The length of the sermon is also measured by the will of the squire, as formerly by the hour-glass, and I know one parish where the preacher has always the complacence to conclude his discourse, however abruptly, the minute that the squire gives the signal by rising up after his nap. In a village church, the squire's lady or the vicar's wife are perhaps the only females that are stared at for their finery; but in the large cities and towns, where the newest fashions are brought down weekly by the stage-coach or waggon, all the wives and daughters of the most topping tradesmen vie with each other every Sunday in the elegance of their apparel. I could even trace their gradations in their dress according to the opulence, the extent, and the distance of the place from London. I was at a church in a populous city in the north, where the macebearer cleared the way for Mrs Mayoress, who came sideling after him in an enormous fan-hoop, of a pattern which had never been seen before in those parts. At another church in a corporation town I saw several Negligees, with furbelowed aprons, which had long disputed the prize of superiority; but these were most wofully eclipsed by a burgess's daughter just come from London, who appeared in a Trollope or Slammerkin with treble ruffles to the cuffs, pinked and gimped, and the sides of the petticoat drawn up in festoons. In some lesser borough towns, the contest, I found, lay between three or four black and green bibs and aprons. At one, a grocer's wife attracted our eyes by a new-fashioned cap, called a Joan, and at another they were wholly taken up by a mercer's daughter in a nun's hood. I need not say anything of the behaviour of the congregation in these more polite places of religious resort; as the same genteel ceremonies are practised there as at the most fashionable churches in town. The ladies, immediately on their entrance, breathe a pious ejaculation through their fan-sticks, and the beaux very gravely address themselves to the haberdashers' bills, glued upon the lining of their hats. This pious duty is no sooner performed, than the exercise of bowing and courtesying succeeds: the locking and unlocking of the pews drowns the reader's voice at the beginning of the service; and the rustling of silks, added to the whispering and tittering of so much good company, renders him totally unintelligible to the very end of it.--I am, dear cousin, yours, etc. CONVERSATION.* Your talk to decency and reason suit, Nor prate like fools, or gabble like a brute! In the comedy of "The Frenchman in London," which, we are told, was acted at Paris with universal applause for several nights together, there is a character of a rough Englishman, who is represented as quite unskilled in the graces of conversation, and his dialogue consists almost entirely of a repetition of the common salutation of "How do you do?-How do you do?" Our nation has, indeed, been generally supposed to be of a sullen and uncommunicative disposition; while, on the other hand, the loquacious French have been allowed to possess the art of conversing beyond all other people. The Englishman requires to be wound up frequently, and stops very soon; but the Frenchman runs on in a continued alarum. Yet it must be acknowledged, that, as the English consist of very different humours, their manner of discourse admits of great variety; but the whole French nation converse alike, and there is no difference in their address between a marquis and a valet-de-chambre. We may frequently see a couple of French barbers accosting each other in the street, and paying their compliments with the same volubility of speech, the same grimace and action, as two courtiers in the Tuileries. I shall not attempt to lay down any particular rules for conversation, but rather point out such faults in discourse and behaviour as render the company of half mankind rather tedious than amusing. It is in vain, indeed, to look for conversation, where we might expect to find it in the greatest perfection, among persons of fashion; there it is almost annihilated by universal cardplaying; insomuch that I have heard it given as a reason why it is impossible for our present writers to succeed in the dialogue of genteel comedy, that our people of quality scarce ever meet but to game. All their discourse turns upon the odd trick and the four honours, and it is no less a maxim with the votaries of whist than with those of Bacchus, that talking spoils company. Every one endeavours to make himself as agreeable to society as he can; but it often happens, that those who most aim at shining in conversation overshoot their mark. Though a man succeeds, he should not (as is frequently the case) engross the whole talk to himself; for that destroys the very essence of conversation, which is talking together. We should try to keep up conversation like a ball bandied to and fro from one to another, rather than seize it ourselves, and drive it before us like a football. We should likewise be cautious to adapt the This subject was afterwards expanded into the delightful poem entitled "Conversation." Q matter of our discourse to our company, and not talk Greek before ladies, or of the last new furbelow to a meeting of country justices. But nothing throws a more ridiculous air over our conversation than certain peculiarities, easily acquired, but very difficultly conquered and discarded. In order to display these absurdities in a truer light, it is my present purpose to enumerate such of them as are most commonly to be met with; and first to take notice of those buffoons in society, the attitudinarians and facemakers. These accompany every word with a peculiar grimace or gesture; they assent with a shrug, and contradict with a twisting of the neck; are angry with a wry mouth, and pleased in a caper or a minuet step. They may be considered as speaking harlequins, and their rules of eloquence are taken from the posture-master. These should be condemned to converse only in dumb show with their own person in the lookingglass; as well as the smirkers and smilers, who so prettily set off their faces, together with their words, by a je-ne-scai-quoi between a grin and a dimple. With these we may likewise rank the affected tribe of mimics, who are constantly taking off the peculiar tone of voice or gesture of their acquaintance; though they are such wretched imitators, that (like bad painters) they are frequently forced to write the name under the picture, before we can discover any likeness. Next to these, whose elocution is absorbed in action, and who converse chiefly with their arms and legs, we may consider the professed speakers. And first, the emphatical; who squeeze, and press, and ram down every syllable with excessive vehemence and energy. These orators are remarkable for their distinct elocution and force of expression; they dwell on the important particles of and the, and the significant conjunctive and, which they seem to hawk up with much difficulty out of their own throats, and to cram them with no less pain into the ears of their auditors. These should be suffered only to syringe, as it were, the ears of a deaf man, through a hearingtrumpet; though I must confess, that I am equally offended with whisperers or low speakers, who seem to fancy all their acquaintance deaf, and come up so close to you, that they may be said to measure noses with you, and frequently overcome you with the exhalations of a powerful breath. I would have these oracular gentry obliged to talk at a distance through a speakingtrumpet, or apply their lips to the walls of a whispering-gallery. The wits who will not condescend to utter anything but a bon-mot, and the whistlers or tune-hummers, who never articulate at all, may be joined very agreeably together in concert; and to these tinkling cymbals I would also add the sounding brass-the bawler, who inquires after your health with the bellowing of a town-crier. adapted to the "soft parts of conversation," and sweetly "prattling out of fashion," make very pretty music from a beautiful face and a female tongue; but from a rough manly voice and coarse features, mere nonsense is as harsh and dissonant as a jig from a hurdy-gurdy. The swearers I have spoken of in a former paper; but the half-swearers, who split, and mince, and fritter their oaths into Gad's but, ad's fish, and demme, the Gothic humbuggers, and those who "nick-name God's creatures," and call a man a cabbage, a crab, a queer cub, an odd fish, and an unaccountable muskin, should never come into company without an interpreter. But I will not tire my readers' patience by pointing out all the pests of conversation; nor dwell particularly on the sensibles, who pronounce dogmatically on the most trivial points, and speak in sentences; the wonderers, who are always wondering what o'clock it is, or wondering whether it will rain or no, or wondering when the moon changes; the phraseologists, who explain a thing by all that, or enter into particulars with this, that, and t'other; and lastly, the silent men, who seem afraid of opening their mouths lest they should catch cold, and literally observe the precept of the Gospel, by letting their conversation be only yea, yea, and nay, nay. The rational intercourse kept up by conversation is one of our principal distinctions from brutes. We should, therefore, endeavour to turn this peculiar talent to our advantage, and consider the organs of speech as the instruments of understanding. We should be very careful not to use them as the weapons of vice, or tools of folly, and do our utmost to unlearn any trivial or ridiculous habits which tend to lessen the value of such an inestimable prerogative. It is indeed imagined by some philosophers, that even birds and beasts (though without the power of articulation) perfectly understand one another by the sounds they utter; and that dogs and cats, etc., have each a particular language to themselves, like different nations. Thus it may be supposed that the nightingales of Italy have as fine an ear for their own native wood notes, as any signor or signora for an Italian air; that the boars of Westphalia gruntle as expressively through the nose as the inhabitants in High German; and that the frogs in the dykes of Holland croak as intelligibly as the natives jabber their Low Dutch. However this may be, we may consider those whose tongues hardly seem to be under the influence of reason, and do not keep up the proper conversation of human creatures, as imitating the language of different animals: thus, for instance, the affinity between chatterers and monkeys, and praters and parrots, is too obvious not to occur at once; grunters and growlers may be justly compared to hogs; snarlers are curs; and the spitfire passionate are The tattlers, whose pliable pipes are admirably a sort of wild cats, that will not bear stroking, but will pur when they are pleased. Complainers are screech-owls; and story-tellers, always repeating the same dull note, are cuckoos. Poets that prick up their ears at their own hideous braying are no better than asses; critics in general are venomous serpents that delight in hissing; and some of them, who have got by heart a few technical terms, without knowing their meaning, are no other than magpies. I myself, who have crowed to the whole town for near three years past, may perhaps put my readers in mind of a dunghill cock; but as I must acquaint them that they will hear the last of me on this day fortnight, I hope they will then consider me as a swan, who is supposed to sing sweetly in his dying moments. WILLIAM HAZLITT.* BORN 1778: DIED 1830. (From "The Round Table," "Political Essays," and "Table Talk.") ON THE TATLER. Of all the periodical Essayists (our ingenious predecessors), the Tatler has always appeared to us the most accomplished and agreeable. Montaigne, who was the father of this kind of personal authorship among the moderns, in which the reader is admitted behind the curtain, and sits down with the writer in his gown and slippers, was a most magnanimous and undisguised egotist; but Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., was the more disinterested gossip of the two. The French author is contented to describe the peculiarities of his own mind and person, which he does with a most copious and unsparing hand. The English journalist, good-naturedly, lets you into the secret both of his own affairs and those of his neighbours. A young lady, on the other side of Temple Bar, cannot be seen at her glass for half a day together, but Mr Bickerstaff takes due notice of it; and he has the first intelligence of the symptoms of the belle passion appearing in any young gentleman at the west end of the town. The departures and arrivals of widows with handsome jointures, either to bury their grief in the country, or to procure a second husband in town, are regularly recorded in his pages. He is well acquainted with the celebrated beauties of the last age at the court of Charles II., and the old gentleman often grows romantic in recounting the disastrous strokes which his youth suffered from the glances * "I should belie my own conscience, if I said less than that I think W. H. to be in his natural and healthy state one of the wisest and finest spirits. I shall go to my grave without finding, or expecting to find, such another companion."-Charles Lamb. "Hazlitt had a keen sense of the beautiful and subtle; and what is more, he was deeply imbued with sympathies for the humane. He ranks high among the social writers-his intuitive feeling was in favour of the multitude; yet had he nothing of the demagogue in literature; he did not pander to a single vulgar passion."-(Bulwer) Lord Lytton. + The papers from "The Round Table" consist of contributions to the Exaniner in 1815-17. of their bright eyes and their unaccountable caprices. In particular, he dwells with a secret satisfaction on one of his mistresses who left him for a rival, and whose constant reproach to her husband, on occasion of any quarrel between them, was, "I that might have married the famous Mr Bickerstaff, to be treated in this manner!" The club at the Trumpet consists of a set of persons as entertaining as himself. The cavalcade of the justice of the peace, the knight of the shire, the country squire, and the young gentleman, his nephew, who waited on him at his chambers, in such form and ceremony, seem not to have settled the order of their precedence to this hour; and we should hope the Upholsterer and his companions in the Green Park stand as fair a chance for immortality as some modern politicians. Mr Bickerstaff himself is a gentleman and a scholar, a humorist and a man of the world'; with a great deal of nice easy naivete about him. If he walks out and is caught in a shower of rain, he makes us amends for this unlucky accident by a criticism on the shower in Virgil, and concludes with a burlesque copy of verses on a city shower. He entertains us, when he dates from his own apartment, with a quotation from Plutarch or a moral reflection; from the Grecian coffee-house with politics; and from Will's or the Temple with the poets and players, the beaux and men of wit and pleasure about town. In reading the pages of the Tatler, we seem as if suddenly transported to the age of Queen Anne, of toupees and full-bottomed periwigs. The whole appearance of our dress and manners undergoes a delightful metamorphosis. We are surprised with the rustling of hoops and the glittering of paste buckles. The beaux and the belles are of a quite different species; we distinguish the dappers, the smarts, and the pretty fellows, as they pass; we are introduced to Betterton and Mrs Oldfield behind the scenes; kethman and Mr Bullock; we listen to a dispute are made familiar with the persons of Mr Pen at a tavern on the merits of the Duke of Marlborough or Marshal Turenne; or are present at the first rehearsal of a play by Vanbrugh, or the reading of a new poem by Mr Pope. The privilege of thus virtually transporting ourselves to past times, is even greater than that of visiting distant places. London, a hundred years ago, would be better worth seeing than Paris at the present moment. sisters, one of whom held her head up higher than ordinary, from having on a pair of flowered garters, and of the married lady who complained to the Tatler of the neglect of her husband, are unquestionably Steele's. If the Tatler is not inferior to the Spectator in manners and character, it is very superior to it in the interest of many of the stories. Several of the incidents related by Steele have never been sur. passed in the heartrending pathos of private distress. We might refer to those of the lover and his mistress when the theatre caught fire, of the bridegroom who, by accident, kills his bride on the day of their marriage, the story of Mr Eustace and his wife, and the fine dream about his own mistress when a youth. What has given its superior popularity to the Spectator, is the greater gravity of its pretensions, its moral dissertations and critical reasonings, by which we confess we are less edified than by other things. Systems and opinions change, but nature is always true. It is the extremely moral and didactic tone of the Spectator which makes us apt to think of Addison (according to Mandeville's sarcasm) as "a parson in a tie-wig." Some of the moral essays are, however, exquis itely beautiful and happy. Such are the reflections in Westminster Abbey, on the Royal Exchange, and some very affecting ones on the death of a young lady. These, it must allowed, are the perfection of elegant sermonising. His critical essays we do not think quite so good. We prefer Steele's occasional selection of beautiful poetical passages, without any affectation of analysing their beauties, to Addison's fine-spun theories. The best criticism in the Spectator, that on the Cartoons of Raphael, is by Steele. We owed this acknowledgment to a writer who has so often put us in good humour with ourselves and everything about us, when few things else could.* It may be said that all this is to be found, in the same or a greater degree, in the Spectator. We do not think so; or, at least, there is in the last work a much greater proportion of commonplace matter. We have always preferred the Tatler to the Spectator. Whether it is owing to our having been earlier or better acquainted with the one than the other, our pleasure in reading the two works is not at all in proportion to their comparative reputation. The Tatler contains only half the number of volumes, and we will venture to say, at least an equal quantity of sterling wit and sense. "The first sprightly runnings" are there: it has more of the original spirit, more of the freshness and stamp of nature. The indications of character and strokes of humour are more true and frequent, the reflections that suggest themselves arise more from the occasion, and are less spun out into regular dissertations. They are more like the remarks which occur in sensible conversation, and less like a lecture. Something is left to the understanding of the reader. Steele scems to have gone into his closet only to set down what he observed out of doors; Addison seems to have spun out and wire-drawn the hints, which he borrowed from Steele, or took from nature, to the utmost. We do not mean to depreciate Addison's talents, but we wish to do justice to Steele, who was, upon the whole, a less artificial and more original writer. The descriptions of Steele resemble loose sketches or fragments of a comedy; those of Addison are ingenious paraphrases on the genuine text. The characters of the club, not only in the Tatler, but in the Spectator, were drawn by Steele. That of Sir Roger de Coverley is among them. Addison has gained himself eternal honour by his manner of filling up this last character. Those of Will Wimble and Will Honeycomb are not a whit behind it in delicacy and felicity. Many of the most exquisite pieces in the Tatler are also Addison's, as the "Court of Honour," and the "Personification of Musical Instruments." We do not know whether the picture of the family of an old acquaintance, in which the children run to let Mr Bickerstaff in at the door, and the one that loses the race that way turns back to tell the father that he is come, with the nice gradation of incredulity in the little boy, who is got into "Guy of Warwick" and the "Seven Champions," and who shakes his head at the veracity of "Esop's Fables"-is hardly think of (that of Sir Isaac Newton is among Steele's or Addison's.* The account of the two "It is Steele's: and the whole paper (No. 95) is in ON MANNER. It was the opinion of Lord Chesterfield that manner is of more importance than matter. This opinion seems at least to be warranted by his most delightful manner. The dream about the mistress, however, is given to Addison by the editors, and the general style of that number is his; though, from the story's being related personally of Bickerstaff, who is also represented as having been at that time in the army, we conclude it to have originally come from Steele, perhaps in the course of conversation. The particular incident is much more like a story of his than of Addison's."-Leigh Hunt. *"We had in our hands the other day an original copy of the Tatler, and a list of the subscribers. It is curious to see some names there which we should them), and also to observe the degree of interest excited by those of the different persons, which is not adjusted according to the rules of the Heralds' College."--Leigh Hunt. |