CHAPTER XXI. P. I. A DOUBT CONCERNING THE USES OF PHILOSOPHY. El comienzo de salud es el saber, distinguir y conocer Proverbios del Marques de Santillana. THAT grave reply produced a short pause. It was broken by the boy, who said, returning to the subject, "I have been thinking, father, that it is not a good thing to be a philosopher." "And what, my son, has led thee to that thought?" "What I have read at the end of the dictionary, father. There was one philosopher that was pounded in a mortar.” That, Daniel," said the father, "could neither have been the philosopher's fault nor his choice." 66 "But it was because he was a philosopher, my lad," said Guy, "that he bore it so bravely, and said, 'Beat on; you can only bruise the shell of Anaxarchus! If he had not been a philosopher they might have pounded him just the same, but they would never have put him in the dictionary. Epictetus in like manner bore the torments which his wicked master inflicted upon him without a groan, only saying, 'Take care, or you will break my leg;' and when the leg was broken, he looked the wretch in the face, and said, 'I told you you would break it.' "But," said the youngster, "there was one philosopher who chose to live in a tub; and another, who, that he might never again see anything to withdraw his mind from meditation, put out his eyes by looking upon a bright brass basin, such as I cured my warts in." "He might have been a wise man," said William Dove, "but not wondrous wise; for if he had, he would not have used the basin to put his eyes out. He would have jumped into a quickset hedge, and scratched them out, like the man of our town; because, when he saw his eyes were out, he might then have jumped into another hedge and scratched them in again. The man of our town was the greatest philosopher of the two." "And there was one," continued the boy, "who had better have blinded himself at once, for he did nothing else but cry at everything he saw. Was not this being very foolish?" "I am sure," says William, "it was not being merry and wise." "There was another who said that hunger was his daily food." "He must have kept such a table as Duke Humphrey," quoth William; "I should not have liked to dine with him." "Then there was Crates," said the persevering boy; "he had a good estate, and sold it, and threw the money into the sea, saying, 'Away, ye paltry cares! I will drown you, that you may not drown me.'" "I should like to know," said William, "what the overseers said to that chap, when he applied to the parish for support." 66 They sent him off to bedlam, I suppose," said the mother; "it was the fit place for him, poor creature." "And when Aristippus set out upon a journey, he bade his servants throw away all their money, that they might travel the better. Why, they must have begged their way, and it cannot be right to beg if people are not brought to it by misfortune. And there were some who thought there was no God. I am sure they were fools, for the Bible says so." “Well, Daniel," said Guy, "thou hast studied the end of the dictionary to some purpose!" "And the Bible, too, Master Guy!" said Dinah, her countenance brightening with joy at her son's concluding remark. "It's the best part of the book,” said the boy, replying to his schoolmaster; "there are more entertaining and surprising things there than I ever read in any other place, except in my father's book about Pantagruel." THE elder Daniel had listened to this dialogue in his usual quiet way, smiling sometimes at his brother William's observations. He now stroked his forehead, and looking mildly but seriously at the boy, addressed him thus: "My son, many things appear strange or silly in themselves if they are presented to us simply, without any notice So with William's assistance, the goose was tried. They began with due prudence, according to rule, by catching a goose. In this matter a couple of ducks Lord Lauderdale knows would not have answered as well. The boy then, having gone through the ceremony which the devotees of Baal are said to have performed at the foot of his image, as the highest act of devotion, (an act of super-reverence it was,) and for which the Jews are said to have called him in mockery Baalzebul, instead of Baalzebub, cried out that he was ready. He was at that moment in the third of those eight attitudes which form a Rik`ath. My readers who are versed in the fashionable poets of the day-(this day I mean-their fashion not being ensured for to-morrow)-such readers, I say, know that arose is called a ghul, and a nightingale a bulbul, and that this is one way of dressing up English poetry in Turkish costume. But if they desire to learn a little more of what Mohammedan customs are, they may consult D'Ohsson's Tableau of the Ottoman Empire, and there they may not only find the eight attitudes described, but see them represented. Of the third attitude, or Rukeou as it is denominated, I shall only say that the ancients represented one of their deities in it, and that it is the very attitude in which As in præsenti committed that notorious act for which he is celebrated in scholastic and immortal rhyme, and for which poor Syntax bore the blame. Verbum sit sat sapienti. During the reign of liberty and equality, a Frenchman was guillotined for exemplifying it under Marat's monument in the Place du Carrousel. The bird was brought, but young Daniel had not the strength of young Gargantua; the goose, being prevented by William from drawing back, pressed forward; they were by the side of the brook, and the boy, by this violent and unexpected movement, was, as the French would say in the politest and most delicate of all languages, culbuté, or, in sailors' English, capsized into the water. The misfortune did not end there; for falling with his forehead against a stone, he received a cut upon the brow which left a scar as long as he lived. It was not necessary to prohibit a repetition of what William called the speriment. Both had been sufficiently frightened; and William never felt more pain of mind than on this occasion, when the father, with a shake of the head, a look of displeasure, and a low voice, told him he ought to have known better than to have put the lad upon such pranks! The mishap, however, was not without its use. For in after life, when Daniel felt an inclination to do anything which might better be left undone, the recollection that he had tried the goose served as a salutary memento, and saved him, perhaps, sometimes from worse consequences. CHAPTER XIX. P. I. A CONVERSATION WITH MISS GRAVEAIRS. Operi suscepto inserviendum fuit: so Jacobus Mycillus pleadeth for himself in his translation of Lucian's Dialogues, and so do I: I must and will perform my task.-BURTON. "Ir does not signify, Miss Graveairs! you may flirt your fan, and overcloud that white forehead with a frown; but I assure you the last chapter could not be dispensed with. The doctor used to relate the story himself to his friends; and often alluded to it as the most wholesome lesson he had ever received. My dear Miss Graveairs, let not those intelligent eyes shoot forth in anger, arrows which ought to be reserved for other execution. You ought not to be displeased; ought not, must not, cannot, shall not!" "But you ought not to write such things, Mr. Author; really you ought not. What can be more unpleasant than to be reading aloud, and come unexpectedly upon something so strange that you know not whether to proceed or make a full stop, or where to look, or what to do? It is too bad of you, sir, let me tell you! and if I come to anything more of the kind, I must discard the book. It is provoking enough to meet with so much that one does not understand: but to meet with anything that one ought not to understand is worse. Sir, it is not to be forgiven; and I tell you again, that if I meet with anything more of the same kind I must discard the book." 66 Nay, dear Miss Graveairs!" "I must, Mr. Author; positively I must." Nay, dear Miss Graveairs! Banish Tristram Shandy! banish Smollett, banish Fielding, banish Richardson! But for the doctor-sweet Doctor Dove, kind Dr. Dove, true Doctor Dove, banish not him! Banish Doctor Dove, and banish all the world! Come, come, good sense is getting the better of preciseness. That stitch in the forehead will not long keep the brows in their constrained position; and the incipient smile which already brings out that dimple, is the natural and proper feeling." "Well, you are a strange man!" "Call me a rare one, and I shall be satisfied. 'O rare Ben Jonson' you know was epitaph enough for one of our greatest men. "But seriously, why should you put anything in your book, which, if not actually exceptionable, exposes it at least to that sort of censure which is most injurious?" "That question, dear madam, is so sensibly proposed that I will answer it with all serious sincerity. There is nothing exceptionable in these volumes; Certes,' as Euphues Lily has said, I think there be more speeches here which for gravity will mislike the foolish, than unseemly terms which for vanity may offend the wise.' There is nothing in them that I might not have read to Queen Elizabeth if it had been my fortune to have lived in her golden days; nothing that can by possibility taint the imagination, or strengthen one evil propensity, or weaken one virtuous principle. But they are not composed like a forgotten novel of Dr. Towers's to be read aloud in dissenting families instead of a moral essay or a sermon; nor like Mr. Kett's Emily to complete the education of young ladies by supplying them with an abstract of universal knowledge. Neither have they any pretensions to be placed on the same shelf with Colebs. But the book is a moral book; its tendency is good, and the morality is ooth the wholesomer and pleasanter because it is not administered as physic, but given as food. I don't like morality in doses." "But why, my good Mr. Author, why lay yourself open Lo censure ?" "Miss Graveairs, nothing excellent was ever produced by any author who had the fear of censure before his eyes. He who would please posterity must please himself by choosing his own course. There are only two classes of writers who dare do this, the best and the worst-for this is one of the many cases in which extremes meet. The mediocres in every grade aim at pleasing the public, and conform themselves to the fashion of their age, whatever it may be." My doctor, like the Matthew Henderson of Burns, was a queer man, and in that respect I, his friend and biographer, humbly resemble him. The resemblance may be natural, or I may have caught it-this I pretend not to decide, but so it is. Perhaps it might have been well if I had resolved upon a further designation of chapters, and distributed them into masculine and feminine; or into the threefold arrangement of virile, feminile and puerile; considering the book as a family breakfast, where there should be meat for men, muffins for women, and milk for children. Or I might have adopted the device of the Porteusian Society, and marked my chapters as they (very usefully) have done the Bible, pointing out what should be read by all persons for edification, and what may be passed over by the many, as instructive or intelligible only to the learned. Here, however, the book is An orchard bearing several trees, And fruits of several taste.* * Middleton and Rowley's Spanish Gipsy. |