ON TWO ROUNDABOUT PAPERS WHICH I INTENDED TO WRITE.
The following paper was written in 1861, after the extraordinary affray between Major Murray and the money-lender in a house in Northumberland Street, Strand, and subsequent to the appearance of M.Du Chaillu's book on Gorillas.
We have all heard of a place paved with good intentions--a place which I take to be a very dismal, useless, and unsatisfactory terminus for many pleasant thoughts, kindly fancies, gentle wishes, merry little quips and pranks, harmless jokes which die as it were the moment of their birth.Poor little children of the brain! He was a dreary theologian who huddled you under such a melancholy cenotaph, and laid you in the vaults under the flagstones of Hades!
I trust that some of the best actions we have all of us committed in our lives have been committed in fancy.It is not all wickedness we are thinking, que diable! Some of our thoughts are bad enough Igrant you.Many a one you and I have had here below.Ah mercy, what a monster! what crooked horns! what leering eyes! what a flaming mouth! what cloven feet, and what a hideous writhing tail!
Oh, let us fall down on our knees, repeat our most potent exorcisms, and overcome the brute.Spread your black pinions, fly--fly to the dusky realms of Eblis, and bury thyself under the paving-stones of his hall, dark genie! But ALL thoughts are not so.No--no.There are the pure: there are the kind: there are the gentle.There are sweet unspoken thanks before a fair scene of nature: at a sun-setting below a glorious sea: or a moon and a host of stars shining over it: at a bunch of children playing in the street, or a group of flowers by the hedge-side, or a bird singing there.At a hundred moments or occurrences of the day good thoughts pass through the mind, let us trust, which never are spoken; prayers are made which never are said; and Te Deum is sung without church, clerk, choristers, parson, or organ.Why, there's my enemy: who got the place I wanted; who maligned me to the woman I wanted to be well with; who supplanted me in the good graces of my patron.I don't say anything about the matter: but, my poor old enemy, in my secret mind I have movements of as tender charity towards you, you old scoundrel, as ever I had when we were boys together at school.You ruffian! do you fancy I forget that we were fond of each other? We are still.We share our toffy; go halves at the tuck-shop; do each other's exercises; prompt each other with the word in construing or repetition; and tell the most frightful fibs to prevent each other from being found out.We meet each other in public.Ware a fight!
Get them into different parts of the room! Our friends hustle round us.Capulet and Montague are not more at odds than the houses of Roundabout and Wrightabout, let us say.It is, "My dear Mrs.
Buffer, do kindly put yourself in the chair between those two men!"Or, "My dear Wrightabout, will you take that charming Lady Blancmange down to supper? She adores your poems, and gave five shillings for your autograph at the fancy fair." In like manner the peacemakers gather round Roundabout on his part; he is carried to a distant corner, and coaxed out of the way of the enemy with whom he is at feud.
When we meet in the Square at Verona, out flash rapiers, and we fall to.But in his private mind Tybalt owns that Mercutio has a rare wit, and Mercutio is sure that his adversary is a gallant gentleman.
Look at the amphitheatre yonder.You do not suppose those gladiators who fought and perished, as hundreds of spectators in that grim Circus held thumbs down, and cried, "Kill, kill!"--you do not suppose the combatants of necessity hated each other? No more than the celebrated trained bands of literary sword-and-buckler men hate the adversaries whom they meet in the arena.They engage at the given signal; feint and parry; slash, poke, rip each other open, dismember limbs, and hew off noses: but in the way of business, and, I trust, with mutual private esteem.For instance, I salute the warriors of the Superfine Company with the honors due among warriors.Here's at you, Spartacus, my lad.A hit, I acknowledge.
A palpable hit! Ha! how do you like that poke in the eye in return?
When the trumpets sing truce, or the spectators are tired, we bow to the noble company: withdraw; and get a cool glass of wine in our rendezvous des braves gladiateurs.
By the way, I saw that amphitheatre of Verona under the strange light of a lurid eclipse some years ago: and I have been there in spirit for these twenty lines past, under a vast gusty awning, now with twenty thousand fellow-citizens looking on from the benches, now in the circus itself, a grim gladiator with sword and net, or a meek martyr--was I?--brought out to be gobbled up by the lions? or a huge, shaggy, tawny lion myself, on whom the dogs were going to be set? What a day of excitement I have had to be sure! But I must get away from Verona, or who knows how much farther the Roundabout Pegasus may carry me?