535 ABOUT SAGE FRIENDS WHO "ALWAYS TOLD A CUE FROM SHAKSPEARE. BY FRANCIS JACOX. Lucullus is one of the Athenian "lords, and flatterers of Timon," upon whom Timon's faithful steward attends, in his master's hour of need, to solicit a loan. Timon has sent Flaminius to this his fast friend, nothing doubting his present assistance. But Lucullus is a summer friend only; a mid-summer friend only. He is not for winter wear. Nothing doubting, quotha? Is Timon so confident as all that? The more fool he. Flaminius must go back re infecta. Lucullus cannot think of bolstering up the sinking credit of so wasteful a master. Hasn't he told Timon fifty times that he was living too fast? Didn't he always say it would come to this at last? "La, la, la, la, -nothing doubting, says he? alas, good lord! a noble gentleman 'tis, if he would not keep so good a house. Many a time and often I have dined with him, and told him on't; and come again to supper to him, of purpose to have him spend less: and yet he would embrace no counsel, take no warning by my coming. Every man has his fault, and honesty (liberality] is his; I have told him on't, but I could never get him from it."* According to Cicero, it is the part of a fool to say, Who'd have thought it? Insipientis est dicere, Non putarem. Applying which canon, Lucullus, who always thought it, and always told Timon how it would be, is a model of prescient candour and correctness. So that if not altogether a sure friend in need, he is a sage friend indeed. No mind has he to be classed with the aghast gapers satirised by Byron, who are said to -stare, as if a new ass spake With the kind world's Amen-"Who would have thought it?" Exiled Coriolanus comes in mean apparel, disguised and muffled, to the house of Aufidius, whose saucy servants vent their contempt on so threadbare a suit, and are for turning him out neck and crop. The coming of their master results in "a thousand welcomes," and at once the tables are turned in the servants' hall. The grooms and lackeys who could see nothing in the sorrily attired stranger but a mark for kitchen insolence and brutality, now discover that from the first there was a something noble and great about that Welcome Guest. 1st Serv. Here's a strange alteration. ... 2nd Serv. By my hand, I had thought to have strucken him with a cudgel; and yet my mind gave me, his clothes made a false report of him. Nay, I knew by his face that there was something in him: He had, sir, a kind of face, methought, I cannot tell how to term it. 1 Serv. He had so: looking as it were, -'Would I were hanged, but I thought there was more in him than I could think. 2 Serv. So did I, I'll be sworn: He is simply the rarest man i' the world.t * Timon of Athens, Act III. Sc. 1. VOL. LVIII. † Coriolanus, Act IV. Sc. 5. 2 N These graceless grooms have, however, the grace to confine their prescience to thoughts, and not to claim the merit of having uttered them. They refrain, under strong temptation, from saying, I told you so.That is a temptation which, with very slight ground for the saying it, is irresistible to noble lords and grave authorities. I told ye all, When we first put this dangerous stone a rolling, says the Duke of Suffolk to the Privy Council, when Cranmer's exhibition of the king's ring suddenly disconcerts them in their measures against him; while good master secretary, Thomas Cromwell, plumes himself on having thought the same ; for his mind misgave him that, in seeking tales and informations against Cranmer, they blew the fire that now burnt them. Ben Jonson was following classical authority when he makes the Roman mob exult in the downfal of Sejanus, Crying, they're glad, they never could abide him. * * * * -Protest They ever did presage he'd come to this; Nobody can possibly grudge Epictetus the mild gratification of saying to his master, "I told you so," in the anecdote recorded by Origen. Epaphroditus must have been no less brutal as a master, than Epictetus was sublime as a slave. "Epictetus, when his master was twisting his leg one day, smiled and quietly said, 'You will break it;' and when he did break it, only remarked, Did I not tell you that you would do so?" "I A less superb picture of servant suffering at the hands of master, and venting the same reminder, is that of Molière's Maître Jacques getting a beating from Harpagon, and screaming out between the blows, "Eh bien! ne l'avais-je pas deviné? Vous ne m'avez pas voulu croire. Je vous avais bien dit que je vous facherais de vous dire la verité."§ We may apply in a like sense the stately line addressed by Bajazet, in Racine's tragedy, to Acalide: Je vous l'avais prédit: mais vous l'avez voulu.|| Long years before official duty brought Mr. Arthur Helps into such intimate relations as at present with Right Honourable members of Her Majesty's Privy Council, he had written in one of the Essays we owe to his horæ subseciva, that those men are the grace and strength of Councils who are of that healthful nature which is content to take defeat with good humour, and of that practical turn of mind which makes them set heartily to work upon plans and propositions which have been originated in opposition to their judgment; "who are not anxious to shift responsibility upon others; and who do not allude to their former objections with triumph, when those objections come to be borne out by the result." La Bruyère** ridicules, in his polite and polished style, the sort of men who are easily caught by some great men's ambitious project, -talk about it with eager interest, and are charmed by the very audacity and novelty it displays. They get quite used to the idea of it, and come to assume it a feasible thing. In fact, they are only waiting for its sure and signal success, when it altogether collapses and comes to nothing after all. Thereupon they change their key, and affirm with peremptory decision that the whole thing was preposterous, and never could have succeeded. * King Henry VIII., Act V. Sc. 2. † Origen, Origen, contra Cels., VII. || Bajazet, Acte II. Sc. 5. † Sejanus, Act V. Sc. 10. § L'Avare, Acte III. Sc. 5. Essays Written in the Intervals of Business: Of Councils and Commissions. ** Les Caractères, ch. xii. Des Jugemens. In another section of his Characteristics the same classical penman sketches a fussy, pretentious quidnune, who had always said how it would be, when two brothers quarrel, or two ministers are at loggerheads. Had he not always foretold to the two brothers this deplorable issue? Had he not always foretold of the two ministers that they would not, could not hold together for long?* In one of Longfellow's later poems there is a portrait-sketch of this complacent predictive-power incarnate: And next the Deacon issued from his door, In his voluminous neckcloth, white as snow; A suit of sable bombazine he wore; His form was ponderous, and his step was slow; He seemed the incarnate "Well, I told you so !"† Note-worthy among the general faults in conversation enumerated by Dean Swift, is the habit some folks have, dexterously, "and with great art," of lying on the watch to hook in their own praise : they will call a witness to remember they always foretold what would happen in such a case, but none would believe them; they advised such a man from the beginning, and told him the consequences, just as they happened; but he would have his way.‡ Byron might well say, Without a friend, what were humanity, * * * * * Of all the horrid, hideous notes of woe, Mrs. Beecher Stowe in the same breath with Byron is well-nigh enough to take that breath away; but the lady is pretty nearly of a mind with the lord. Her Nina, in the tale of the Dismal Swamp, gets into a decided scrape, and comes to tell Aunt Nesbit so. "I told you you'd get into trouble one of these days," the sage senior observes. “Oh, you told me so!" is the impatient rejoinder: "if there's anything I hate, it is to have anybody tell me, 'I told you so." Aunt and niece then confabulate awhile, on the scrape in question; and anon the former returns to the charge : "You see the consequences now of not attending to the advice of your friends. I always knew these flirtations of yours * Les Caractères de La Bruyère, ch. ii.; Du Mérite personnel. † The Birds of Killingworth. ‡ Swift's Hints towards an Essay on Conversation. would bring you into trouble." And Aunt Nesbit said this, Mrs. Stowe tells us, "with that quiet satisfied air with which precise elderly people so often edify their thoughtless young friends under difficulties."* There is a deal of practical significance in one of Scapin's replies to Silvestre, when warned against his itch for des enterprises hasardeuses : Silv. Je te l'ai dejà dit, tu quitterais le dessein que tu as, si tu m'en voulais croire. Scap. Oui; mais c'est moi que j'en croirai.t In deep chagrin at the disappointment of his expectations from the Minister, Peregrine Pickle resolves to make Crabtree acquainted with his misfortune, that once for all he may pass the ordeal of his satire, without subjecting himself to a long series of sarcastic hints and allusions, altogether past endurance. "He accordingly took the first opportunity of telling him that he was absolutely ruined by the perfidy of his patron, and desired that he would not aggravate his affliction by those cynical reflections which were peculiar to men of his misanthropical disposition. Cadwallader listened to this declaration with internal surprise, which, however, produced no alteration in his countenance; and, after some pause, observed, that our hero had no reason to look for any new observation from him on this event, which he had long foreseen, and daily expected."‡ Not less in the internal surprise, than in the mendacious assurance, is Crabtree a good sample of these prophets of the past. Supposing such folks now and then to venture on an actual prediction, mightily piqued they are to bring about its fulfilment, at whatever damage to their friend. When the Greek emperor, in peril from Mahomet (A.D. 1453), who threatened the capital of the East, implored with fervent prayers the assistance of Christendom, Gibbon relates of the Roman pontiff,-no friend to the Greeks, that, "instead of employing in their favour the arms and treasures of Italy, Nicholas the Fifth had foretold their approaching ruin; and his honour was engaged in the accomplishment of his prophecy."§ Swift hits off this state of mind with his usual point, in the Verses on his own Death, where anxious inquiring "friends" are supposed to be calling to ask after the Dean in extremis. Some great misfortune to portend, (When daily how d'yes come of course, Than his prediction prove a lie.|| * Dred, ch. v. † Molière, Les Fourberies de Scapin, Acte III. Sc. 1. Peregrine Pickle, ch. xcii. Decline and Fall, ch. lxviii. On the Death of Dr. Swift. In a review of the writings of M. Viennet, of the French Academy, who, in 1840, predicted that within ten years his fellow-peers and fellowcountrymen would be laying upon each other the blame of national ruin, -M. Désiré Nisard affirms that, certes, it is entirely allowable in one who has noway contributed to that ruin, to boast of having foreseen and foretold it. But, he adds, "Je n'en dirai pas autant de ceux qui ont travaillé de leurs mains à faire réussir leurs prophéties. Ils ont prédit la chute de la monarchie; je le crois bien, ils y aidaient. Le beau mérite, quand on a poussé la sape jusqu'au mur et ouvert la brèche, de dire, la ville prise: Je l'avais bien prédit !"* ... When the fagot-maker and his wife have cruelly disposed of Hop-o'my-Thumb and his brothers, the relenting mother sets to upbraiding her husband on the subject of that accomplished fact. "It was all your fault, Richard! I told you over and over again that we should repent the hour when we left them to starve in the forest. Richard! Richard! I told you how it would be!" At last, says the nursery-tale, the fagot-maker grew very angry with his wife, who said more than twenty times that he would repent what he had done, and that she had told him so again and again. He declared he would give her a good beating if she did not hold her tongue; not, indeed, the story-teller assures us, with a fine knowledge of human nature, that Richard was less sorry than his wife for what had been done; but her scolding teased him; and, like other husbands, adds the story-teller-whose italics on this occasion we conscientiously reproduce-" he liked his wife to be always in the right; but not to talk of being so."† Squire Western, naturally irascible, is made even preternaturally irate by the similar aggravations of Mistress Western; who winds up so many sentences of table-talk with the ever-recurring "I repeat it to you again, brother, you must comfort yourself, by remembering that it is all your own fault. How often have I advised-"‡ one repetition too many of which reminder provokes the squire to bounce from his chair, and, venting two or three hideous imprecations, bolt furiously out of the room. General fiction, indeed, will supply a redundant stock of examples, to the same effect, and in every shade of character. There is Miss Austen's Mrs. Allen, for instance, who, consulted by anxious Catherine Morland as to the look of the weather, has no doubt it will be a fine day, if the clouds will only go off, and the sun keep out. At eleven o'clock some rain-drops begin to fall, and "Oh dear! I do believe it will be wet," breaks from Catherine in a most desponding tone. "I thought how it would be," says Mrs. Allen. They resign themselves, after a fashion, to the doom of a wet day. But at half-past twelve it turns fine. "Ten minutes more made it certain that a bright afternoon would succeed, and justified the opinion of Mrs. Allen, who had always thought it would clear up. "§ There is Lady Theresa Lewis's Lady Portmore, one of the odd channels scooped out by whose restless vanity is the persuasion that she is the world's universal confidante; and who will enter into long arguments to prove that she must necessarily have foreknown any piece of intelligence * Etudes d'Histoire et de Littérature, par D. Nisard, p. 54. † Hop-o'-my-Thumb. Northanger Abbey, ch. xi. † History of a Foundling, ch. ci. |