第52章

SMALL-BEER CHRONICLE.

Not long since, at a certain banquet, I had the good fortune to sit by Doctor Polymathesis, who knows everything, and who, about the time when the claret made its appearance, mentioned that old dictum of the grumbling Oxford Don, that "ALL CLARET would be port if it could!" Imbibing a bumper of one or the other not ungratefully, Ithought to myself, "Here surely, Mr.Roundabout, is a good text for one of your reverence's sermons." Let us apply to the human race, dear brethren, what is here said of the vintages of Portugal and Gascony, and we shall have no difficulty in perceiving how many clarets aspire to be ports in their way; how most men and women of our acquaintance, how we ourselves, are Aquitanians giving ourselves Lusitanian airs; how we wish to have credit for being stronger, braver, more beautiful, more worthy than we really are.

Nay, the beginning of this hypocrisy--a desire to excel, a desire to be hearty, fruity, generous, strength-imparting--is a virtuous and noble ambition; and it is most difficult for a man in his own case, or his neighbor's, to say at what point this ambition transgresses the boundary of virtue, and becomes vanity, pretence, and self-seeking.You are a poor man, let us say, showing a bold face to adverse fortune, and wearing a confident aspect.Your purse is very narrow, but you owe no man a penny; your means are scanty, but your wife's gown is decent; your old coat well brushed; your children at a good school; you grumble to no one; ask favors of no one; truckle to no neighbors on account of their superior rank, or (a worse, and a meaner, and a more common crime still) envy none for their better fortune.To all outward appearances you are as well to do as your neighbors, who have thrice your income.There may be in this case some little mixture of pretension in your life and behavior.You certainly DO put on a smiling face whilst fortune is pinching you.

Your wife and girls, so smart and neat at evening parties, are cutting, patching, and cobbling all day to make both ends of life's haberdashery meet.You give a friend a bottle of wine on occasion, but are content yourself with a glass of whiskey-and-water.You avoid a cab, saying that of all things you like to walk home after dinner (which you know, my good friend, is a fib).I grant you that in this scheme of life there does enter ever so little hypocrisy;that this claret is loaded, as it were; but your desire to PORTIFYyourself is amiable, is pardonable, is perhaps honorable: and were there no other hypocrisies than yours in the world we should be a set of worthy fellows; and sermonizers, moralizers, satirizers, would have to hold their tongues, and go to some other trade to get a living.

But you know you WILL step over that boundary line of virtue and modesty, into the district where humbug and vanity begin, and there the moralizer catches you and makes an example of you.For instance, in a certain novel in another place my friend Mr.Talbot Twysden is mentioned--a man whom you and I know to be a wretched ordinaire, but who persists in treating himself as if he was the finest '20 port.In our Britain there are hundreds of men like him;for ever striving to swell beyond their natural size, to strain beyond their natural strength, to step beyond their natural stride.

Search, search within your own waistcoats, dear brethren--YOU know in your hearts, which of your ordinaire qualities you would pass off, and fain consider as first-rate port.And why not you yourself, Mr.Preacher? says the congregation.Dearly beloved, neither in or out of this pulpit do I profess to be bigger, or cleverer, or wiser, or better than any of you.A short while since, a certain Reviewer announced that I gave myself great pretensions as a philosopher.I a philosopher! I advance pretensions! My dear Saturday friend.And you? Don't you teach everything to everybody?

and punish the naughty boys if they don't learn as you bid them?

You teach politics to Lord John and Mr.Gladstone.You teach poets how to write; painters, how to paint; gentlemen, manners; and opera-dancers, how to pirouette.I was not a little amused of late by an instance of the modesty of our Saturday friend, who, more Athenian than the Athenians, and apropos of a Greek book by a Greek author, sat down and gravely showed the Greek gentleman how to write his own language.

No, I do not, as far as I know, try to be port at all; but offer in these presents, a sound genuine ordinaire, at 18s.per doz.let us say, grown on my own hillside, and offered de bon coeur to those who will sit down under my tonnelle, and have a half-hour's drink and gossip.It is none of your hot porto, my friend.I know there is much better and stronger liquor elsewhere.Some pronounce it sour:

some say it is thin; some that it has wofully lost its flavor.This may or may not be true.There are good and bad years; years that surprise everybody; years of which the produce is small and bad, or rich and plentiful.But if my tap is not genuine it is naught, and no man should give himself the trouble to drink it.I do not even say that I would be port if I could; knowing that port (by which Iwould imply much stronger, deeper, richer, and more durable liquor than my vineyard can furnish) is not relished by all palates, or suitable to all heads.We will assume then, dear brother, that you and I are tolerably modest people; and, ourselves being thus out of the question, proceed to show how pretentious our neighbors are, and how very many of them would be port if they could.