--

It was

firmed in him the resolution of perpetual bachelorship. during their short courtship, he told me, that he had been one day treating his mistress with a profusion of civil speeches the common gallantries to which kind of thing she had hitherto manifested no repugnance- but in this instance with no effect. He could not obtain from her a decent acknowledgment in return. She rather seemed to resent his compliments. He could not set it down to caprice, for the lady had always shown herself above that littleness. When he ventured on the following day, finding her a little better humored, to expostulate with her on her coldness of yesterday, she confessed, with her usual frankness, that she had no sort of dislike to his attentions; that she could even endure some high-flown compliments; that a young woman placed in her situation had a right to expect all sort of civil things said to her; that she hoped she could digest a dose of adulation, short of insincerity, with as little injury to her humility as most young women; but that a little before he had commenced his compliments- she had overheard him by accident, in rather rough language, rating a young woman, who had not brought home his cravats quite to the appointed time, and she thought to herself, "As I am Miss Susan Winstanley, and a young lady-a reputed beauty, and known to be a fortune, I can have my choice of the finest speeches from the mouth of this very fine gentleman who is courting me- but if I had been poor Mary Such-a-one (naming the milliner), — and had failed of bringing home the cravats to the appointed hour,— though perhaps I had sat up half the night to forward them,— what sort of compliments should I have received then? And my woman's pride came to my assistance, and I thought that if it were only to do me honor, a female, like myself, might have received handsomer usage; and I was determined not to accept any fine speeches, to the compromise of that sex, the belonging to which was, after all, my strongest claim and title to them."

I think the lady discovered both generosity, and a just way of thinking, in this rebuke which she gave her lover; and I have sometimes imagined that the uncommon strain of courtesy which through life regulated the actions and behavior of my friend towards all of womankind indiscriminately, owed its happy origin to this seasonable lesson from the lips of his lamented mistress.

I wish the whole female world would entertain the same notion of these things that Miss Winstanley showed. Then we

should see something of the spirit of consistent gallantry; and no longer witness the anomaly of the same man a pattern of true politeness to a wife of cold contempt, or rudeness, to a sister -the idolater of his female mistress-the disparager and despiser of his no less female aunt, or unfortunate I still female maiden cousin. Just so much respect as a woman derogates from her own sex, in whatever condition placed her handmaid, or dependant-she deserves to have diminished from herself on that score; and probably will feel the diminution, when youth, and beauty, and advantages, not inseparable from sex, shall lose of their attraction. What a woman should demand of a man in courtship, or after it, is first-respect for her as she is a woman; and next to that to be respected by him above all other women. But let her stand upon her female character as upon a foundation; and let the attentions, incident to individual preference, be so many pretty additaments and ornaments. as many, and as fanciful, as you please—to that main structure. Let her first lesson be- with sweet Susan Winstanley - to reverence her

sex.

Complete. From the London Magazine,
November, 1822.

NOT

POPULAR FALLACIES

THAT ENOUGH IS AS GOOD AS A FEAST

or a man, woman, or child, in ten miles round Guildhall, who really believes this saying. The inventor of it did not believe it himself. It was made in revenge by somebody who was disappointed of a regale. It is a vile cold-scragof-mutton sophism; a lie palmed upon the palate, which knows better things. If nothing else could be said for a feast, this is sufficient, that from the superflux there is usually something left for the next day. Morally interpreted, it belongs to a class of proverbs which have a tendency to make us undervalue money. Of this cast are those notable observations, that money is not health; riches cannot purchase everything; the metaphor which makes gold to be mere muck, with the morality which traces fine clothing to the sheep's back, and denounces pearl as the unhandsome excretion of an oyster. Hence, too, the phrase which imputes dirt to acres- -a sophistry so barefaced that even the

literal sense of it is true only in a wet season. This, and abundance of similar sage saws assuming to inculcate content, we verily believe to have been the invention of some cunning borrower who had designs upon the purse of his wealthier neighbor, which he could only hope to carry by force of these verbal jugglings. Translate any one of these sayings out of the artful metonymy which envelops it, and the trick is apparent. Goodly legs and shoulders of mutton, exhilarating cordials, books, pictures, the opportunities of seeing foreign countries, independence, heart's-ease, a man's own time to himself, are not muck— however we may be pleased to scandalize with that appellation the faithful metal that provides them for us.

Complete. Number VI.

THAT THE WORST PUNS ARE THE BEST

F BY worst be only meant the most far-fetched and startling, we agree to it. A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear, not a feather to tickle the intellect. It is an antic which does not stand upon manners, but comes bounding into the presence, and does not show the less comic for being dragged in sometimes by the head and shoulders. What though it limp a little, or prove defective in one leg - all the better. A pun may easily be too curious and artificial. Who has not at one time or other been at a party of professors (himself perhaps an old offender in that line), where, after ringing a round of the most ingenious conceits, every man contributing his shot, and some there the most expert shooters of the day; after making a poor word run the gauntlet till it is ready to drop; after hunting and winding it through all the possible ambages of similar sounds; after squeezing and hauling and tugging at it till the very milk of it will not yield a drop further-suddenly some obscure, unthought-of fellow in a corner, who was never 'prentice to the trade, whom the company for very pity passed over, as we do by a known poor man when a money subscription is going round, no one calling upon him for his quota, has all at once come out with something so whimsical, yet so pertinent - so brazen in its pretensions, yet so impossible to be denied — so exquisitely good, and so deplorably bad at the same time-that it has proved a Robin

Hood's shot? Anything ulterior to that is despaired of; and the party breaks up, unanimously voting it to be the very worst (that is, best) pun of the evening. This species of wit is the better for not being perfect in all its parts. What it gains in completeness, it loses in naturalness. The more exactly it satisfies the critical, the less hold it has upon some other faculties. The puns which are most entertaining are those which will least bear an analysis. Of this kind is the following, recorded with a sort of stigma in one of Swift's "Miscellanies":

An Oxford scholar, meeting a porter who was carrying a hare through the streets, accosts him with this extraordinary question: "Prithee, friend, is that thy own hare, or a wig?"

There is no excusing this, and no resisting it. A man might blur ten sides of paper in attempting a defense of it against a critic who should be laughter proof. The quibble in itself is not considerable. It is only a new turn given by a little false pronunciation to a very common, though not a very courteous inquiry. Put by one gentleman to another at a dinner party, it would have been vapid; to the mistress of the house, it would have shown much less wit than rudeness. We must take in the totality of time, place, and person: the pert look of the inquiring scholar, the desponding looks of the puzzled porter; the one stopping at leisure, the other hurrying on with his burden; the innocent though rather abrupt tendency of the first member of the question, with the utter and inextricable irrelevancy of the second; the place-a public street-not favorable to frivolous investigations; the affrontive quality of the primitive inquiry (the common question) invidiously transferred to the derivative (the new turn given to it) in the implied satire; namely, that few of that tribe are expected to eat of the good things which they carry, they being in most countries considered rather as the temporary trustees than owners of such dainties- which the fellow was beginning to understand; but then the wig again comes in, and he can make nothing of it; all put together constitute a picture. Hogarth could have made it intelligible on canvas.

Yet nine out ci ten critics will pronounce this a very bad pun, because of the defectiveness in the concluding member, which is its very beauty, and constitutes the surprise. The same person shall cry up for admirable the cold quibble from Virgil about the broken Cremona, because it is made out in all its parts, and leaves nothing to the imagination. We venture to call it cold;

because of thousands who have admired it, it would be difficult to find one who has heartily chuckled at it. As appealing to the judgment merely (setting the risible faculty aside) we must pronounce it a monument of curious felicity. But as some stories (applied by Swift to a lady's dress, or mantua, as it was then termed, coming in contact with one of those fiddles called Cremonas), are said to be too good to be true, it may with equal truth be asserted of this biverbal allusion, that it is too good to be natural. One cannot help suspecting that the incident was invented to fit the line. It would have been better had it been

less perfect. Like some Virgilian hemistichs, it has suffered by filling up. The nimium Vicina was enough in conscience; the Cremona afterward loads it. It is, in fact, a double pun, and we have always observed that a superfetation in this sort of wit is dangerous. When a man has said a good thing, it is seldom politic to follow it up. We do not care to be cheated a second time; or, perhaps, the mind of man (with reverence be it spoken) is not capacious enough to lodge two puns at a time. The impression, to be forcible, must be simultaneous and undivided.

Complete. Number IX.

THAT WE SHOULD RISE WITH THE LARK

T WHAT precise minute that little airy musician doffs his

A night gear, and prepares to tune up his unseasonable mat

ins, we are not naturalists enough to determine. But for a mere human gentleman - that has no orchestra business to call him from his warm bed to such preposterous exercise - we take ten, or half after ten (eleven, of course, during this Christmas solstice), to be the very earliest hour at which he can begin to think of abandoning his pillow. To think of it, we say; for to do it in earnest requires another half hour's good consideration. Not but there are pretty sunrisings, as we are told, and such like gauds abroad in the world, in summertime especially, some hours before what we have assigned, which a gentleman may see, as they say, only for getting up. But having been tempted once or twice, in earlier life, to assist at those ceremonies, we confess our curiosity abated. We are no longer ambitious of being the sun's courtiers, to attend at his morning levees. We hold the good hours of the dawn too sacred to waste them upon