|
rest, by the same analogy, is so much of heaven. Now, I (being very thin) think dif- ferently; and that so much of motion, is so much of life, and so much of joy ---- and that to stand still, or get on but slowly, is death and the devil ---- Hollo! Ho! ---- the whole world's asleep! ---- bring out the horses ---- grease the wheels ---- tie on the mail ---- and drive a nail into that moulding ---- I'll not lose a moment ---- Now the wheel we are talking of, and whereinto (but notwhereunto, for that would make an Ixion's wheel of it) he curseth his enemies, according to the bishop's |
|
bishop's habit of body, should certainly be a post-chaise wheel, whether they were set up in Palestine at that time or not ---- and my wheel, for the contrary reasons, must as certainly be a cart-wheel groaning round its revolution once in an age ; and of which sort, were I to turn commentator, I should make no scru- ple to affirm, they had great store in that hilly country. I love the Pythagoreans (much more than ever I dare tell my dear Jenny) for their ``Khorismon apo tou Somatos, eis to Kalos Philosophein'' ---- [their] ``getting out of the body, in order to think well.'' No man thinks right whilst he is in it ; blinded as he must be, with his congenial humours, and drawn dif- ferently |
|
ferently aside, as the bishop and my- self have been, with too lax or too tense a fibre ---- REASON, is half of it, SENSE ; and the measure of heaven itself is but the measure of our present appe- tites and concoctions ---- ---- But which of the two, in the present case, do you think to be mostly in the wrong? You, certainly : quoth she, to dis- turb a whole family so early. C H A P. |
|
---- But she did not know I was un- der a vow not to shave my beard till I got to Paris ; ---- yet I hate to make mysteries of nothing ; ---- 'tis the cold cautiousness of one of those little souls from which Lessius (lib. 13. de moribus divinis, cap. 24.) hath made his esti- mate, wherein he setteth forth, That one Dutch mile, cubically multiplied, will allow room enough, and to spare, for eight hundred thousand millions, which he supposes to be as great a num- ber of souls (counting from the fall of Adam) as can possibly be damn'd to the end of the world. From |
|
From what he has made this second estimate ---- unless from the parental goodness of God -- I don't know ---- I am much more at a loss what could be in Franciscus Libbera's head, who pretends that no less a space than one of two hun- dred Italian miles multiplied into itself, will be sufficient to hold the like num- ber ---- he certainly must have gone up- on some of the old Roman souls, of which he had read, without reflecting how much, by a gradual and most ta- bid decline, in a course of eighteen hundred years, they must unavoidably have shrunk, so as to have come, when he wrote, almost to nothing. In |
|
In Lessius's time, who seems the cooler man, they were as little as can be imagined ---- ---- We find them less now ---- And next winter we shall find them less again ; so that if we go on from little to less, and from less to nothing, I hesitate not one moment to affirm, that in half a century, at this rate, we shall have no souls at all ; which being the period beyond which I doubt likewise of the existence of the Chrlstian faith, 'twill be one advantage that both of 'em will be exactly worn out together ---- Blessed Jupiter! and blessed every other heathen god and goddess! for now |
|
now ye will all come into play again, and with Priapus at your tails ---- what jovial times! ---- but where am I? and into what a delicious riot of things am I rushing? I ---- I who must be cut short in the midst of my days, and taste no more of 'em than what I borrow from my imagi- nation ---- peace to thee, generous fool! and let me go on. C H A P. |
|
------ ``So hating, I say, to make mysteries of nothing'' ---- I intrusted it with the post-boy, as soon as ever I got off the stones ; he gave a crack with his whip to balance the compliment ; and with the thill-horse trotting, and a sort of an up and a down of the other, we danced it along to Ailly au clochers, famed in days of yore for the finest chimes in the world ; but we danced through it without music ---- the chimes being greatly out of order -- (as in truth they were through all France). And so making all possible speed, from Ailly au clochers, I got to Hixcourt, from |
|
from Hixcourt, I got to Pequignay, and from Pequignay, I got to AMIENS, concerning which town I have nothing to inform you, but what I have informed you once before ---- and that was ---- that Janatone went there to school. IN the whole catalogue of those whiff- ling vexations which come puffing across a man's canvass, there is not one of a more teasing and tormenting nature, than this particular one which I am going to describe ---- and for which, (unless you travel with an avance-courier, which numbers do in order to prevent it) ---- there is no help : and it is this. That be you in never so kindly a pro- pensity to sleep ---- tho' you are passing perhaps |
|
perhaps through the finest country -- upon the best roads, -- and in the easiest carriage for doing it in the world ---- nay was you sure you could sleep fifty miles straight forwards, without once opening your eyes ---- nay what is more, was you as demonstratively satisfied as you can be of any truth in Euclid, that you should upon all accounts be full as well asleep as awake ---- nay perhaps better ---- Yet the incessant returns of paying for the horses at every stage, ---- with the necessity thereupon of putting your hand into your pocket, and counting out from thence, three livres fifteen sous (sous by sous) puts an end to so much of the pro- ject, that you cannot execute above six miles of it (or supposing it is a post and a half, that is but nine) ---- were it to save your soul from destruction. VOL. VII E -- I'll |
|
-- I'll be even with 'em, quoth I, for I'll put the precise sum into a piece of paper, and hold it ready in my hand all the way : ``Now I shall have no- ``thing to do'' said I (composing my- self to rest) ``but to drop this gently ``into the post-boy's hat, and not say ``a word.'' ---- Then there wants two sous more to drink ---- or there is a twelve-sous piece of Louis XIV. which will not pass -- or a livre and some odd liards to be brought over from the last stage, which Monsieur had forgot ; which altercations ( as a man cannot dispute very well asleep) rouse him : still is sweet sleep retrievable ; and still might the flesh weigh down the spirit, and recover it- self of these blows -- but then, by heaven! you 8 |
|
you have paid but for a single post -- whereas 'tis a post and a half ; and this obliges you to pull out your book of post-roads, the print of which is so very small, it forces you to open your eyes, whether you will or no : then Monsieur le Curé offers you a pinch of snuff ---- or a poor soldier shews you his leg ---- or a shaveling his box ---- or the priest- ess of the cistern will water your wheels ---- they do not want it ---- but she swears by her priesthood (throwing it back) that they do : ---- then you have all these points to argue, or consider over in your mind ; in doing of which, the rational powers get so thoroughly awak- ened ---- you may get 'em to sleep again as you can. E 2 It |
|
It was entirely owing to one of these misfortunes, or I had pass'd clean by the stables of Chantilly ---- ---- But the postillion first affirming, and then persisting in it to my face, that there was no mark upon the two sous piece, I open'd my eyes to be convinced -- and seeing the mark upon it, as plain as my nose -- I leap'd out of the chaise in a passion, and so saw every thing at Chantilly in spite. -- I tried it but for three posts and a half, but believe 'tis the best principle in the world to travel speedily upon ; for as few objects look very inviting in that mood -- you have little or nothing to stop you ; by which means it was that I pass'd through St. Dennis, |
|
Dennis, without turning my head so much as on side towards the Ab- by ---- ---- Richness of their treasury! stuff and nonsense! -- bating their jewels, which are all false, I would not give three sous for any one thing in it, but Judas's lantern ---- nor for that either, only as it grows dark, it might be of use. E 3 C H A P. |
|
CRACH, crack ---- crack, crack ---- crack, crack ---- so this is Paris! quoth I (continuing in the same mood) ---- and this is Paris! ---- humph! ---- Paris! cried I, repeating the name the third time ---- The first, the finest, the most bril- liant ---- -- The streets however are nasty ; But it looks, I suppose, better than it smells ---- crack, crack ---- crack, crack ---- What a fuss thou makest! -- as if it concern'd the good people to be inform'd, That a man with pale face, and |
|
and clad in black, had the honour to be driven into Paris at nine o'clock at night, by a postillion in a tawny yellow jerkin turned up with red calamanco ---- crack, crack ---- crack, crack ---- crack, crack ---- I wish thy whip ---- ---- But 'tis the spirit of thy nation ; so crack -- crack on. Ha! ---- and no one gives the wall! ---- but in the SCHOOL of URBANITY herself, if the walls are besh--t -- how can you do otherwise? And prithee when do they light the lamps? What? -- never in the summer months! ---- Ho! 'tis the time of salads. ---- O rare! salad and soup -- soup and salad -- salad and soup, encore ---- E 4 ---- 'Tis |
|
---- 'Tis too much for sinners. Now I cannot bear the barbarity of it ; how can that unconscionable coachman talk so much bawdy to that lean horse? don't you see, friend, the streets are so villainously narrow, that there is not room in all Paris to turn a wheel-barrow? In the grandest city of the whole world, it would not have been amiss, if they had been left a thought wider ; nay were it only so much in every single street, as that a man might know (was it only for satisfaction) on which side of it he was walking. One -- two -- three -- four -- five -- six -- seven -- eight -- nine -- ten. -- Ten cooks' shops! and twice the number of barbers'! and all within three minutes' driving! one |
|
one would think that all the cooks in the world, on some great merry-meeting with the barbers, by joint consent had said -- Come, let us all go live at Paris : the French love good eating ---- they are all gourmands ---- we shall rank high ; if their god is their belly ---- their cooks must be gentlemen : and forasmuch as the periwig maketh the man, and the peri- wig-maker maketh the periwig --- ergo, would the barbers say, we shall rank higher still -- we shall be above you all -- we shall be * Capitouls at least -- pardi! we shall all wear swords ---- -- And so, one would swear, (that is by candle-light, -- but there is no depending upon it) they continue to do, to this day. * Chief Magistrate in Toulouse, &c. &c. &c. C H A P. |
|
THE French are certainly misunder- stood : ------ but whether the fault is theirs, in not sufficiently explain- ing themselves ; or speaking with that ex- act limitation and precision which one would expect on a point of such impor- tance, and which moreover, is so likely to be contested by us ---- or whether the fault may not be altogether on our side, in not understanding their language al- ways so critically as to know ``what they would be at'' ---- I shall not decide ; but 'tis evident to me, when they affirm, ``That they who have seen Paris, have seen every thing,'' they must mean to speak of those who have seen it by day-light. As |
|
As for candle-light -- I give it up ---- I have said before, there was no depend- ing upon it -- and I repeat it again ; but not because the lights and shades are too sharp -- or the tints confounded -- or that there is neither beauty or keeping, &c. . . . for that's not truth -- but it is an un- certain light in this respect, That in all the five hundred grand hôtels, which they number up to you in Paris -- and the five hundred good things, at a modest computation (for 'tis only allowing one good thing to a hôtel), which by candle- light are best to be seen, felt, heard and understood (which, by the bye is a quota- tion from Lilly) ---- the devil a one of us out of fifty, can get our heads fairly thrust in amongst them. This |