Mirror of the Months. P. G. Patmore

As the first few pages of this little volume will sufficiently explain its purport, the reader would not have been troubled with any prefatory remarks, but that, since its commencement, two existing works have been pointed out to me, the plans of which are, in one respect, similar to mine: I allude to the Natural History of the Year, by the late Dr. Aikin and his Son; and The Months, by Mr. Leigh Hunt.

I will not affect any obligations to these agreeable little works, (I mean as a writer); because I feel none; and I mention them here, only to add, that if, on perusing them, either, or both united, had seemed to supersede what I proposed to myself in mine, I should immediately have abandoned my intention of writing it. But the above-named works, in the first place, relate to country matters exclusively. In the next place, the first of them details those matters in the form of a dry calendar, professedly made up from other calendars which previously existed, and not from actual observation; and the second merely throws gleams of its writer’s agreeable genius over such of those matters as are most susceptible of that treatment: while both occupy no little portion of their space by quotations, sufficiently appropriate no doubt, but from poets whose works are in everybody’s hands.

The Mirror of the Months, therefore, does not interfere with the abovenamed works, nor do they with it. It is in substance, though certainly not in form, a Calendar of the various events and appearances connected with a Country and a London life, during each successive Month of the Year. And it endeavours to impress upon the memory such of its information as seems best worth retaining, by either placing it in a picturesque point of view, or by connecting it with some association, often purely accidental, and not seldom extravagant perhaps, but not the less likely to answer its end, if it succeed in changing mere dry information into amusement.

I may perhaps be allowed to add, in extenuation of the errors and deficiencies of this little volume, that it has been written entirely from the personal observations of one who uses no note-book but that which Nature writes for him in the tablets of his memory; and that when printed books have been turned to at all, it has only been with a view to solve any doubt that he might feel, as to the exact period of any particular event or appearance.

It is also proper to mention, that the four first Months have appeared in a periodical work. In fact, it was the favourable reception they met with there which induced the careful re-writing of them, and the appearance of the whole under their present form.

MIRROR OF THE MONTHS.

JANUARY.

Table of Contents

Those “Cynthias of a minute,” the Months, fleet past us so swiftly, that though we never mistake them while they are present with us, yet the moment any one of them is gone by, we begin to blend the recollection of its features with those of the one which preceded it, or that which has taken its place, and thus confuse them together till we know not “which is which.” And then, to mend the matter, when the whole of them have danced their graceful round, hand in hand, before us, not being able to think of either separately, we unite them all together in our imagination, and call them the Past Year; as we gather flowers into a bunch, and call them a bouquet.

Now this should not be. Each one of the sweet sisterhood has features sufficiently marked and distinct to entitle her to a place and a name; and if we mistake these features, and attribute those of any one to any other, it is because we look at them with a cold and uninterested, and therefore an inobservant regard. The lover of Julie could trace fifty minute particulars which were wanting in the portrait of his mistress; though to any one else it would have appeared a likeness: for, to common observers, “a likeness” means merely a something which is not so absolutely unlike but what it is capable of calling up the idea of the original, to those who are intimately acquainted with it.

Now, I have been for a long while past accustomed to feel towards the common portraits of the Months, of which so many are extant, what St. Preux did towards that of his mistress: all I could ever discover in them was the particulars in which they were not like. Still I had never ventured to ask the favour of either of them to sit to me for her picture; having seen that it was the very nature of them to be for ever changing, and that, therefore, to attempt to fix them, would be to trace the outline of a sound, or give the colour of a perfume.

At length, however, my unwearied attendance on them, in their yearly passage past me, and the assiduous court that I have always paid to each and all of their charms, has met with its reward: for there is this especial difference between them and all other mistresses whatever, that, so far from being jealous of each other, their sole ground of complaint against their lovers is, that they do not pay equal devotion to each in her turn; the blooming May and the blushing June disdain the vows of those votaries who have not previously wept at the feet of the weeping April, or sighed in unison with the sad breath of March. And it is the same with all the rest. They present a sweet emblem of the ideal of a happy and united human family; to each member of which the best proof you can offer that you are worthy of her love, is, that you have gained that of her sisters; and to whom the best evidence you can give of being able to love either worthily, is, that you love all. This, I say, has been the kind of court that I have paid to the Months—loving each in all, and all in each. And my reward (in addition to that of the love itself—which is a “virtue,” and therefore “its own reward”)

Скачать книгу