Punch or The London charivari (3.1842)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

PHAETON DRIVING THE CHARIOT
OF THE SUN.

The poets have told

How Phaeton made bold
To say to his daddy Apollo—

If you'll lend me your nags,

I'll soon show, blow my rags !
There's no dragsman but I can beat hollow.

u.

His dad gave consent,

And off the boy went,
But the tits took to bolt, and surprised him ;

And there's not the least doubt

We had all been '•' burnt out
Had uot Jupiter kindly capsized him.

So take care, Master Bob,

It's a ticklish job
To manage the team you have chosen,

And if you contrive

To continue your drive
Why I'll say—you're a man of a dozen

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF COURTSHIP.

chapter x.-on the art of making the romantic.

The pleasing possessor of "mind," "soul," "intense sensibility,"
" exquisite sentiment," " soaring imagination," forms (provided she
have a few thousands a year to tempt the undertaking) a fit and
facile subject for the arts of courtship.

Romantic women are as susceptible of conquest as ugly ones are
difficult to be won. This is to be accounted for from the well-known
fact that nobody is so easy to deceive as an habitual deceiver ; and as
it is the business of sentimental women's lives to persuade the world
that they are infinitely superior to the rest of their sex—so they
are peculiarly open to the same kind of deception when prac-
tised upon themselves by male admirers. Now, although a man
cannot become at will a gentleman, a wit, a scholar, or a lord, yet he
is able on the shortest notice to get up a set of superfine feelings—
to be continually rapt in the delicious mystics of romance—to ape all
the tender sensibilities of genius ! Let him only wear dark clothes,
a rueful countenance, an eye-glass, a tuft, and his hair unconscionably
long—let him speaK seldom, and when he does, with the most guarded
caution, that he utter nothing but extravagant nonsense—let him be
subject to fits of abstraction, and never answer a question till he is
aroused from bis absorbing reflections by its third repetition—let him
fciways express an indignant contempt for his species, and an utter
aversion to company—nevertheless, let him on no account miss an op-

portunity of being dragged into society, that his love of solitude may
not be hidden under a bushel: let him implicitly follow all these in-
structions, and however unpromising his suit, we can assure the
romantic lover thus manufactured—whether a boatswain, a city-
alderman, a puisne judge, or a broad comedian—that he shall not
sigh gratis.

Take an example. Letitia Leonora Lurliety, though suspected of
having seen thirty-five summers, still wears long ringlets—and they
match her own hair to a miracle. She quotes Byron in common con-
versation, and knows all the amorous poets by heart. For half the
year she buries her sorrows in a secluded cottage in Derbyshire, and
shares them with all those neighbours who keep footmen and
give parties. But during " the season" she weeps in London,
and spends a competency in laced cambric handkerchiefs, that
her tears may be dried with becoming effect. She is always
the victim of some soul-subduing grief—some inconsolable bereave-
ment; a pet parrot, who was so tractable, so affectionate, has ucen
maliciously poisoned—her lap-dog, true to his King Charles's bleed,
has been inconstant, straying from her caresses by the enticements
of a dog-stealer. Yes, she is born to sorrow—to disappointment—■
she never had a friend, one she believed to be a true, sincere, ;i
faithful friend, but who proved false—she never had a canary that
did not fly away ; the " never knew a young gazelle, &c.;" in short,
bereft of all that makes existence tolerable, she has nothing left but
to mourn, to sicken and—to die.