The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 14, No. 382, July 25, 1829
TekstSPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS
THE LIBERTINE'S CONFESSION
In Imitation of the Writers of the Sixteenth Century
I'm sad and sore afraid,
That fickle, and forsworn,
I've sported life away,
And now am left forlorn.
Poor fool! I dreamt the years
Of youth would never fly,
And pleasure's brimming bowl
Methought could ne'er run dry.
That woman's bounteous love
Should e'er wax cold for me!
It seem'd that she must first
A woman cease to be.
Her fondest smiles I thought
My rights by charter were;
Her sighs, her tears, forsooth,—
Whilst I—was free as air.
I've knelt at many a shrine,
Of wit and beauty too;
I've lisp'd light vows to all,
And sworn that all were true.
My pastime was to gain
Their young and grateful love,
Then break the heart I won,
And straight to others rove.
Ah! wild wit, now at last
Thy vagrancies are o'er;
The ear and gazing eye
That you enthrall'd before.
No longer hear or see;
Whilst those you now would woo,
The time-worn truant slight,
Nor dream of love with you.
New Monthly Magazine.
Dublin is a great city. Dublin, as the late Lord L–th used to say, is "one of the tay-drinkenest, say-bathinest, car-drivinest places in the world; it flogs for divarsion."
THE TOYMAN IS ABROAD
(Concluded from page 46.)
There is a point at which the inconvenience of superfluities so far exceeds their utility, that luxury becomes converted into a perfect bore. What, for instance, but an annoyance, would be the most splendid feast, to a man whose stomach is already overladen with food? Human ingenuity may effect much; and the Romans, by means of emetics, met this emergency with considerable skill; but on a more enlarged experience of general history, it must be conceded, that it is quite impossible to add one more superfluous meal to those already established by general usage. So also in matters of dress, ladies' hats must not be larger than the actual doorways of the country will admit—not at least until time is allowed for a corresponding increase in our architectural proportions. With respect to personal ornaments also, ear-rings must not be so weighty as to tear the lobes of the ears; nor should a bracelet prevent, by its size, the motions of the arm. "Barbaric pomp and gold" is a fine thing; but a medallion, as heavy and as cumbrous as a shield, appended to a lady's bosom, would be any thing but a luxury. So, in the other extreme, a watch should not be so small as to render the dial-plate illegible; nor should a shoe be so tight as to lame its wearer for life. Beauty, it has been said, should learn to suffer; and there are, I am aware, resources in vanity, that will reconcile man, and woman too, to martyrdom; but these resources should not be exhausted wantonly; and in pleasure, as in economy, there is no benefit in lighting the candle at both ends. The true philosopher extracts the greatest good out of every thing; and fools only, as Horace has it, run into one vice in trying to avoid another. Let not the reader, from these remarks, suppose that their author is a morose censurer of the times; or that the least sneer is intended against that idol of all orthodoxy "things as they are." As a general proposition, nothing can be more true, than that whatever is established, even in the world of fashion, is, for the time being, wisest, discreetest, best; and, woe betide the man that flies too directly in its face.
There is, however, one point upon which I own myself a little sore; and in which, I do think, superfluities are carried to a somewhat vicious excess. The point to which I allude, and I beg the patience of the reader, is the vast increase of superfluities, which of late years have become primary necessaries in the appointment of a well-furnished house. Here, indeed, is a revolution; a revolution more formidable than the French and the American emancipation put together. We all remember the time when one tea-table, two or three card-tables, a pier glass, a small detachment of chairs, with two armed corporals to command them, on either side the fire-place, with a square piece of carpet in the centre of the floor, made a very decent display in the drawing, or (as it was then preposterously called) the dining-room. As yet, rugs for the hearth were not; and twice a day did Betty go upon her knees to scour the marble and uncovered slab. In the bedrooms of those days, a narrow slip of carpet round the bed was the maximum of woollen integument allowed for protecting the feet of the midnight wanderer from his couch; and, in the staircases of the fairest mansions, a like slip meandered down the centre of the flight of steps. At that time, curtains rose and fell in a line parallel to the horizon, after the simple plan of the green siparium of our theatres; and, being strictly confined to the windows, they never dreamed of displaying themselves in front of a door. No golden serpents then twisted their voluminous folds across the entire breadth of the room; nor did richly-carved cods' heads and shoulders, under the denomination of dolphins, or glittering spread eagles, with a brass ring in their mouths, support fenestral draperies, which rival the display of a Waterloo-house calico-vender. Thus far, I admit, the change is an improvement. Nay, I could away with ladders to go to bed withal, though many a time and oft they have broken my shins. I would not either object to sofas and ottomans, in any reasonable proportion; but protest I must, and in the strongest terms too, against such a multiplication and variety of easy chairs, as effectually exclude the possibility of easy sitting; and against the overweening increase of spider-tables, that interferes with rectilinear progression. An harp mounted on a sounding-board, which is a stumbling-block to the feet of the short-sighted, is, I concede, an absolute necessity; and a piano-forte, like a coffin, should occupy the centre even of the smallest given drawing-room—"the court awards it, and the law doth give it,"—but why multiply footstools, till there is no taking a single step in safety? An Indian cabinet also, or a buhl armoire, are, either, or both of them, very fit and becoming; but it cannot be right to make a broker's shop of your best apartment. An ink-stand, as large as a show twelfth-cake, is just and lawful; ditto, an ornamental escrutoire; and a nécessaire for the work-table is, if there be meaning in language, perfectly necessary. These, with an adequate contingent of musical snuff-boxes, or molu clocks, China figures, alabaster vases and flower-pots, together with a discreet superfluity of cut-paper nondescripts, albums, screens, toys, prints, caricatures, duodecimo classics, new novels and souvenirs, to cut a dash, and litter the tables, must be allowed to the taste and refinement of the times. But surely some space should be left for depositing a coffee-cup, or laying down a useful volume, when the hand may require to be relieved from its weight, or when it is proper to take a pinch of snuff, or agreeable to wipe one's forehead. Josses, beakers, and Sevres' vases have unquestionably the entrée into a genteel apartment; but they are not entitled to a monopoly of the locale; nor are Roman antiquities, or statues even by Canova, justifiable in usurping the elbow-room of living men and women. Most unfortunately for myself, I have a very small house, and a wife of the most enlarged taste; and the disproportion between these blessings is so great, that I cannot move without the risk of a heavy pecuniary loss by breakage, and a heavier personal affliction in perpetual imputations of awkwardness. Then, again, it is no easy matter to put on a smiling and indifferent countenance, whenever a friend, accustomed to some latitude of motion, runs, as is often the case, his devastating chair against a high-priced work of art, or overturns a table laden with an "infinite thing" in costly bijouterie. I have long made it a rule to exclude from my visiting-list, or at least not to let up stairs, ladies who pay their morning calls with a retinue of children: but the thing is not always possible; and one urchin with his whip will destroy more in half an hour, than the worth of a month's average domestic expenditure. Oh! how I hate the little fidgeting, fingering, dislocating imps! A bull in a china-shop is innocuous to the most orderly and amenable of them. Why did Providence make children? and why does not some wise Draconic law banish them for ever to the nursery?
The general merit of nick-nacks is unquestioned. Ornaments, I admit, are ornamental; and works of art afford intellectual amusement of the highest order. But then perfection is their only merit; and a crack or a flaw destroys all the pleasure of a sensible beholder. Yet I have not a statue that is not a torso, nor a Chelsea china shepherdess with her full complement of fingers. I have not a vase with both its handles, a snuff-box that performs its waltz correctly, nor a volume of prints that is not dogs-eared, stained, and ink-spotted. These are serious evils; but they are the least that flow from a neglect of the maxim which stands at the head of my paper. Perpend it well, reader; and bear ever in mind that, in our desires, as in our corporeal structure, it is not given to man to add a cubit to his stature. I am very tired; so "dismiss me—enough." New Monthly Magazine.