“Sare, I am at where?--” “Well, I know you be!” ]
BEING AN APOLOGY FOR NOT MAKING AN ATTEMPT ON MY OWN LIFE.
The late inimitable Charles Mathews, in one of his amusing entertainments, used to tell a story of a certain innkeeper, who made it a rule of his house, to allow a candle to a guest, only on condition of his ordering a pint of wine. Whereupon the guest contends, on the reciprocity system, for a light for every half-bottle, and finally drinks himself into a general illumination.
Something of the above principle seems to have obtained in the case of a Portrait and a Memoir, which in literary practice have been usually dependent on each other--a likeness and a life,--a candle and a pint of wine. The mere act of sitting, probably suggests the idea of hatching; at least an author has seldom nestled in a painter’s chair, without coming out afterwards with a brood of Reminiscences, and accordingly, no sooner was my effigy about to be presented to the Public, than I found myself called upon by my Publisher, with a finished proof of the engraving in one hand, and a request for an account of myself in the other. He evidently supposed, as a matter of course, that I had my autobiography in the bottle, and that the time was come to uncork and pour it out _with a Head_.
To be candid, no portrait, perhaps, ever stood more in need of such an accompaniment. The figure opposite has certainly the look of one of those practical jokes whereof the original is oftener suspected than really culpable. It might pass for the sign of “The Grave Maurice.” The author of Elia has declared that he once sat as substitute for a whole series of British Admirals,[2] and a physiognomist might reasonably suspect that in wantonness or weariness, instead of giving my head I had procured myself to be painted by proxy. For who, that calls himself stranger, could ever suppose that such a pale, pensive, peaking, sentimental, sonneteering countenance--with a wry mouth as if it always laughed on its wrong side--belonged bonâ fide to the Editor of the Comic--a Professor of the Pantagruelian Philosophy, hinted at in the preface to the present work? What unknown who reckons himself decidedly serious, would recognise the head and front of my “offending,” in a visage not at all too hilarious for a frontispiece to the Evangelical Magazine! In point of fact the owner has been taken sundry times, ere now, for a Methodist Minister, and a pious turn has been attributed to his hair--lucus a non lucendo--from its having no turn in it at all.[3] In like manner my literary contemporaries who have cared to remark on my personals, have agreed in ascribing to me a melancholy bias; thus an authority in the New Monthly Magazine has described me as “a grave anti-pun-like-looking person,” whilst another--in the Book of Gems--declares that “my countenance is more grave than merry,” and insists, therefore, that I am of a pensive habit, and “have never laughed heartily in company or in rhyme.” Against such an inference, however, I solemnly protest, and if it be the fault of my features, I do not mind telling my face to its face that it insinuates a false Hood, and grossly misrepresents a person notorious amongst friends for laughing at strange times and odd places, and in particular when he has the worst of the rubber. For it is no comfort for the loss of points, by his theory, to be upon thorns. And truly what can be more unphilosophical, than to sit ruefully as well as whistfully, with your face inconsistently playing at longs and your hand at shorts,--getting hypped as well as pipped,--“talking of Hoyle,” as the City lady said, “but looking like winegar,” and betraying as keen a sense of the profit and loss, as if the _pack_ had turned you into a _pedlar_.