Gryll Grange. Thomas Love Peacock
to stand up for halibut, which, for my part, I have excommunicated.
Mr. Gryll. I agree with you on that point; but I think you have named one or two that might as well keep it company.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I do not think I have named a single unpresentable fish.
Mr. Gryll. Bream, doctor: there is not much to be said for bream.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. On the contrary, sir, I think there is much to be said for him. In the first place, there is the authority of the monastic brotherhoods, who are universally admitted to have been connoisseurs in fish, and in the mode of preparing it; and you will find bream pie set down as a prominent item of luxurious living in the indictments prepared against them at the dissolution of the monasteries. The work of destruction was rather too rapid, and I fear the receipt is lost. But he can still be served up as an excellent stew, provided always that he is full-grown, and has swum all his life in clear running water. I call everything fish that seas, lakes, and rivers furnish to cookery; though, scientifically, a turtle is a reptile, and a lobster an insect. Fish, Miss Gryll—I could discourse to you on fish by the hour: but for the present I will forbear: as Lord Curryfin is coming down to Thornback Bay, to lecture the fishermen on fish and fisheries, and to astonish them all with the science of their art You will, no doubt, be curious to hear him. There will be some reserved seats.
Miss Gryll. I shall be very curious to hear him, indeed. I have never heard a lecturing lord. The fancy of lords and gentlemen to lecture everybody on everything, everywhere, seems to me something very comical; but perhaps it is something very serious, gracious in the lecturer, and instructive to the audience. I shall be glad to be cured of my unbecoming propensity to laugh whenever I hear of a lecturing lord.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I hope, Miss Gryll, you will not laugh at Lord Curryfin: for you may be assured nothing will be farther from his lordship's intention than to say anything in the slightest degree droll.
Mr. Gryll. Doctor Johnson was astonished at the mania for lectures, even in his day, when there were no lecturing lords. He thought little was to be learned from lectures, unless where, as in chemistry, the subject required illustration by experiment. Now, if your lord is going to exhibit experiments in the art of cooking fish, with specimens in sufficient number for all his audience to taste, I have no doubt his lecture will be well attended, and a repetition earnestly desired.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I am afraid the lecture will not have the aid of such pleasant adventitious attractions. It will be a pure scientific exposition, carefully classified, under the several divisions and subdivisions of Ichthyology, Entomology, Herpetology, and Conchology. But I agree with Doctor Johnson, that little is to be learned from lectures. For the most part those who do not already understand the subject will not understand the lecture, and those who do will learn nothing from it. The latter will hear many things they would like to contradict, which the bienséance of the lecture-room does not allow. I do not comprehend how people can find amusement in lectures. I should much prefer a tenson of the twelfth century, when two or three masters of the Gai Saber discussed questions of love and chivalry.
Miss Gryll. I am afraid, doctor, our age is too prosy for that sort of thing. We have neither wit enough, nor poetry enough, to furnish the disputants. I can conceive a state of society in which such tensons would form a pleasant winter evening amusement: but that state of society is not ours.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Well, Miss Gryll, I should like, some winter evening, to challenge you to a tenson, and your uncle should be umpire. I think you have wit enough by nature, and I have poetry enough by memory, to supply a fair portion of the requisite materials, without assuming an absolute mastery of the Gai Saber.
Miss Gryll. I shall accept the challenge, doctor. The wit on one side will, I am afraid, be very shortcoming; but the poetry on the other will no doubt be abundant.
Mr. Gryll. Suppose, doctor, you were to get up a tenson a little more relative to our own wise days. Spirit-rapping, for example, is a fine field. Nec pueri credunt … Sed tu vera puta.{1} You might go beyond the limits of a tenson. There is ample scope for an Aristophanic comedy. In the contest between the Just and the Unjust in the Clouds, and in other scenes of Aristophanes, you have ancient specimens of something very like tensons, except that love has not much share in them. Let us for a moment suppose this same spirit-rapping to be true—dramatically so, at least. Let us fit up a stage for the purpose: make the invoked spirits visible as well as audible: and calling before us some of the illustrious of former days, ask them what they think of us and our doings? Of our astounding progress of intellect? Our march of mind? Our higher tone of morality? Our vast diffusion of education? Our art of choosing the most unfit man by competitive examination?
1 Not even boys believe it: but suppose it to be true.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. You had better not bring on many of them at once, nor ask many similar questions, or the chorus of ghostly laughter will be overwhelming. I imagine the answer would be something like Hamlets: 'You yourselves, sirs, shall be as wise as we were, if, like crabs, you could go backward.' It is thought something wonderful that uneducated persons should believe in witchcraft in the nineteenth century: as if educated persons did not believe in grosser follies: such as this same spirit-rapping, unknown tongues, clairvoyance, table-turning, and all sorts of fanatical impositions, having for the present their climax in Mormonism. Herein all times are alike. There is nothing too monstrous for human credulity. I like the notion of the Aristophanic comedy. But it would require a numerous company, especially as the chorus is indispensable. The tenson may be carried on by two.
Mr. Gryll. I do not see why we should not have both.
Miss Gryll. Oh pray, doctor! let us have the comedy. We hope to have a houseful at Christmas, and I think we may get it up well, chorus and all. I should so like to hear what my great ancestor, Gryllus, thinks of us: and Homer, and Dante, and Shakespeare, and Richard the First, and Oliver Cromwell.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. A very good dramatis personae. With these, and the help of one or two Athenians and Romans, we may arrive at a tolerable judgment on our own immeasurable superiority to everything that has gone before us.
Before we proceed further, we will give some account of our interlocutors.
CHAPTER II
THE SQUIRE AND HIS NIECE
FORTUNA . SPONDET . MULTA . MULTIS . PRESTAT .
NEMINI . VIVE . IN . DIES . ET . HORAS . NAM .
PROPRIUM . EST . NIHIL.{1} Marmor vetus apud Feam, ad
Hor. Epist. i. ii, 23.
Fortune makes many promises to many,
Keeps them to none.
Live to the days and hours,
For nothing is your own.
Gregory Gryll, Esq., of Gryll Grange in Hampshire, on the borders of the New Forest, in the midst of a park which was a little forest in itself, reaching nearly to the sea, and well stocked with deer, having a large outer tract, where a numerous light-rented and well-conditioned tenantry fattened innumerable pigs, considering himself well located for what he professed to be, Epicuri de grege porcus,{2} and held, though he found it difficult to trace the pedigree, that he was lineally descended from the ancient and illustrious Gryllus, who maintained against Ulysses the superior happiness of the life of other animals to that of the life of man.{3}
1 This inscription