百度搜索 伊利亚随笔 天涯 或 伊利亚随笔 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.
The all-sweeping besom of societarian reformation -- your only modern Alcides club to rid the time of its abuses -- is uplift with many-handed sway to extirpate the last fluttering tatters of the bugbear Mendicity from the metropolis. Scrips, wallets, bags -- staves, dogs, and crutches <big></big>-- the whole mendit fraternity with all their baggage are fast posting out of the purlieus of this eleventh persecution. From the crowded crossing, from the ers of streets and turnings of allies, the parting Genius of Beggary is "with sighi."I do not approve of this wholesale going to work, this imperti crusado, or bellum ad exterminationem, proclaimed against a species. Muight be sucked from these Beggars.
They were the oldest and the honourablest form of pauperism. Their appeals were to our on nature; less revolting to an ingenuous mind than to be a suppliant to the particular humours or caprice of any fellow-creature, or set of fellow-creatures, parochial or societarian. Theirs were the only rates uninvidious in the levy, ungrudged in the assessment.
There was a dignity springing from the very depth of their desolation; as to be naked is to be so muearer to the being a man, than to go in livery.
The greatest spirits have felt this in their reverses; and when Dionysius from king turned saster, do we feel any thing towards him but pt? Could Vandyke have made a picture of him, swaying a ferula for a sceptre, which would have affected our minds with the same heroic pity, the same passionate admiration, with whic<bdo></bdo>h we regard his Belisarius begging for an obolum? Would the moral have been mraceful, more pathetic?
The Blind Beggar in the legend -- the father of pretty Bessy -- whose story doggrel rhymes and ale-house signs ot so degrade nor attenuate, but that some sparks of a lustrous spirit will shihrough the disguisements -- this noble Earl of wall (as indeed he was) and memorable sport of fortune, fleeing from the unjust sentence of his liege lord, stript of all, aed on the fl green of Bethnal, with his more fresh and springing daughter by his side, illumining his rags and his beggary -- would the child and parent have cut a better figure, doing the honours of a ter, or expiating their fallen dition upohree-foot eminence of some sempstering shop-board?
In tale or history ygar is ever the just antipode to your King. The poets and romancical writers (as dear Margaret Newcastle would call them) when they would most sharply and feelingly paint a reverse of fortune, op till they have brought down their hero in good ears and the wallet. The depth of the dest illustrates the height he falls from. There is no medium which be preseo the imagination without offehere is no breaking the fall. Lear, thrown from his palace, must divest him of his garments, till he answer "mere nature;" and Cresseid, fallen from a princes love, must extend her pale arms, pale with other whitehan of beauty, supplig lazar alms with bell and clap-dish.
The Lu wits khis very well; and, with a verse policy, when they would express s of greatness without the pity, they show us an Alexander in the shades cobbling shoes, or a Semiramis getting up foul linen.
How would it sound in song, that a great monarch had deed his affes upon the daughter of a baker! yet do we feel the imagination at all violated when we read the "true ballad," where King Cophetua wooes the beggar maid?
Pauperism, pauper, poor man, are expressions of pity, but pity alloyed with pt. No one properly ns a beggar. Poverty is a parative thing, and each degree of it is mocked by its "neighbrice." Its poor rents and ings-in are soon summed up and told. Its preteo property are almost ludicrous. Its pitiful attempts to save excite a smile. Every sful panion weigh his trifle-bigger purse against it. Poor man reproaches poor man ireets with impolitition of his dition, his own being a shade better, while the rich pass by and jeer at both. No rascally parative insults a Beggar, or thinks of weighing purses with him. He is not in the scale of parison. He is not uhe measure of property. He fessedly hath none, any more than a dog or a sheep. No owitteth him with ostentation above his means. No one accuses him of pride, or upbraideth him with mock humility. None jostle with him for the wall, or pick quarrels for preo wealthy neighbour seeketh to eject him from his te. No man sues him. No mao law with him. If I were not the indepe gentleman that I am, rather than I would be a retaio the great, a led captain, or a poor relation, I would choose, out of the delicad true greatness of my mind, to be a Beggar.
Rags, which are the reproach of poverty, are the Beggars robes, and graceful insignia of his profession, his tenure, his full dress, the suit in which he is expected to show himself in public. He is never out of the fashion, or limpeth awkwardly behind it. He is not required to put on court m. He weareth all colours, fearing none. His e hath undergone less ge than the quakers. He is the only man in the universe who is not obliged to study appearahe ups and downs of the world him no longer. He alone tih iay. The price of stock or land affecteth him not. The fluctuations of agricultural or ercial prosperity touch him not, or at worst but ge his ers. He is not expected to bee bail or surety for any one. No man troubleth him with questioning his religion or politics. He is the only free man in the universe.
The Mendits of this great city were so many of her sights, her lions. I o more spare then, than I could the Cries of London. No er of a street is plete without them. They are as indispensable as the Ballad Singer; and in their picturesque attire as oral as the Signs of old London. They were the standing morals, emblems, mementos, dial-mottos, the spital sermons, the books for children, the salutary checks and pauses to the high and rushing tide of greasy citizenry -
--- Look
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there.
Above all, those old blind Tobits that used to lihe wall of Lins Inn Garden, before modern fastidiousness had expelled them, casting up their ruined orbs to catch a ray of pity, and (if possible) of light, with their faithful Dog Guide at their feet, -- whither are they fled? or into what ers, blind as themselves, have they been driven, out of the wholesome air and sun-warmth? immersed between four walls, in what withering poor-house do they ehe penalty of double darkness, where the k of the dropt halfpenny no more soles their forlorn bereavement, far from the sound of the cheerful and hope-stirring tread of the passenger? Where hang their useless staves? and who will farm their dogs Have the overseers of St. L --- caused them to be shot? or were they tied up in sacks, and dropt into the Thames, at the suggestion of B--- , the mild rector of -- -?
Well fare the soul of unfastidious Vi Bourne, most classical, and at the same time, most English, of the Latinists -- who has treated of this human and quadrupedal alliahis dog and man friendship, in the sweetest of his poems, the Epitaphium in em, or, Dogs Epitaph. Reader, peruse it; and say, if ary sights, which could call up such gentle poetry as this, were of a nature to do more harm ood to the moral sense of the passengers <bdi></bdi>through the daily thhfares of a vast and busy metropolis.
Pauperis hic iri requiesco Lyciscus, he９９ｌib?rilis,
Dum vixi, tutela vigil enque seae,
Dux caeco fidus: nec, me dute, solebat,
Praetenso hinc atque hinc baculo, per iniqua lo
Iam explorare viam; sed fila secutus,
Quae dubierent passus, vestigia tuta
Fixit inoffenso gressu; gelidumque sedile
In nudo nactus saxo, qua praetereuntium
Unda frequens fluxit, ibi miserisque tenebras
Lamentis, noctemque oculis ploravit obortam.
Ploravit nec frustra; obolum dedit alter et alter,
Queis corda et mentem i natura benignam.
Ad latus interea jacui sopitus herile,
Vel mediis vigil in somnis; ad herilia jussa
Auresque atque animum arrectus, seu frustula amice
Porrexit sociasque dapes, seu longa diei
Taedia perpessus, reditum sub nocte parabat.
Hi mores, haec vita fuit, dum fata si,
Dum neque languebam morbis, neerte sea;
Quae tandem obrepsit, veterique satellite cascum
Orbavit dominum prisci sed gratia facti
a i, longos deleta per annos,
Exiguum hunc Irus tumulum de cespite fecit,
Etsi inopis, non ingratae, munuscula dextrae;
Carmine signavitque brevi, dominumque emque
Quod memoret, fidumque em dominumque benignum.
Poor Irus faithful wolf-dog here I lie,
That wont to tend m<bdo>..</bdo>y old blind masters steps,
His guide and guard: nor, while my service lasted,
Had he occasion for that staff, with which
He now goes pig out his path in fear
Over the highways and crossings; but would plant,
Safe in the duy friendly string,
A firm foot forward still, till he had reachd
His poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide
Of passers by in thickest fluence flowd:
To whom with loud and passionate laments
From morn to eve his dark estate he waild.
Nor waild to all in vain: some here and there,
The well-disposed and good, their pennies gave.
I mea his feet obsequious slept;
Not all-asleep in sleep, hut heart and ear
Prickd up at his least motion; to receive
At his kind hand my ary crums,
And on portion in his feast of scraps;
Or when night warnd us homeward, tired and spent
With our long day and tedious beggary.
These were my manners, this my way of life,
Till age and slow disease me overtook,
And severd from my sightless masters side.
But lest the grace of so good deeds should die,
Through tract of years in mute oblivion lost,
This sleomb of turf hath Irus reared,
Cheap mo of no ungrudging hand,
And with short verse inscribed it, to attest,
In long and lasting union to attest,
The virtues of the Beggar and his Dog.
These dim eyes have in vain explored for some months past a well-known figure, or part of the figure, of a man, who used to glide his ely upper half over the pavements of London, wheeling along with most ingenious celerity upon a mae of wood; a spectacle to natives, tners, and to children. He was of a robust make, with a florid sailor-like plexion, and his head was bare to the storm and sunshine. He was a natural curiosity, a speculation to the stific, a prodigy to the simple. The infant would stare at the mighty man brought down to his own level. The on cripple would despise his own pusillanimity, viewing the hale stoutness, ay heart, of this half-limbed giant. Few but must have noticed him; for the act, which brought him low, took place during the riots of 1780, and he has been a groundling so long. He seemed earth-born, an Anteus, and to su fresh vigour from the soil which he neighboured. He was a grand fragment; as good as an Elgin marble. The nature, which should have recruited his reft legs and thighs, was not lost, but only retired into his upper parts, and he was half a Hercules. I heard a tremendous voice thundering and growling, as before ahquake, and casting down my eyes, it was this mandrake reviling a steed that had started at his portentous appearance. He seemed to want but his just stature to have rent the offending quadruped in shivers. He was as the man-part of a taur, from which the horse-half had been cloven in some dire Lapithan troversy. He moved on, as if he could have made shift with yet half of the body- portion which was left him. The os sublime was not wanting; ahrew out yet a jolly tenance upon the heavens. Forty-and-two years had he driven this out of door trade, and now that his hair is grizzled in the service, but his good spirits no way impaired, because he is not tent to exge his free air and exercise for the restraints of a poor-house, he is expiating his a one of those houses (ironically christened) of Corre.
Was a daily spectacle like this to be deemed a nuisance, which called fal interfereo remove? or not rather a salutary and a toug object, to the passers-by in a great city? -- Among her shows, her museums, and supplies for ever-gaping curiosity (and what else but an accumulation of sights -- endless sights -- is a great city; or for what else is it desirable?) was there not room for one Lusus (not Naturae, indeed, but) Actium? What if in forty-and-two years going about, the man had scraped together enough to give a portion to his child (as the rumour ran) of a few hundreds -- whom had he injured ? -- whom had he imposed upon? The tributors had eheir sight for their pennies. What if after being exposed all day to the heats, the rains, and the frosts of heaven -- shuffling his ungainly trunk along in an elaborate and painful motion -- he was eo retire at night to enjoy himself at a club of his fellow cripples over a dish of hot meat aables, as the charge was gravely brought against him by a clergyman deposing before a House of ons ittee -- was this, or was his truly paternal sideration, which (if a fact) deserved a statue rather than a whipping-post, and is insistent at least with the exaggeration of noal ies which he has been slandered with -- a reason that he should be deprived of his chosen, harmless, nay edifying, way of life, and be itted in he for a sturdy vagabond? --
There was a Yorice, whom it would not have shamed to have sate down at the cripples feast, and to have thrown in his beion, ay, and his mite too, for a panionable symbol. "Age, thou hast lost thy breed." -
Half of these stories about the prodigious fortunes made by begging are (I verily believe) misers calumnies. One was much talked of in the public papers some time since, and the usual charitable inferences deduced. A clerk in the Bank was surprised with the annou of a five hundred pound legacy left him by a person whose name he was a strao. It seems that in his daily m walks from Peckham (or some village thereabouts) where he lived, to his office, it had been his practice for the last twenty years to drop his halfpenny duly into the hat of some blind Bartimeus, that sate begging alms by the way-side in the Bh. The good old beggar reised his daily beor by the voily; and, when be died, left all the amassings of his alms (that [p 120] had been half a tury perhaps in the accumulating) to his old Bank friend. Was this a story to purse up peoples hearts, and pennies, against giving an aims to the blind ? -- or not rather a beautiful moral of well-directed charity on the one part, and noble gratitude upoher?
I sometimes wish I had been that Bank clerk.
I seem to remember a poor old grateful kind of creature, blinking, and looking up with his no eyes in the sun --
Is it possible I could have steeled my purse against him?
Perhaps I had no small ge.
Reader, do not be frighte the hard words, imposition, imposture -- give, and ask no questions. Cast thy bread upoers. Some have unawares (like this Bank clerk) eained angels.
Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted distress. Act a charity sometimes. When a poor creature (outwardly and visibly such) es before thee, do not stay to inquire whether the "seven small children," in whose name he implores thy assistance, have a veritable existence. Rake not into the bowels of unwele truth, to save a halfpenny. It is good to believe him. If he be not all that he preteh, give, and under a persoher of a family, think (if thou pleasest) that thou hast relieved an i bachelor. When they e with their terfeit looks, and mumping tohink them players. You pay your moo see a edian feighings, which, ing these poor people, thou st not certainly tell whether they are feigned or not.
百度搜索 伊利亚随笔 天涯 或 伊利亚随笔 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.