nicety. One apology, only, can be offered for such people, which is, that having been disappointed themselves in their plans of life, they take revenge by endeavoring to make people dissatisfied with themselves and each other-fostering bad feeling, to have companions in misfortune. Sometimes this habit is the offspring of an irritable temperament-more frequently of long indulgence and custom. I wonder that neither Addison nor Steele ever delineated a character of this description. It lay entirely within their province of observation, and they must have known persons of this sort. Artificial life they knew thoroughly: the male coquette, the beau and his co-mates, the pretty fellow, the rake, &c., all came under their vigilant observation. The male scold only seems to have escaped it. Perhaps they fell into the general notion of appropriating the title of scold to their sister woman alone; or they may have considered a man exercising the same talent to be an orator of the higher class, ranking with the Satirist and the Censor. XLI. THE SEXTON. A CHARACTER. THE Sexton should be a man of staid and solemn aspect, not overgay, but rather given to melancholy and gloom. Shakspeare exhibits him in Hamlet, a merry wag; but this is a freak of his great genius. Steele hit nearer the mark, when he represented his undertaker, (who is often a sexton,) lecturing his hired mutes on the propriety of their behavior at funerals. Lamb calls him "bedmaker to the dead." Perhaps he might be as fitly named "an earthly upholsterer." He should be a serene man, except when bustling about the rooms before the funeral procession is ready to move-otherwise sparing of his words, and meditative-neat in his dress and decorous in manHe ought to be fond of serious reading, chiefly of divines. He ner. has ample opportunity for criticising every variety of contemporary preaching. He is fond of church music, revelling in the chime of bells, and has an especially fine ear for the saddest music in the world' i. e the fall of the dust on the coffin. His thoughts should be dark and murky, like the black air of a vault. His frequent descent into such places gives him rheumatic pains, which, martyr-like, he endures as professional evils. He is attached to fine linen, and loves nothing better than a handsome suit of grave clothes. He has an old-fashioned partiality for the rod, and gives the younger portion of the congregation sundry intimations of his skill in applying it. He is also peculiarly great in a frown or awful nod. He takes a stranger up the aisle with all the formality of a Presbyterian deacon. Nothing pleases him more, however, than to stop him, to speak in his ear during his perambulations around the church. On a public occasion, he sits (Janitor) at the church door stately enough, refusing admittanee to all not possessed of tickets. This is some week-day festival or celebration. A slight douceur will, however, procure your admittance through the densest mass. He has the highest opinion of the Pastor and the Vestry. The Wardens are his Castor and Pollux, and the Choir his angelic host. He is Death's valet or gentleman of the bed-chamber-chamberlain and master of the wardrobe.-A necessary man, and if you treat him well, grateful. XLII. THE LINGUIST. he that is but able to express No sense at all in various languages, To speak the strongest reason in his own.—BUTLER. A CHARACTER. THE Linguist is a creature all tongue, without "a garnish of brains;" or rather, he has the gift of the tongues. He could have set them all right at Babel, had he been living at the time of the Great Con fusion. Charles V. proved himself no very sagacious critic, when he said, "He that could speak five languages was five times a man." Suppose he could say nothing of consequence in any one dialect ;even allowing, however, his sense to be weighty, is it improved by passing through the strainers of five different national idioms? Is it not at least probable that alone would have perverted the original meaning? The greatest thinker that ever lived could think in one language only; for if he pretended to speculate in another, it must have been as a mere translator of his first thoughts. These always are formed in the mother tongue. But this is irrelevant. In point of fact, our linguist regards language, the symbol of thought, as equally important with, or perhaps more important than, the thought itself. A long and intimate acquaintance with literary history and the arts of composition, inclines one to rate expression and style a great deal too highly. Indeed, some have gone so far as to say that style alone preserved an author. One who is for ever turning over lexicons, grammars, vocabularies, tables of roots, &c., &c., cannot fail to form a very extravagant estimate of philological studies. Such a person becomes, from long habit and intolerable prejudice, cramped and confined in all his ideas, and is gradually transformed into a perfect Polyglot. He might be bound "in congenial calf,” a terror to all similar offenders. His ideas are arrayed in tables of contents, and his writings are indexes. His highest literary attempts are notes, emendations, scholia, glosses. He corrects misspellings and errors in punctuation. By his blundering, he often spoils a fine passage. Fitz Osborne's satirical hit on " tweedledum and tweedledee" is very fair and in point. To edit a classic tops the bent of his ambition. He is, besides, a powerful writer of prefaces and introductions. In regard to profit, he clears more from a spellingbook than the first poet of the age for his finest work. The editors of Horace alone have fattened where their great original starved. He will spend hours in searching for a preposition, or chasing an adverb through successive editions, and yet censure the modern Nimrod. He professes no charity for poetical reveries. He takes more delight in the muddy crudites of Lycophron than in the clear beauties of the silver Virgil. The more trivial and obscure an ancient author is, the more he reveres him. He might sometimes write even better himself in the same strain; especially if his idol be crabbed and musty. His taste is most depraved. I knew one before whom was placed a Persian grammar and a volume of Irving, who studied the former with undisguised pleasure, but threw aside the latter as a mere child's book. The senseless classifications and absurd theories of affiliation of languages, and all such pedantic trumpery, were forsooth of greater mark than refined satire, picturesque description, a rich vein of masculine humor, and the utmost grace of style. I suppose he would have preferred Warburton or Parr to the glorious Shakspeare. He had rather read, as some literary glutton honestly confessed, a criticism on Homer, than Homer himself. His contempt of the moderns is so great, he can only converse with the ancients. His appetite for the latter is voracious, and by no means fastidious; for the former, his stomach is very squeamish. He can, like certain epicures, relish only what is past eating in the opinion of everybody else. His style of discourse is described by Butler with admirable effect : "A Babylonish dialect, Which learned pedants most affect; His plainest English is most execrable Latin. He teaches his little daughter Latin, and has his sons "well seen" in Greek and Hebrew. Perhaps he forgets where Hebrew roots grow, and in what soil they flourish best. He The head of a Polyglot may be compared to a pawnbroker's shop, where you may find every variety of dress, but tarnished, and in a state of dilapidation. He knows the exterior sign of every language, but has never penetrated the interior signification of any one. apes the manners of the ancients, as a footman his master's air. The dinner of the ancients is a capital satire on this propensity. He cannot ask for a glass of cold water, without introducing the "fontes Bandusic," or the Pierian Spring; nor help a friend to bread at table without a pun on Pan. He has his pet letters-vowels and consonants, and will sometimes array them in mimic battle against each other. To some he is indifferent, to others he bears a grudge;-rainy-day letters and holi day favorites. In his opinion, a b and c are worth their weight in gold; while a y and z are comparatively worthless and inefficient. He is, in the most liberal acceptation, a man of letters. While we speak thus of the mere philologist, we would by no means intend to underrate the benefit derived from the study of other languages beside our mother tongue. Indeed, we can never hope to appreciate its beauties precisely, without a comparative reference to the languages of other nations and countries. The only evil arises from constantly dwelling upon mere signs, without gaining the substance. After a certain period of life, we must look more to things and less to words. It is then, an undue attention to the study of languages is censurable in the extreme. Languages are highly useful to the commercial, and interesting to literary men. Many tongues are not only unnecessary, but even hurtful to the mind. Could a man of elegant taste be improved by the acquisition of Chaldee or Turkish? The learned professions require learned men; and, to a certain extent, repulsive studies are proper to be followed. Languages are the keys of learning; they serve to open its stores and unlock its treasures; they serve to embalm ideas, and render images and sentiments eternal. All this they can do; still they are but the willing servitors of thought, and must not presume a rivalry. Independent of sense and meaning, they are more worthless than tinkling cymbals. Joined to sense and meaning, they can shadow forth the finest essence of intellect and mysteriously unveil the immortal glories of the soul. "I wonder how 'tis possible that the opera, with all its exquisite music and almost regal magnificience, should yet so successfully tire me.”—La Bruyere. THE Opera is the last refinement of Musical Science. It has carried the most delightful of the Arts to an unnatural pitch of perfection. It has destroyed (in all those who cultivate it) a taste for *1838-39. |