Melincourt

The evenings were beginning to give symptoms of winter, and a large fire was blazing in the library. Mr. Forester took the opportunity of stigmatising the use of sugar, and had the pleasure of observing that the practice of Anthelia in this respect was the same as his own. He mentioned his intention of giving an anti-saccharine festival at Redrose Abbey, and invited all the party at Melincourt to attend it. He observed that his aunt, Miss Evergreen, who would be there at the time, would send an invitation in due form to the ladies, to remove all scruples on the score of propriety; and added, that if he could hope for the attendance of half as much moral feeling as he was sure there would be of beauty and fashion, he should be satisfied that a great step would be made towards accomplishing the object of the Anti-saccharine Society.

The Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub felt extremely indignant at Mr. Forester’s notion ‘of every real enemy to slavery being bound by the strictest moral duty to practical abstinence from the luxury which slavery acquires’; but when he found that the notion was to be developed in the shape of a festival, he determined to suspend his judgment till he had digested the solid arguments that were to be brought forward on the occasion.

Mr. O’Scarum was, as usual, very clamorous for music, and was seconded by the unanimous wish of the company, with which Anthelia readily complied, and sang as follows:

‘I am afraid,’ said Mr. Derrydown, ‘the flower of modern love is neither the rose nor the amaranth, but the chrysanthemum, or gold-flower. If Miss Danaretta and Mr. O’Scarum will accompany me, we will sing a little harmonised ballad, something in point, and rather more conformable to the truth of things.’ Mr. O’Scarum and Miss Danaretta consented, and they accordingly sang the following:—

During this terzetto the Reverend Mr. Portpipe fell asleep, and accompanied the performance with rather a deeper bass than was generally deemed harmonious.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett took Mr. Forester aside, to consult him on the subject of the journey to Onevote.

‘I have asked,’ said he, ‘my aunt and cousin, Mrs. and Miss Pinmoney, to join the party, and have requested them to exert their influence with Miss Melincourt to induce her to accompany them.’

‘That would make it a delightful expedition, indeed,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘if Miss Melincourt could be prevailed on to comply.’

‘Nil desperandum,’ said Sir Telegraph.

The Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney drew Anthelia into a corner, and developed all her eloquence in enforcing the proposition. Miss Danaretta joined in it with great earnestness; and they kept up the fire of their importunity till they extorted from Anthelia a promise that she would consider of it.

Mr. Forester took down a splendid edition of Tasso, printed by Bodoni at Parma, and found it ornamented with Anthelia’s drawings. In the magic of her pencil the wild and wonderful scenes of Tasso seemed to live under his eyes: he could not forbear expressing to her the delight he experienced from these new proofs of her sensibility and genius, and entered into a conversation with her concerning her favourite poet, in which the congeniality of their tastes and feelings became more and more manifest to each other.

Mr. Feathernest and Mr. Derrydown got into a hot dispute over Chapman’s Homer and Jeremy Taylor’s Holy Living: Mr. Derrydown maintaining that the ballad metre which Chapman had so judiciously chosen rendered his volume the most divine poem in the world; Mr. Feathernest asserting that Chapman’s verses were mere doggerel: which vile aspersion Mr. Derrydown revenged by depreciating Mr. Feathernest’s favourite Jeremy. Mr. Feathernest said he could expect no better judgment from a man who was mad enough to prefer Chevy Chase to Paradise Lost; and Mr. Derrydown retorted, that it was idle to expect either taste or justice from one who had thought fit to unite in himself two characters so anomalous as those of a poet and a critic, in which duplex capacity he had first deluged the world with torrents of execrable verses, and then written anonymous criticisms to prove them divine. ‘Do you think, sir,’ he continued, ‘that it is possible for the same man to be both Homer and Aristotle? No, sir; but it is very possible to be both Dennis and Colley Cibber, as in the melancholy example before me.’

At this all the blood of the genus irritabile boiled in Mr. Feathernest’s veins, and uplifting the ponderous folio, he seemed inclined to bury his antagonist under Jeremy’s weight of words, by applying them in a tangible shape; but wisely recollecting that this was not the time and place

he contented himself with a point-blank denial of the charge that he wrote critiques on his own works, protesting that all the articles on his poems were written either by his friend Mr. Mystic, of Cimmerian Lodge, or by Mr. Vamp, the amiable editor of the Legitimate Review. ‘Yes,’ said Mr. Derrydown, ‘on the “Tickle me, Mr. Hayley” principle; by which a miserable cabal of doggerel rhymesters and worn-out paragraph-mongers of bankrupt gazettes ring the eternal changes of panegyric on each other, and on everything else that is either rich enough to buy their praise, or vile enough to deserve it: like a gang in a country steeple, paid for being a public nuisance, and maintaining that noise is melody.’

Mr. Feathernest on this became perfectly outrageous; and waving Jeremy Taylor in the air, exclaimed, ‘Oh that mine enemy had written a book! Horrible should be the vengeance of the Legitimate Review!’

Mr. Hippy now deemed it expedient to interpose for the restoration of order, and entreated Anthelia to throw in a little musical harmony as a sedative to the ebullitions of a poetical discord. At the sound of the harp the antagonists turned away, the one flourishing his Chapman and the other his Jeremy with looks of lofty defiance.