Headlong Hall Part 3

_Mr Cranium._ Secretiveness, destructiveness, and covetiveness. You may add, if you please, that of constructiveness.

_Mr Escot._ Meaning, I presume, the organ of building; which I contend to be not a natural organ of the _featherless biped_.

_Mr Cranium._ Pardon me: it is here.--(_As he said these words, he produced a skull from his pocket, and placed it on the table to the great surprise of the company._)--This was the skull of Sir Christopher Wren. You observe this protuberance--(_The skull was handed round the table._)

_Mr Escot._ I contend that the original unsophisticated man was by no means constructive. He lived in the open air, under a tree.

_The Reverend Doctor Gaster._ The tree of life. Unquestionably. Till he had tasted the forbidden fruit.

_Mr Jenkison._ At which period, probably, the organ of constructiveness was added to his anatomy, as a punishment for his transgression.

_Mr Escot._ There could not have been a more severe one, since the propensity which has led him to building cities has proved the greatest curse of his existence.

_Squire Headlong._ (_taking the skull._) _Memento mori._ Come, a b.u.mper of Burgundy.

_Mr Nightshade._ A very cla.s.sical application, Squire Headlong. The Romans were in the practice of adhibiting skulls at their banquets, and sometimes little skeletons of silver, as a silent admonition to the guests to enjoy life while it lasted.

_The Reverend Doctor Gaster._ Sound doctrine, Mr Nightshade.

_Mr Escot._ I question its soundness. The use of vinous spirit has a tremendous influence in the deterioration of the human race.

_Mr Foster._ I fear, indeed, it operates as a considerable check to the progress of the species towards moral and intellectual perfection. Yet many great men have been of opinion that it exalts the imagination, fires the genius, accelerates the flow of ideas, and imparts to dispositions naturally cold and deliberative that enthusiastic sublimation which is the source of greatness and energy.

_Mr Nightshade._ _Laudibus arguitur vini vinosus Homerus._[5.3]

_Mr Jenkison._ I conceive the use of wine to be always pernicious in excess, but often useful in moderation: it certainly kills some, but it saves the lives of others: I find that an occasional gla.s.s, taken with judgment and caution, has a very salutary effect in maintaining that equilibrium of the system, which it is always my aim to preserve; and this calm and temperate use of wine was, no doubt, what Homer meant to inculcate, when he said: _Par de depas oinoio, piein hote thumos anogoi._[5.4]

_Squire Headlong._ Good. Pa.s.s the bottle. (_Un morne silence_). Sir Christopher does not seem to have raised our spirits. Chromatic, favour us with a specimen of your vocal powers. Something in point.

Mr Chromatic, without further preface, immediately struck up the following

SONG

In his last binn Sir Peter lies, Who knew not what it was to frown: Death took him mellow, by surprise, And in his cellar stopped him down.

Through all our land we could not boast A knight more gay, more prompt than he, To rise and fill a b.u.mper toast, And pa.s.s it round with THREE TIMES THREE.

None better knew the feast to sway, Or keep Mirth's boat in better trim; For Nature had but little clay Like that of which she moulded him.

The meanest guest that graced his board Was there the freest of the free, His b.u.mper toast when Peter poured, And pa.s.sed it round with THREE TIMES THREE.

He kept at true good humour's mark The social flow of pleasure's tide: He never made a brow look dark, Nor caused a tear, but when he died.

No sorrow round his tomb should dwell: More pleased his gay old ghost would be, For funeral song, and pa.s.sing bell, To hear no sound but THREE TIMES THREE.

(_Hammering of knuckles and gla.s.ses and shouts of bravo!_)

_Mr Panscope._ (_Suddenly emerging from a deep reverie._) I have heard, with the most profound attention, every thing which the gentleman on the other side of the table has thought proper to advance on the subject of human deterioration; and I must take the liberty to remark, that it augurs a very considerable degree of presumption in any individual, to set himself up against the _authority_ of so many great men, as may be marshalled in metaphysical phalanx under the opposite banners of the controversy; such as Aristotle, Plato, the scholiast on Aristophanes, St Chrysostom, St Jerome, St Athanasius, Orpheus, Pindar, Simonides, Gronovius, Hemsterhusius, Longinus, Sir Isaac Newton, Thomas Paine, Doctor Paley, the King of Prussia, the King of Poland, Cicero, Monsieur Gautier, Hippocrates, Machiavelli, Milton, Colley Cibber, Bojardo, Gregory n.a.z.ianzenus, Locke, D'Alembert, Boccaccio, Daniel Defoe, Erasmus, Doctor Smollett, Zimmermann, Solomon, Confucius, Zoroaster, and Thomas-a-Kempis.

_Mr Escot._ I presume, sir, you are one of those who value an _authority_ more than a reason.

_Mr Panscope._ The _authority_, sir, of all these great men, whose works, as well as the whole of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the entire series of the Monthly Review, the complete set of the Variorum Cla.s.sics, and the Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions, I have read through from beginning to end, deposes, with irrefragable refutation, against your ratiocinative speculations, wherein you seem desirous, by the futile process of a.n.a.lytical dialectics, to subvert the pyramidal structure of synthetically deduced opinions, which have withstood the secular revolutions of physiological disquisition, and which I maintain to be transcendentally self-evident, categorically certain, and syllogistically demonstrable.

_Squire Headlong._ Bravo! Pa.s.s the bottle. The very best speech that ever was made.

_Mr Escot._ It has only the slight disadvantage of being unintelligible.

_Mr Panscope._ I am not obliged, sir, as Dr Johnson observed on a similar occasion, to furnish you with an understanding.

_Mr Escot._ I fear, sir, you would have some difficulty in furnis.h.i.+ng me with such an article from your own stock.

_Mr Panscope._ 'Sdeath, sir, do you question my understanding?

_Mr Escot._ I only question, sir, where I expect a reply; which, from things that have no existence, I am not visionary enough to antic.i.p.ate.

_Mr Panscope._ I beg leave to observe, sir, that my language was perfectly perspicuous, and etymologically correct; and, I conceive, I have demonstrated what I shall now take the liberty to say in plain terms, that all your opinions are extremely absurd.

_Mr Escot._ I should be sorry, sir, to advance any opinion that you would not think absurd.

_Mr Panscope._ Death and fury, sir----

_Mr Escot._ Say no more, sir. That apology is quite sufficient.

_Mr Panscope._ Apology, sir?

_Mr Escot._ Even so, sir. You have lost your temper, which I consider equivalent to a confession that you have the worst of the argument.

_Mr Panscope._ Lightning and devils! sir----

_Squire Headlong._ No civil war!--Temperance, in the name of Bacchus!--A glee! a glee!

_Music has charms to bend the knotted oak._ Sir Patrick, you'll join?

_Sir Patrick O'Prism._ Troth, with all my heart; for, by my soul, I'm bothered completely.

_Squire Headlong._ Agreed, then; you, and I, and Chromatic. b.u.mpers! Come, strike up.

Squire Headlong, Mr Chromatic, and Sir Patrick O'Prism, each holding a b.u.mper, immediately vociferated the following

GLEE

A heeltap! a heeltap! I never could bear it!

So fill me a b.u.mper, a b.u.mper of claret!

Let the bottle pa.s.s freely, don't s.h.i.+rk it nor spare it, For a heeltap! a heeltap! I never could bear it!

No skylight! no twilight! while Bacchus rules o'er us: No thinking! no shrinking! all drinking in chorus: Let us moisten our clay, since 'tis thirsty and porous: No thinking! no shrinking! all drinking in chorus!

GRAND CHORUS

_By Squire Headlong, Mr Chromatic, Sir Patrick O'Prism, Mr Panscope, Mr Jenkison, Mr Gall, Mr Treacle, Mr Nightshade, Mr Mac Laurel, Mr Cranium, Mr Milestone, and the Reverend Dr Gaster._

A heeltap! a heeltap! I never could bear it!