The boy evinced great hardihood of temper, and no inconsiderable
quickness of intellect. In whatever he attempted, his success was rapid,
and a remarkable strength of limb and muscle seconded well the dictates
of an ambition turned, it must be confessed, rather to physical than
mental exertion. It is not to be supposed, however, that his boyish life
passed in unbroken tranquillity. Although Mrs. Lobkins was a good woman
on the whole, and greatly attached to her protegee, she was violent and
rude in temper, or, as she herself more flatteringly expressed it, “her
feelings were unkimmonly strong;” and alternate quarrel and
reconciliation constituted the chief occupations of the protegee’s
domestic life. As, previous to his becoming the ward of Mrs. Lobkins, he
had never received any other appellation than “the child,” so the duty of
christening him devolved upon our hostess of the Mug; and after some
deliberation, she blessed him with the name of Paul. It was a name of
happy omen, for it had belonged to Mrs. Lobkins’s grandfather, who had
been three times transported and twice hanged (at the first occurrence of
the latter description, he had been restored by the surgeons, much to the
chagrin of a young anatomist who was to have had the honour of cutting
him up). The boy did not seem likely to merit the distinguished
appellation he bore, for he testified no remarkable predisposition to the
property of other people. Nay, although he sometimes emptied the pockets
of any stray visitor to the coffee-room of Mrs. Lobkins, it appeared an
act originating rather in a love of the frolic than a desire of the
profit; for after the plundered person had been sufficiently tormented by
the loss, haply, of such utilities as a tobacco-box or a handkerchief;
after he had, to the secret delight of Paul, searched every corner of the
apartment, stamped, and fretted, and exposed himself by his petulance to
the bitter objurgation of Mrs. Lobkins, our young friend would quietly
and suddenly contrive that the article missed should return of its own
accord to the pocket from which it had disappeared. And thus, as our
readers have doubtless experienced when they have disturbed the peace of
a whole household for the loss of some portable treasure which they
themselves are afterwards discovered to have mislaid, the unfortunate
victim of Paul’s honest ingenuity, exposed to the collected indignation
of the spectators, and sinking from the accuser into the convicted,
secretly cursed the unhappy lot which not only vexed him with the loss of
his property, but made it still more annoying to recover it.
Opposite to the fireplace was a large deal table, at which Dummie,
surnamed Dunnaker, seated near the dame, was quietly ruminating over a
glass of hollands and water. Farther on, at another table in the corner
of the room, a gentleman with a red wig, very rusty garments, and linen
which seemed as if it had been boiled in saffron, smoked his pipe, apart,
silent, and apparently plunged in meditation. This gentleman was no
other than Mr. Peter MacGrawler, the editor of a magnificent periodical
entitled “The Asiaeum,” which was written to prove that whatever is
popular is necessarily bad,–a valuable and recondite truth, which “The
Asinaeum” had satisfactorily demonstrated by ruining three printers and
demolishing a publisher. We need not add that Mr. MacGrawler was Scotch
by birth, since we believe it is pretty well known that all periodicals
of this country have, from time immemorial, been monopolized by the
gentlemen of the Land of Cakes. We know not how it may be the fashion to
eat the said cakes in Scotland, but here the good emigrators seem to
like them carefully buttered on both sides. By the side of the editor
stood a large pewter tankard; above him hung an engraving of the
“wonderfully fat boar formerly in the possession of Mr. Fattem, grazier.”
To his left rose the dingy form of a thin, upright clock in an oaken
case; beyond the clock, a spit and a musket were fastened in parallels to
the wall. Below those twin emblems of war and cookery were four shelves,
containing plates of pewter and delf, and terminating, centaur-like, in a
sort of dresser. At the other side of these domestic conveniences was a
picture of Mrs. Lobkins, in a scarlet body and a hat and plume. At the
back of the fair hostess stretched the blanket we have before mentioned.
As a relief to the monotonous surface of this simple screen, various
ballads and learned legends were pinned to the blanket. There might you
read in verses, pathetic and unadorned, how–
“Sally loved a sailor lad
As fought with famous Shovel!”
There might you learn, if of two facts so instructive you were before
unconscious, that
“Ben the toper loved his bottle,–
Charley only loved the lasses!”
When of these and various other poetical effusions you were somewhat
wearied, the literary fragments in bumbler prose afforded you equal
edification and delight. There might you fully enlighten yourself as to
the “Strange and Wonderful News from Kensington, being a most full and
true Relation how a Maid there is supposed to have been carried away by
an Evil Spirit on Wednesday, 15th of April last, about Midnight.” There,
too, no less interesting and no less veracious, was that uncommon
anecdote touching the chief of many-throned powers entitled “The Divell
of Mascon; or, the true Relation of the Chief Things which an Unclean
Spirit did and said at Mascon, in Burgundy, in the house of one Mr.
Francis Pereaud: now made English by one that hath a Particular Knowledge
of the Truth of the Story.”
At the conclusion of this harangue, a knock at the door being heard, Paul
took his departure, and met in the hall a fine-looking person dressed in
the height of the fashion, and wearing a pair of prodigiously large
buckles in his shoes. Paul looked, and his heart swelled. “I may
rival,” thought he,–“those were his very words,–I may rival (for the
thing, though difficult, is not impossible) Augustus Tomlinson!”
Absorbed in meditation, he went silently home. The next day the memoirs
of the great Turpin were committed to the flames, and it was noticeable
that henceforth Paul observed a choicer propriety of words, that he
assumed a more refined air of dignity, and that he paid considerably more
attention than heretofore to the lessons of Mr. Peter MacGrawler.
Although it must be allowed that our young hero’s progress in the learned
languages was not astonishing, yet an early passion for reading, growing
stronger and stronger by application, repaid him at last with a tolerable
knowledge of the mother-tongue. We must, however, add that his more
favourite and cherished studies were scarcely of that nature which a
prudent preceptor would have greatly commended. They lay chiefly among
novels, plays, and poetry,–which last he affected to that degree that he
became somewhat of a poet himself. Nevertheless these literary
avocations, profitless as they seemed, gave a certain refinement to his
tastes which they were not likely otherwise to have acquired at the Mug;
and while they aroused his ambition to see something of the gay life they
depicted, they imparted to his temper a tone of enterprise and of
thoughtless generosity which perhaps contributed greatly to counteract
those evil influences towards petty vice to which the examples around him
must have exposed his tender youth. But, alas! a great disappointment
to Paul’s hope of assistance and companionship in his literary labours
befell him. Mr. Augustus Tomlinson, one bright morning, disappeared,
leaving word with his numerous friends that he was going to accept a
lucrative situation in the North of England. Notwithstanding the shock
this occasioned to the affectionate heart and aspiring temper of our
friend Paul, it abated not his ardour in that field of science which it
seemed that the distinguished absentee had so successfully cultivated.
By little and little, he possessed himself (in addition to the literary
stores we have alluded to) of all it was in the power of the wise and
profound Peter MacGrawler to impart unto him; and at the age of sixteen
he began (oh the presumption of youth!) to fancy himself more learned
than his master.
