The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey Volume II Part 16

be sure you do not forget the little sequel which I shall furnish: tell it to the end, my Pilsen:

And set you down that in Aleppo once--'

Here the whole company began to quake with the laughter of antic.i.p.ation--

'And set you down that in Aleppo once--

when a fribble--a c.o.xcomb--a puppy dared to traduce a student from the university of X----

I took the circ.u.mcised dog by the nose, And smote him thus----'

at the same time breaking his pipe calmly on the very prominent nose of Mr.

Von Pilsen.

Inextinguishable laughter followed from all present: Mr. Von Pilsen quitted the room forthwith: and next morning was sought for in vain in B----.

CHAPTER XXV.

WHICH CONTAINS A DUEL--AND A DEATH.

Scarcely had Mr. Schnackenberger withdrawn to his apartment, when a pair of 'field-pieces' were heard clattering up-stairs--such and so mighty as, among all people that on earth do dwell, no mortal wore, himself only except, and the student, Mr. Fabian Sebastian. Little had he thought under his evening canopy of smoke, that Nemesis was treading so closely upon his heels.

'Sir, my brother,' began Mr. Student Fabian, 'the time is up: and here am I, to claim my rights. Where is the dog? The money is ready: deliver the article: and payment shall be made.'

Mr. Schnackenberger shrugged his shoulders.

'Nay, my brother, no jesting (if you please) on such serious occasions: I demand my article.'

'What, if the article have vanished?'

'Vanished!' said Mr. Fabian; 'why then we must fight, until it comes back again.--Sir, my brother, you have acted nefariously enough in absconding with goods that you had sold: would you proceed to yet greater depths in nefariousness, by now withholding from me my own article?'

So saying, Mr. Fabian paid down the purchase money in hard gold upon the table. 'Come, now, be easy,' said Mr. Schnackenberger, 'and hear me.'

'Be easy, do you say? _That_ will I not: but hear I will, and with all my heart, provided it be nothing unhearable--nor anything in question of my right to the article: else, you know, come knocks.' 'Knocks!' said Jeremiah: 'and since when, I should be glad to know, has the Schnackenberger been in the habit of taking knocks without knocking again, and paying a pretty large per centage?'

'Ah! very likely. That's your concern. As to me, I speak only for myself and for my article.' Hereupon Mr. Schnackenberger made him acquainted with the circ.u.mstances, which were so unpalatable to the purchaser of 'the article,'

that he challenged Mr. Schnackenberger to single combat there and then.

'Come,' said Mr. Fabian; 'but first put up the purchase money: for I, at least, will practise nothing that is nefarious.'

Mr. Schnackenberger did so; redeemed his sword from Mrs. Sweetbread by settling her bill; buckled it on; and attended Mr. Fabian to the neighbouring forest.

Being arrived at a spot suitable to their purpose, and their swords drawn, Mr. Schnackenberger said--'Upon my word it's a shocking thing that we must fight upon this argument: not but it's just what I have long expected.

Junonian quarrels I have had, in my time, 747; and a Junonian duel is nothing more than I have foreseen for this last week. Yet, after all, brother, I give you my honour that the brute is not worth a duel: for, fools as we have been in our rivals.h.i.+p about her, between ourselves she is a mere agent of the fiend, and minister of perdition, to him who is so unhappy as to call her his.'

'Like enough, my brother; haven't a doubt you're in the right, for you know her best: still it would be nefarious in a high degree if our blades were to part without crossing each other. We must tilt a bit: Sir, my brother, we must tilt. So lunge away at me; and never fear but I'll lunge as fast as you.'

So said--so done: but scarce had Mr. Sebastian pushed his first 'carte over the arm,' which was well parried by his antagonist, when, with a loud outcry, in rushed Juno; and, without troubling herself about the drawn swords, she drove right at the pit of Mr. Sebastian's stomach, knocked the breath out of his body, the sword out of his hand, and himself upon his back.

'Ah! my G.o.ddess, my Juno!' cried Mr. Schnackenberger; 'Nec vox hominem sonat, oh Dea certe!'

'Nec vox hominem sonat?' said Mr. Fabian, rising: 'Faith, you're right there; for I never heard a voice more like a brute's in my life.'

'Down then, down, Juno,' said Mr. Schnackenberger, as Juno was preparing for a second campaign against Mr. Fabian's stomach: Mr. Fabian, on his part, held out his hand to his brother student--saying, 'all quarrels are now ended.' Mr. Jeremiah accepted his hand cordially. Mr. Fabian offered to resign 'the article,' however agitating to his feelings. Mr. Jeremiah, though no less agitated, protested he should not. 'I will, by all that's magnanimous,' said Mr. Fabian. 'By the memory of Curtius, or whatever else is most sacred in self-sacrifice, you shall not,' said Mr. Jeremiah. 'Hear me, thou light of day,' said Mr. Fabian kneeling. 'Hear _me_,' interrupted Mr. Jeremiah, kneeling also: yes, the Schnackenberger knelt, but carefully and by circ.u.mstantial degree; for he was big and heavy as a rhinoceros, and afraid of capsizing, and perspired freely. Mr. Fabian kneeled like a dactyle: Mr. Jeremiah kneeled like a spondee, or rather like a molossus.

Juno, meantime, whose feelings were less affected, did not kneel at all; but, like a tribrach, amused herself with chasing a hare which just then crossed one of the forest ridings. A moment after was heard the report of a fowling-piece. Bitter presentiment of the truth caused the kneeling duelists to turn their heads at the same instant. Alas! the subject of their high-wrought contest was no more: English Juno lay stretched in her blood!

Up started the 'dactyle;' up started the 'spondee;' out flew their swords; curses, dactylic and spondaic, began to roll; and the gemini of the university of X, side by side, strode after the Junonicide, who proved to be a forester. The forester wisely retreated, before the storm, into his cottage; from an upper window of which he read to the two coroners, in this inquest after blood, a section of the forest-laws, which so fully justified what he had done--that, like the reading of the English riot act, it dispersed the gemini, both dactylic and spondaic, who now held it advisable to pursue the matter no further.

'Sir, my brother,' said Mr. Fabian, embracing his friend over the corpse of Juno, 'see what comes of our imitating Kotzebue's plays! Nothing but our nefarious magnanimity was the cause of Juno's untimely end. For had we, instead of kneeling (which by the way seemed to "punish" you a good deal), had we, I say, vested the property in one or other of us, she, instead of diverting her ennui by hunting, would have been trotting home by the side of her master--and the article would have been still living.'

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE FUNERAL GAMES.

'Now then,' said Mr. Schnackenberger, entering the Double-barrelled Gun with his friend,--'Now, waiter, let us have Rhenish and Champagne, and all other good things with which your Gun is charged: fire off both barrels upon us: Come, you dog, make ready--present; for we solemnise a funeral to-day:' and, at the same time, he flung down the purchase-money of Juno upon the table.

The waiter hastened to obey his orders.

The longer the two masters of Juno drank together, the more did they convince themselves that her death was a real blessing to herself, who had thus obviously escaped a life of severe cudgelling, which her voracity would have entailed upon her: 'yes,' they both exclaimed; 'a blessing to herself--to her friends in particular--and to the public in general.'

To conclude, the price of Juno was honourably drunk up to the last farthing, in celebration of her obsequies at this one sitting.

[Greek: Hos hoi g'amphiepon taphon Hektoros hippodamoio.]

END OF 'MR. SCHNACKENBERGER.'

ANGLO-GERMAN DICTIONARIES.

The German dictionaries, compiled for the use of Englishmen studying that language, are all bad enough, I doubt not, even in this year 1823; but those of a century back are the most ludicrous books that ever mortal read: _read_, I say, for they are well worth reading, being often as good as a jest book. In some instances, I am convinced that the compilers (Germans living in Germany) had a downright hoax put upon them by some facetious Briton whom they had consulted; what is given as the English equivalent for the German word being not seldom a pure coinage that never had any existence out of Germany. Other instances there are, in which the words, though not of foreign manufacture, are almost as useless to the English student as if they were; slang-words, I mean, from the slang vocabulary, current about the latter end of the seventeenth century. These must have been laboriously culled from the works of Tom Brown, Sir Roger L'Estrange, Echard, Jeremy Collier, and others, from 1660 to 1700, who were the great masters of this _vernacular_ English (as it might emphatically be called, with a reference to the primary[27] meaning of the word _vernacular_): and I verily believe, that, if any part of this slang has become, or ever should become a dead language to the English critic, his best guide to the recovery of its true meaning will be the German dictionaries of Bailey, Arnold, &c. in their earliest editions. By one of these, the word _Potztausend_ (a common German oath) is translated, to the best of my remembrance, thus:--'Udzooks, Udswiggers, Udswoggers, Bublikins, Boblikins, Splitterkins,' &c. and so on, with a large choice of other elegant varieties. Here, I take it, our friend the hoaxer had been at work: but the drollest example I have met with of their slang is in the following story told to me by Mr. Coleridge. About the year 1794, a German, recently imported into Bristol, had happened to hear of Mrs. X., a wealthy widow. He thought it would be a good speculation to offer himself to the lady's notice as well qualified to 'succeed' to the late Mr.

X.; and accordingly waited on the lady with that intention. Having no great familiarity with English, he provided himself with a copy of one of the dictionaries I have mentioned; and, on being announced to the lady, he determined to open his proposal with this introductory sentence--Madam, having heard that Mr. X., late your husband, is dead: but coming to the last word 'ges...o...b..n' (dead), he was at a loss for the English equivalent; so, hastily pulling out his dictionary (a huge 8vo.), he turned to the word 'sterben,' (to die),--and there found----; but what he found will be best collected from the dialogue which followed, as reported by the lady:--

_German._ Madam, hahfing heard that Mein Herr X., late your man, is----(these words he kept chiming over as if to himself, until he arrived at No. 1 of the interpretations of 'sterben,'--when he roared out, in high glee at his discovery)----is, dat is--has, _kicked de bucket_.

_Widow._ (With astonishment.)--'Kicked the bucket,' Sir!--what--

_German._ Ah! mein Gott!--Alway Ich make mistake: I vou'd have said--(beginning again with the same solemnity of tone)--since dat Mein Herr X., late your man, hav--_hopped de twig_--(which words he screamed out with delight, certain that he had now hit the nail upon the head).