THE LOOKER-ON. N° 73. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1793. Navibus atque Quadrigis petimus bene vivere. HORAT. We think we must advance by travelling far: AS, in a paper or two ago, I offered to my readers some observations on travelling, I should have said nothing more on that subject, had it not been revived in my mind by an occurrence which took place on Thursday night. A gentleman who has visited almost all parts of the globe, has lately taken a house at about a mile's distance from our town. Having heard that our Society was composed of many persons of parts and erudition, it was not long before he signified a strong inclination to become one of our members; and as there happened to be a vacancy at that time amongst us, we could not refuse him the customary trial. On the morning before our meeting, a foreign servant, in a kind of hussar dress, brought me from this gentleman several parch VOL. XLIV. ment rolls, which, on examination, I found to contain the certificates of his election to a great number of different societies abroad, which his servant was commissioned to interpret, as they were written in a variety of languages. To these dazzling testimonies of merit, the modest request was subjoined, that, as president of this Honourable Academy, as he termed it, I would be pleased, with the assistance of his interpreter, to make known the contents to the members in full assembly, for which purpose I was expected to consecrate the evening of that day. I saw plainly that our candidate was possessed of a very imperfect idea of the nature and objects of our institution; but as the character of our meeting is not long in explaining itself, I thought it best to leave his mistake to a practical correction at the meeting itself. We met accordingly at our usual hour, and the greater part of us had taken our seats, when some very loud voices on the stairs announced an extraordinary visit. Nothing is more discernible than the approach of a new candidate; for such is the decorous restraint to which we are exercised, that an old member never enters the room with a speech in his mouth, for fear of interrupting the conversation with which the company are supposed to be pre-occupied. As our travelled gentleman was mounting the stairs, which, to be sure, were somewhat steep, we could distinctly hear the mention of the Janiculan Hill, and the Thermæ of Caracalla, which last name was repeated by the echo the moment he entered the room. After his introduction by Mr. Shapely, our master of the ceremonies, which was not finished without a profusion of bows, he sat himself down, and, throwing some very anxious looks towards me, seemed to be expecting when I should put on my hat, and rise up to pronounce his eulogy and his titles to the assembly. But perceiving no motion on my part that bespoke any such intention, he addressed himself to our churchwarden, who sat opposite to him, and, informing him that he had seen a gentleman abroad extremely like him, asked him if he had not passed some time in Italy? Mr. Barnaby assured the gentleman that he had not been ten miles out of his own parish these ten years, during which time he had been overseer of the poor, and that he knew no more of Italy than the Pope of Rome. As the simplicity of this answer afforded some grounds for concluding that the information of our society reached to no very extraordinary height, our traveller was entering with no small courage into many wonderful relations, and was just escaping from an Algerine corsair, when the orders of the society were handed across to him for his perusal. He read them with some attention, and, returning them to the secretary, declared they put him in mind of the Babine Society in Poland, into which he had been admitted in the year 1778. I could observe, that every thing he saw or heard had the same effect of reviving the recollection of some foreign incident or occurrence. There was not a gentleman in the room that had not his likeness in some foreign prince; and my nose, which has run in my family for ages, and is in a manner an hereditary exclusive kind of property, was, in the course of the evening, given both to the Grand Vizier and the Great Mogul. If any event was talked of, however local or trivial, it was exactly like a circumstance which had occurred to him in company with some foreigner of distinction; and it was discovered that Mr. Blunt's favourite mare had foaled on the same day in which our candidate was received into the Academy of Sciences at Berlin. Our registrar was all this while employed in marking down the forfeits incurred by our visitor in the course of his narrations, and, upon a signal from any of the judges in our different courts, made an immediate entry in his black catalogue. As he appeared, however, to the person concerned, to be only taking minutes of what was most extraordinary in the different anecdotes he was relating, he was the more encouraged to prosecute the detail of his adventures, and to bestow upon them the needful embellishments. It is with travellers as it is with scholars; the man of book-learning has seldom the forbearance to wait until he is found out by those with whom he is conversing the irritation of vanity will not suffer him to postpone his rewards, though it be to enhance their price; and thus he raises, by his impolitic haste, an expectation inimical to his views, and disparages the effect of his exhibition by too early and ambitious a display of the process and machinery. It is not in our extensive acquaintance with countries, or with books, that the world is interested, but in the general influence these advantages have had on our character, our conversation, and our deportment: and we are all of us, beyond comparison, more pleased with the discoveries we make ourselves of another's excellencies, and with the surprise that accompanies these discoveries, than with the proudest testimonies that can be produced in his behalf. But pride is the destroyer of itself, and falls by its own weapons. The morning after our meeting, our registrar brought me the books to inspect; and I was not surprised to find three whole pages filled with articles of impeachment against our traveller; and I do not know that the first appearance of any of our members has been signalized by so long a list. I shall here present a transcript of the first page, for the instruction of my readers. For raising the Echo. 1. In a rapture about the Venus of Medicis. 2. By an imitation of signor Algarotti's note in E. 3. By throwing down four tumblers, in representing the attitude of the Laocoon. 4. By a burst of democratic fury. 5. By showing how the tiger roared which he presented to the cham of Tartary. 6. Ditto the Sultan's mutes strangling the prime vizier. 7. Ditto the Indian war-whoop. 8. By squeezing Mr. Barnaby's hand in an ecstasy about Ebon Hassah's haram, till he was forced to cry out for mercy. 9. By a description of the siege of Belgrade, with the bombs and mortars. All this came under the cognisance of the Echo. In the other courts he was sentenced for the following transgressions. Sir Gabriel Grimstone, our latest member, preferred an accusation against him for bringing his peruque to the ground with the stroke of a sabre that killed a Cossac Tartar. My curate ditto, for dipping his finger in his punch, to describe the fortifications of Oczakow. Threatened to challenge sir Gabriel for winking to Mr. Barnaby at the story of the rhinoceros. Called the king of Poland a fool, for not following |