Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон - Devereux — Complete

“You think with equal profundity and truth.”

“You may well say that, your honour. Stip in a bit: I’ll tell my master; it is himself that will see you in a twinkling!”

“But you forget that your master is ill?” said I.

“Sorrow a bit for the matter o’ that: my master is never ill to a jontleman.”

And with this assurance “the Beau’s keeper” ushered me up a splendid staircase into a large, dreary, faded apartment, and left me to amuse myself with the curiosities within, while he went to perform a cure upon his master’s “megrims.” The chamber, suiting with the house and the owner, looked like a place in the other world set apart for the reception of the ghosts of departed furniture. The hangings were wan and colourless; the chairs and sofas were most spiritually unsubstantial; the mirrors reflected all things in a sepulchral sea-green; even a huge picture of Mr. Fielding himself, placed over the chimney-piece, seemed like the apparition of a portrait, so dim, watery, and indistinct had it been rendered by neglect and damp. On a huge tomb-like table in the middle of the room, lay two pencilled profiles of Mr. Fielding, a pawnbroker’s ticket, a pair of ruffles, a very little muff, an immense broadsword, a Wycherley comb, a jackboot, and an old plumed hat; to these were added a cracked pomatum-pot containing ink, and a scrap of paper, ornamented with sundry paintings of hearts and torches, on which were scrawled several lines in a hand so large and round that I could not avoid seeing the first verse, though I turned away my eyes as quickly as possible; that verse, to the best of my memory, ran thus: “Say, lovely Lesbia, when thy swain.” Upon the ground lay a box of patches, a periwig, and two or three well thumbed books of songs. Such was the reception-room of Beau Fielding, one indifferently well calculated to exhibit the propensities of a man, half bully, half fribble; a poet, a fop, a fighter, a beauty, a walking museum of all odd humours, and a living shadow of a past renown. “There are changes in wit as in fashion,” said Sir William Temple, and he proceeds to instance a nobleman who was the greatest wit of the court of Charles I., and the greatest dullard in that of Charles II. 13 13 The Earl of Norwich.

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In his Commentary on the account of China by two Travellers.

“O mare, O litus, verum secretumque Movoetov, quam multa dictatis, quam multa invenitis!”—PLINIUS.

“But should there chance any occasion or necessity, one may wear better though still decorous garments.”

Thank Heaven, for the honour of literature, nous avons change tout cela! —ED.

An antiquated word in use for puppet-shows.

See “Spectator,” No. 14, for a letter from this unfortunate under-sexton.

Whig ladies patched on one side of the cheek, Tories on the other.

Lord Bolingbroke tells us that it was the main end of Harley’s administration to marry his son to this lady. Thus is the fate of nations a bundle made up of a thousand little private schemes.

In the “Arcadia,” that museum of oddities and beauties.

“Tatler.”

This seems to corroborate the suspicion entertained of the identity of Colonel Cleland with the Will Honeycomb of the “Spectator.”

“The Greek wants an ablative, the Italians a dative, I a nominative.”

The Earl of Norwich.