written it with a second sight of the application thus to be made of it: There is a kind of physiognomy in the titles of books no less than in the faces of men, by which a skilful observer will as well know what to expect from the one as the other.' This was the remark of one whose wisdom can never be obsolete; and whose wit, though much of it has become so, it will always be worth while for an Englishman to study and to understand." Mr. D'Israeli has said that "the false idea which a title conveys is alike prejudicial to the author and the reader, and that titles are generally too prodigal of their promises;" but yet there is an error on the other hand to be avoided, for if they say too little they may fail of attracting notice. I bore in mind what Baillet says upon this subject, to which he has devoted a long chapter: "Le titre d'un livre doit être son abregé, et il en doit renfermer tout l'esprit, autant qu'il est possible. Il doit être le centre de toutes les paroles et de toutes les pensées du livre; de telle sorte qu'on n'y en puisse pas même trouver une qui n'y dit de la correspondance et du rapport." From this rule there has been no departure. Everything that is said of Peter Hopkins relates to the doctor prospectively, because he was the doctor's master; everything that may be said of, or from myself, relates to the doctor retrospectively, or reflectively, because he, though in a different sense, was mine: and everything that is said about anything else, relates to him collaterally, being either derivative or tributary, either divergent from the main subject, or convergent to its main end. But albeit I claim the privilege of motley, and in right thereof yet I have in no instance abused that charter, or visited any one too roughly. Nor will I ever do against the world what John Kinsaider did, in unseemly defiance-nor against the wind either; though it has been no maxim of mine, nor ever shall be, to turn with the tide, or go with the crowd, unless they are going my road, and there is no other way that I can take to escape the annoyance of their company. “And is this any reason, Mr. Author, why you should get on as slowly with the story of your book as the House of Commons with the business of the nation, in the present reformed parliament, with Lord Althorpe for its leader?" "Give me credit, sir, for a temper as imperturbably good as that which Lord Althorpe presents, like a sevenfold * Shakspeare. shield of lamb's wool, to cover him against all attacks, and I will not complain of the disparagement implied in your comparison." "Your confounded good temper, Mr. Author, seems to pride itself upon trying experiments on the patience of your readers. Here I am, near the end of the last volume, and if any one asked me what the book is about, it would be impossible for me to answer the question. I have never been able to guess at the end of one chapter what was likely to be the subject of the next." "Let me reply to that observation, sir, by an anecdote. A collector of scarce books was one day showing me his small but curious hoard: Have you ever seen a copy of this book?' he asked, with every rare volume that he put into my hands; and when my reply was that I had not, he always rejoined, with a look and tone of triumphant delight, 'I should have been exceedingly sorry if you had!' "Let me tell you another anecdote, not less to the purpose. A thorough-bred foxhunter found himself so much out of health a little before the season for his sport began, that he took what was then thought a long journey to consult a physician, and get some advice which he hoped would put him into a condition for taking the field. Upon his return his friends asked him what the doctor had said. Why,' said the squire, he told me that I've got a dyspepsy. I don't know what that is; but it's some damned thing or other, I suppose.' My good sir, however much at a loss you may be to guess what is coming in the next chapter, you can have no apprehension that it may turn out anything like what he, with too much reason, supposed a dyspepsy to be. "Lecteur, mon ami, I have given you the advantage of a motto from Sophocles; and were it as apposite to me as it seems applicable when coming from you, I might content myself with replying to it in a couplet of the honest old winebibbing Water Poet: 'That man may well be called an idle mome That mocks the cock because he wears a comb.' But no one who knows a hawk from a heronshaw, or a sheep's head from a carrot, or the Lord Chancellor Brougham, in his wig and robes, from a Guy Vaux on the fifth of November, can be so mistaken in judgment as to say that I make use of many words in making nothing understood; nor as to think me, ἄνθρωπον ἀγριοποιον, αὐθαδόστομον, ἔχοντ ̓ ἀχαλινον, ἀκρατὲς, ἀπύλωτον στόμα, * Aristophanen. "Any subject is inexhaustible if it be fully treated of; that is, if it be treated doctrinally and practically, analytically and synthetically, historically and morally, critically, popularly, and eloquently, philosophically, exegetically, and æsthetically, logically, neologically, etymologically, archaiologic.. ally, Daniologically, and Doveologically, which is to say, summing up all in one, doctorologically. "Now, my good reader, whether I handle my subject in any of these ways, or in any other legitimate way, this is cer, tain, that I never handle it as a cow does a musket; and that I have never wandered from it, not even when you have drawn me into a tattle-de-moy.' "Auctor incomparabilis, what is a tattle-de-moy?" "Lecteur, mon ami, you shall now know what to expect in the next chapter, for I will tell you there what a tattle-de. moy is." CHAPTER XCIV. P. I. THE AUTHOR DISCOVERS CERTAIN MUSICAL CORRESPONDENCES TO THESE HIS LUCUBRATIONS. And music mild I learn'd, that tells Tune, time, and measure of the song. 66 A TATTLE-DE-MOY, reader, was a newfashioned thing" in the year of our Lord 1676, "much like a seraband, only it had in it more of conceit and of humour, and it might supply the place of a seraband at the end of a suit of lessons at any time." That simplehearted, and therefore happy old man, Thomas Mace, invented it himself, because he would be a little modish, he said; and he called it a tattle-de-moy, “because it tattles, and seems to speak those very words or syllables. Its humour," said he, "is toyish, jocund, harmless, and pleasant; and as if it were one playing with or tossing a ball up and down; yet it seems to have a very solemn countenance, and like unto one of a sober and innocent condition or disposition; not antic, apish, or wild." If, indeed, the gift of prophecy were imparted, or imputed to musicians as it has sometimes been to poets, Thomas Mace might be thought to have unwittingly foreshown certain characteristics of the unique opus which is now before the reader: so nearly has he described them when instruct ing his pupils how to give right and proper names to all lessons they might meet with. "There are, first, preludes; then, secondly, fancies and voluntaries; thirdly, pavines; fourthly, allmaines; fifthly, airs; sixthly, galliards; seventhly, corantoes; eighthly, serabands; ninthly, tattle-de-moys; tenthly, chichonas; eleventhly, toys or jigs; twelfthly, common tunes; and, lastly, grounds, with divisions upon them. "The prelude is commonly a piece of confused, wild, shapeless kind of intricate play, (as most use it,) in which no perfect form, shape, or uniformity can be perceived; but a random business, pottering and groping, up and down, from one stop, or key, to another; and generally so performed, to make trial, whether the instrument be well in tune or not; by which doing after they have completed their tuning, they will (if they be masters) fall into some kind of voluntary or fanciful play more intelligible; which (if he be a master able) is a way whereby he may more fully and plainly show his excellence and ability, than by any other kind of undertaking; and has an unlimited and unbounded liberty, in which he may make use of the forms and shapes of all the rest." Here the quasi-prophetic lutanist may seem to have described the ante-initial chapters of this opus, and those other pieces which precede the beginning thereof, and resemble A lively prelude, fashioning the way For though a censorious reader will pick out such expressions only as may be applied with a malign meaning; yet in what he may consider confused and shapeless, and call pottering and groping, the competent observer will recognise the hand of a master, trying his instrument and tuning it; and then passing into a voluntary, whereby he approves his skill, and foreshows the spirit of his performance. The pavines, Master Mace tells us, are lessons of two, three, or four strains, very grave and solemn; full of art and profundity, but seldom used in "these our light days," as in many respects he might well call the days of King Charles the Second. Here he characterizes our graver chapters, which are in strains so deep, so soothing, and so solemn withal, that if such a pavine had been played in the hall of the palace at Aix, when King Charlemagne asked the archbishop to dance, the invitation could not have been deemed inde corous. Allmaines are very airy and lively, and generally in com * Keats. CHAPTER XCII. P. I. CONCERNING PETER HOPKINS AND THE INFLUENCE OF THE MOON AND TIDES UPON THE HUMAN BODY-A CHAPTER WHICH SOME PERSONS MAY DEEM MORE CURIOUS THAN DULL, AND OTHERS MORE DULL THAN CURIOUS. A man that travelleth to the most desirable home, hath a habit of desire to it all the way; but his present business is his travel; and horse, and company, and inns, and ways, and weariness, &c., may take up more of his sensible thoughts, and of his talk and action, than his home.-BAXTER. FEW things in this world are useless-none, indeed, but what are of man's own invention. It was one of Oberlin's wise maxims that nothing should be destroyed, nothing thrown away or wasted; he knew that every kind of refuse which will not serve to feed pigs, may be made to feed both man and beast in another way by serving for manure: perhaps he learned this from the Chinese proverb, that a wise man saves.even the parings of his nails and the clippings of his beard for this purpose. "To burn a hair," says Darwin, "or a straw, unnecessarily, diminishes the sum of matter fit for quick nutrition, by decomposing it nearly into its elements and should therefore give some compunction to a mind of universal sympathy." Let not this cant about universal sympathy nauseate a reader of common sense, and make him regard Darwin's opinion here with the contempt which his affectation deserves. Everything may be of use to the farmer. And so it is with knowledge; there is none, however vain in itself and however little it may be worth the pains of acquiring it, which may not at some time or other be turned to account. Peter Hopkins found that his acquaintance with astrology was sometimes of good service in his professional practice. In his days most of the almanacs contained Rules Astrological showing under what aspects and positions different modes of remedy were to be administered, and different complexions were to let blood. He had often to deal with persons who believed in their almanac as implicitly as in their Bible, and who studied this part of it with a more anxious sense of its practical importance to themselves. When these notions were opposed to the course of proceeding which the case required, he could gain his point by talking to them in their own language, and displaying, if it were called for, a knowledge of the art which might have astonished the al |