THE DOCTOR, &c. CHAPTER VII. A. I. A FAMILY PARTY AT A NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOUR'S. Good Sir, reject it not, although it bring GEORGE WITHer to the King. I was in the fourth night of the story of the Doctor and his horse, and had broken it off, not like Scheherezade because it was time to get up, but because it was time to go to bed. It was at thirty-five minutes after ten o'clock, on the 20th of July, in the year of our Lord 1813. I finished my glass of punch, tinkled the spoon against its side, as if making music to my meditations, and having my eyes fixed upon the Bhow Begum, who was sitting opposite to me at the head of her own table, I said, "It ought to be written in a book!" There had been a heavy thunder-storm in the afternoon; and though the thermometer had fallen from 78 to 70, still the atmosphere was charged. If that mysterious power by which the nerves convey sensation and make their impulses obeyed, be (as experiments seem to indicate) identical with the galvanic fluid; and if the galvanic and electric fluids be the same (as philosophers have more than surmised); and if the lungs (according to a happy hypothesis) elaborate for us from the light of heaven this pabulum of the brain, and material essence, or essential matter of genius, -it may be that the ethereal fire which I had inhaled so largely during the day produced the bright conception, or at least impregnated and quickened the latent seed. The punch, reader, had no share in it. I had spoken as it were abstractedly, and the look which accompanied the words was rather cogitative than regardant. The Bhow Begum laid down her snuff-box and replied, entering into the feeling, as well as echoing the words, "It ought to be written in a book, - certainly it ought." They may talk as they will of the dead languages. Our auxiliary verbs give us a power which the ancients, with all their varieties of mood, and inflections of tense, never could attain. "It must be written in a book," said I, encouraged by her manner. The mood was the same, the tense was the same; but the gradation of meaning was marked in a way which a Greek or Latin grammarian might have envied as well as admired. "Pshaw! nonsense! stuff!" said my wife's eldest sister, who was sitting at the right hand of the Bhow Begum; "I say, write it in a book indeed!” My wife's youngest sister was sitting diagonally opposite to the last speaker; she lifted up her eyes and smiled. It was a smile which expressed the same opinion as the late vituperative tones; there was as much of incredulity in it; but more of wonder and less of vehemence. My wife was at my left hand, making a cap for her youngest daughter, and with her tortoiseshell-paper work-box before her. I turned towards her, and repeated the words, "It must be written in a book!" But I smiled while I was speaking, and was conscious of that sort of meaning in my eyes which calls out contradiction for the pleasure of sporting with it. "Write it in a book!" she replied, “I am sure you won't;" and she looked at me with a frown. Poets have written much upon their ladies' frowns, but I do not remember that they have ever described the thing with much accuracy. When my wife frowns, two perpendicular wrinkles, each three quarters of an inch in length, are formed in the forehead, the base of each resting upon the top of the nose, and equidistant from each other. The poets have also attributed dreadful effects to the frown of those whom they love. I cannot say that I ever experienced any thing very formidable in my wife's. At present she knew her eyes would give the lie to it if they looked at me steadily for a moment; so they wheeled to the left about quick, off at a tangent, in a direction to the Bhow Begum, and then she smiled. She could not prevent the smile; but she tried to make it scornful. My wife's nephew was sitting diagonally with her, and opposite his mother, on the left hand of the Bhow Begum. "Oh!" he exclaimed," it ought to be written in a book! it will be a glorious book! write it, uncle, I beseech you!" My wifes nephew is a sensible lad. He reads my writings, likes my stories, admires my singing, and thinks as I do in politics:- -a youth of parts and considerable promise. "He will write it!" said the Bhow Begum, taking up her snuff-box, and accompanying the words with a nod of satisfaction and encouragement. “He will never be so foolish!" said my wife. My wife's eldest sister rejoined, "he is foolish enough for any thing." SHOWING EASILY Chapters ante-initial and post-initial appeared in delightful prospect "long drawn out:" the beginning, the middle and the end were evolved before me: the whole spread itself forth, and then the parts unravelled themselves and danced the hays. The very types rose in judgment against me, as if to persecute me for the tasks which during so many years I had imposed upon them. Capitals and small letters, pica and longprimer, brevier and bourgeois, English and nonpareil, minion and pearl, Romans and Italics, black-letter and red, passed over my inward sight. The notes of admiration !!! stood straight up in view as I lay on the one side; and when I turned on the other to avoid them, the notes of interrogation cocked up their hump-backs??? Then came to recollection the various incidents of the eventful tale. "Visions of glory spare my aching sight!" The various personages, like spectral faces in a fit of the vapours, stared at me through my eyelids. The Doctor oppressed me like an incubus; and for the Horse,-he became a perfect night-mare. "Leave me, leave me to repose! Twelve by the kitchen clock!--still restless! One! O Doctor, for one of thy comfortable composing draughts!-Two! here's a case of insomnolence! I, who in summer close my lids as instinctively as the daisy when the sun goes down; and who in winter could hybernate as well as Bruin, were I but provided with as much fat to support me during the season, and keep the wick of existence burning: I, who, if my pedigree were properly made out, should be found to have descended from one of the Seven Sleepers, and from the Sleeping THAT AN AUTHOR MAY MORE Beauty in the Wood! CHAPTER VI. A. I. I put my arms out of bed. I turned the BY pillow for the sake of applying a cold sur BE KEPT AWAKE BY HIS OWN IMAGINATIONS THAN PUT TO SLEEP THEM HIMSELF, WHATEVER MAY BE THEIR EFFECT UPON HIS READERS. face to my cheek. I stretched my feet into the cold corner. I listened to the river, and to the ticking of my watch. I thought of all sleepy sounds and all soporific things: the flow of water, the humming of bees, the motion of a boat, the waving of a field of corn, the nodding of a mandarine's head on the chimney-piece, a horse in a mill, the opera, Mr. Humdrum's conversation, Mr. At last Morpheus reminded me of Dr. CHAPTER V. A. I. SOMETHING CONCERNING THE PHILOSOPHY OF they are called by Vaninus, when he takes advantage of them to explain the Fata Morgana), the atomists I say, supposed that these spectral forms which are constantly emitted from all bodies, Omne genus quoniam passim simulacra feruntur *, assail the soul when she ought to be at rest; according to which theory all the lathered faces that are created every morning in the looking-glass, and all the smiling ones that my Lord Simper and Mr. Smallwit contemplate there with so much satisfaction during the day, must at this moment be floating up and down the world. Others again opine, as if in contradiction to those who pretend life to be a dream, that dreams are realities, and that sleep sets the soul free like a bird from a cage. John Henderson saw the spirit of a slumbering cat pass from her in pursuit of a visionary mouse; -(I know not whether he would have admitted the fact as an argument for materialism;) and the soul of Hans Engelbrecht not only went to hell, but brought back from it a stench which proved to all the bystanders that it had been there. - Faugh! Whether then my spirit that night found DREAMS, AND THE AUTHOR'S EXPERIENCE its way out at the nose (for I sleep with my IN AERIEL HORSEMANSHIP. If a dream should come in now to make you afear'd, mouth shut), and actually sallied out seeking adventures; or whether the spectrum of the Horse floated into my chamber; or some benevolent genius or dæmon assumed the well-known and welcome form; or whether the dream were merely a dream, si fuè en espiritu, d fuè - so however it was that in the visions of the night I mounted Nobs. Tell me not of Astolfo's hippogriff, or Pacolet's wooden steed; nor THE wise ancients held that dreams are from that the likenesses or spectres of corporeal Of that wonderous horse of brass nor of Alborak, who was the best beast for a me not even of Pegasus! I have ridden him many a time; by day and by night have I ridden him; high and low, far and wide, round the earth, and about it, and over it, and under it. I know all his earth-paces, and his sky-paces. I have tried him at a walk, at an amble, at a trot, at a canter, at a hand-gallop, at full gallop, and at full speed. I have proved him in the manège with single turns and the manège with double turns, his bounds, his curvets, his pirouettes, and his pistes, his croupade and his balotade, his gallop-galliard, and his capriole. I have been on him when he has glided through the sky with wings outstretched and motionless, like a kite or a summer cloud; I have bestrode him when he went up like a bittern with a strong spiral flight, round, round, and round, and upward, upward, upward, circling and rising still; and again when he has gone full sail, or full fly, with his tail as straight as a comet's behind him. But for a hobby or a night horse, Pegasus is nothing to Nobs. Where did we go on that memorable night? What did we see? - What did we do? Or rather what did we not see? and what did we not perform? CHAPTER IV. A. I. A CONVERSATION AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE. Tel condamne mon Coq-à-l'âne qui un jour en justifiera e bon sens. LA PRETIEuse. usual, overFor mirth I WENT down to breakfast as flowing with joyous thoughts. and for music, the skylark is but a type of me. I warbled a few wood notes wild, and then, full of the unborn work, addressed myself to my wife's eldest sister, and asked if she would permit me to dedicate the Book to her. "What book?" she replied. "The History," said I, "of Doctor Daniel Dove, of Doncaster, and his Horse Nobs." She answered, "No, indeed! I will have no such nonsense dedicated to me!"—and with that she drew up her upper lip, and the lower region of the nose. I turned to my wife's youngest sister: "Shall I have the pleasure of dedicating it to you?" She raised her eyes, inclined her head forwards with a smile of negation, and begged leave to decline the honour. "Commandante," said I, to my wife and Commandress, “shall I dedicate it then to you?" My Commandante made answer, "Not unless you have something better to dedicate." "So Ladies!" said I; "the stone which the builders rejected,"—and then looking at my wife's youngest sister-"Oh, it will be such a book!" The manner and the tone were so much in earnest, that they arrested the bread and butter on the way to her mouth; and she exclaimed, with her eyes full of wonder and incredulity at the same time, 'Why, you never can be serious?" "Not serious," said I; "why I have done nothing but think of it and dream of it the whole night." "He told me so," rejoined my Commandante, "the first thing in the morning." "Ah, Stupey!" cried my wife's eldest sister, accompanying the compliment with a protrusion of the head, and an extension of the lips, which disclosed not only the whole remaining row of teeth, but the chasms that had been made in it by the tooth drawer; hiatus valde lacrymabiles. "Two volumes," said I, "and this in the title-page!" So taking out my pencil, I drew upon the back of a letter the mysterious monogram, erudite in its appearance as the diagamma of Mr. A. F. Valpy. It past from hand to hand. "Why, he is not in earnest;" said my wife's youngest sister. "He never can be," replied my wife. And yet beginning to think that peradventure I was, she looked at me with a quick turn of the eye,-"a pretty subject, indeed, for you when they have picked up a stray traveller to employ your time upon!-You,—vema or two more than they require for their supwhehaha yohu almad otenba twandri athan-per, cod!" I have thought proper to translate this part of my Commandante's speech into the Garamna tongue. CHAPTER III. A. I. THE UTILITY OF POCKETS. A COMPLIMENT PROPERLY RECEIVED. La tasca è proprio cosa da Christiani. BENEDETTO VARCHI. Mr eldest daughter had finished her Latin lessons, and my son had finished his Greek; and I was sitting at my desk, pen in hand and in mouth at the same time, (a substitute for biting the nails which I recommend to all onygophagists), when the Bow Begum came in with her black velvet reticule, suspended as usual from her arm by its silver chain. a Now, of all the inventions of the Tailor (who is of all artists the most inventive), I hold the pocket to be the most commodious, and, saving the fig leaf, the most indispensable. Birds have their craw; ruminating beasts their first or ante-stomach; the monkey has his cheek, the opossum her pouch; and, so necessary is some convenience of this kind for the human animal, that the savage who cares not for clothing, makes for himself pocket if he can. The Hindoo carries his snuff-box in his turban. Some of the inhabitants of Congo make a secret fob in their woolly toupet, of which, as P. Labat says, the worst use they make is― to carry poison in it. The Matolas, a long-haired race, who border upon the Caffres, form their locks into a sort of hollow cylinder in which they bear about their little implements; certes a more sensible bag than such as is worn at court. The New Zealander is less ingenious; he makes a large opening in his ear, and carries his knife in it. The Ogres, who are worse than savages, and whose ignorance and brutality is in proportion to their bulk, are said, upon the authority of tradition, to lodge them in a hollow tooth, as a place of security till breakfast; whence it may be inferred that they are not liable to tooth-ache, and that they make no use of tooth-picks. Ogres, savages, beasts, and birds, all require something to serve the purpose of a pocket. Thus much for the necessity of the thing. Touching its antiquity, much might be said; for it would not be difficult to show, with that little assistance from the auxiliaries must and have and been, which enabled Whitaker, of Manchester, to write whole quartos of hypothetical history in the potential mood, that pockets are coeval with clothing and, as erudite men have maintained that language and even letters are of divine origin, there might with like reason be a conclusion drawn from the twenty-first verse of the third chapter of the book of Genesis, which it would not be easy to impugn. Moreover, nature herself shows us the utility, the importance, nay, the indispensability, or, to take a hint from the pure language of our diplomatists, the sinequanonniness of pockets. There is but one organ which is common to all animals whatsoever: some are without eyes, many without noses; some have no heads, others no tails; some neither one nor the other; some there are who have no brains, others very pappy ones; some no hearts, others very bad ones; but all have a stomach, and what is the stomach but a live inside pocket? Hath not Van Helmont said of it, "Saccus vel pera est, ut ciborum olla?” Dr. Towers used to have his coat pockets made of capacity to hold a quarto volume - a wise custom; but requiring stout cloth, good buckram, and strong thread well waxed. I do not so greatly commend the humour of Dr. Ingenhouz, whose coat was lined with pockets of all sizes, wherein, in his latter years, when science had become to him as a plaything, he carried about various materials for chemical experiments: among the rest, so many compositions for fulminating powders in glass tubes, separated only by a cork in the middle of the tube, that, if any |