Breakfast in Bed; OR, PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. BY GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA. No. XII., AND LAST. ON A YOUNG LADY IN A BALCONY. A DISTINGUISHED English writer has been occupied, I am informed, for some years in the composition of a book with the taking title of the Footsteps of Luther. My acquaintance with contemporary literature is of so limited a nature, and I know so little of what is going on in the great world, that it is quite possible that the book I speak of may have been completed, published, and reviewed these six months past, and that its gifted author has been long since crowned with laurel or overwhelmed with abuse: the terms being, to many intents and purposes, synonymous. If this be indeed the case, I am sure I beg the author's pardon very humbly. I know that he went to Germany to write the book, and took a camera and a quantity of collodion with him to photograph the footprints of the Great Reformer as he wandered; but here my positive information ceases. My only object in alluding to the Footsteps of Luther was to point out that, good as that title was, it seemed to me that I knew of a better. In Protestant England, of course, every tittle of information having even the remotest connexion with mighty Doctor Martin is interesting, and, after a kind, sacred; but at Geneva, I fancy, the Sire Jean Chauvin, otherwise Calvin, is first favourite in the Reforming heart; and if we go southwards, and across certain mountains, we shall find inany millions of religionists who wickedly maintain that, if Martin Luther could have been made, by persuasion of the secular arm, to dance upon nothing, such aërial footsteps would have been the gratefullest to the Church at large. But here is a book whose title, were it faithfully and skilfully borne out by its matter, would be sure to please all, and could offend none. What do you think of The Footsteps in Italy of William Shakespeare? Can you imagine a tome more delightful? Once, when I was young and hale, and my heart fat as butter with conceit, I thought of sitting down to write such a book myself. It was years and years ago-before I had been set face to face with my own ignorance, and, glancing in the glass of experience, had found how very long my ears were. I remember that I propounded my design in the boxes of the Porte St. Martin Theatre in Paris, where they were playing Alexandre Dumas's Orestie to a great English man of letters. The illustrious personage saw my drift at once, and deigned to say to me, "I envy you your subject,"-il l'a bien dit,-he who never envied mortal man, but ever strove to help and to encourage the weakest and the dullest, and to give frank praise to his few compeers. VOL. IX. ૨ Well, I never grappled with the subject that he professed to envy me. I did not forget, I simply neglected it. I have been haunted by this abandoned one many a time. Here it is still, an embryo crying for maturity; a blossom that, were I worthy, would have given place, ere now, to ripe and luscious fruit. However, it is now too late; so, to preserve my bantling from atrophy (here is a fine confusion of metaphors at your service!), I desert it on a doorstep. With averted face, and tearful eye, and remorseful heart, I place it in the turning-cradle. May some good Sister of Charity receive, to cherish it; and may it find better fortune in the Foundling Hospital for Wit than in my brains! Only last night (I remember now, as I Breakfast for the last time in Bed), sitting in the stalls of the Princess's Theatre, and witnessing the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, the image of my abortive book came across me, and I longed to find some man or woman of wit and parts who would turn my vision into reality. For I should be loth to see the task undertaken by one of the common herd of scribblers. Naturally, now that the notion is common property, every botcher has a right to try his 'prentice hand upon it. Hircius probably will swear that he thought ten years ago of following Shakespeare up and down Italy; and Spungius may endeavour to raise money on account from the booksellers on the security of the idea. But to do the thing thoroughly, a host of rare qualities would be needed. M. d'Alembert once dotted down a few of the acquirements which, in his opinion (and D'Alembert knew a thing or two, were requisite to a writer who aspired to be a Biblical critic. The dottings-down filled half a dozen closely-printed pages; the which I respectfully commend (together with Voltaire's Défense de mon Oncle, and Bayle's second Life of David) to the attention of the Right Reverend Father in Mumbo Jumbo, Dr. Colenso. He will find that there were some strong men before Agamemnon, and some hard nuts, which stronger men thn Le essayed to crack, before the demolition of the authenticity of the Pentateuch became as fashionable an amusement as rubbing one's nose against Zadkiel's crystal ball, or going to see Blondin on the high rope. He who would write the Footsteps in Italy of William Shakespeare, I thought in my stall, should be, first, a copious and profound Shakesperian scholar, and an acute Shakesperian critic. He should know the plays by heart; have the poems on the tip of his tongue; and harbour some tangible hypothesis on the sonnets. He should be well up in his Dyce, Lis Staunton, his Halliwell, his Hazlitt, his Schlegel, and his Coleridge. All that Malone and Steevens had written should be familiar to him. Then he shou'd be a linguist, who had read through Guicciardini without being daunted at the War of Pisa, and mastered all the Foreign StatePapers in our Record Office (unhappy Turnbull !), and all the Relations of the Venetian Ambassadors lately disentombed by M. Armand Baschet from the Convent of the Frari. Furthermore, he should be an artist, practised in the various styles of Turner and Calcott, of Stanfield and Holland. In addition, he should be a polished, patient, appreciative, and observant traveller; a Rogers, a Lear, a Kinglake, a Canon Wordsworth. Finally, he should bring to his Italian journeyings the mordant humour of Heinrich Heine, the metaphysical sentiment of George Sand, the voluptuous word-painting of Byron, the minute pencilling of the President de Brosses. Finally, he should be a gentleman. Armed cap-à-pie with all these qualities, and with plenty of money, time, industry, and health, and sufficient reticence to burn his MS. sheet by sheet if it proved faulty, he might in the end produce, I think, such a work as would infinitely delight this generation, and one that posterity would not willingly let die. I don't think it militates in the slightest degree against the value of my ideal book to be told that Shakespeare never was in Italy. He had been every where, as he was every thing, in the spirit. The people who cudgel their brains as to his medical knowledge and his legal knowledge, as to whether Le was ever a scrivener or an apothecary, a soldier or a sailor, a butcher or a horse-couper,-are, to my mind, donkeys, and nothing more. He was a clairvoyant. His Elsinore is in the very Denmark; his Dunsinane in Scotland; his Cliff in Kent; his Belmont in Venetia (I have seen Portia's house; it is on the banks of the Brenta, and is now inhabited by an enriched prima donna); his "park and palace in Navarre" in the Basque country;-not necessarily because he ever actually or corporeally journeyed to those places, but because the Almighty had gifted him with the power of seeing things in his soul, and of describing them in matchless music. And in the main, though all his absolute peregrinations may have extended no further than between London and Stratford, and the suburbs of the metropolis, he is a more trustworthy traveller than Mandeville or Purchas, Hackluyt or Marco Polo. In the whole Shakesperian catalogue there is no play more thoroughly Italian than Romeo and Juliet. Enthusiasm for the mighty master may be the parent of such an opinion, you may surmise; but just take a through ticket by the Victor Emmanuel Railway, and leave the train at the Porta Nuova, Verona, and trot on the next day to Mantua, and you will come to be of my mind. Gorgeous as are Mr. John Gilbert's illustrations to the Routledge edition, his superb designs, when he touches the Italian dramas, seem to me meagre and shrivelled. It is in the text that you must look for the genuine local colouring, the choice Italian. There you will feel the real Italian sunshine, the balmy nights, the bath of moonlight, the lounging, lazy lives of the men and women, the saunterings and sighings and whisperings, chequered every now and then by fierce outbreaks of passion,-by the sharp scream, the torrent of passionate invective, the quick curse, the sudden stab. Upon my word, not six weeks since at Verona I saw Sampson biting his thumb at Abram, and Gregory backing him up; and then there was a rire, and the Capulet women rushed out of their houses and slapped the Montague children violently; and Benvolio strove in vain to quell the turmoil, and old Capulet in his gown (he carried on the profession of a money-changer, and had been disturbed from his siesta) came shuffling out of his shop, with Lady Capulet, in a dingy bed gown, clinging to him; and then old Montague (who had subsided into the peaceful pursuit of vending saffrontinted sausages) issued from his back parlour, accompanied by his lady, and gave Capulet a piece of his mind; and then the women scolded, and the men stormed, and the dogs barked, and every body bit his or her thumb, or snapped their fingers at every body else; and people who had seemingly nothing on earth to do with the fray threw up third-floor windows, and joined with shrill verbiage in it; and there was, on the whole, a deuce of a commotion. It did not concern me; but I felt so excited, that had I had a weapon on my thigh, I am afraid I should have drawn, and had a lunge at somebody. As it was, I found myself in fierce parley with an old woman who sold lemonade under an archway; and where it would have ended I know not, had not, in the nick of time, Prince Escalus (represented for the nonce by an Austrian corporal's guard with fixed bayonets) come up, and abused the combatants all round in Teutonic Italian. Some one-I believe Gregory-was marched off to the guardhouse; and I made my peace with the old lady who sold lemonade; and Capulet went back to his siesta, and Montague to his sausages. But until I left Verona by the Porta Vescova, I was in a perpetual day-dream about Romeo and Juliet. Wherever the road bifurcated, I expected to meet the fiery Tybalt, his sword drawn, raging up the thoroughfare. What a man of men he was, that Tybalt! Shakespeare knew well enough that he would be possible nowhere but in Italy; so he put him in Verona. The heat of the climate made him mad. His sword turned red-hot in its scabbard, and burnt through the leather, and scorched his thigh. Then he went at it, hammer and tongs: "Non schirar, non parar, non ritirarsi Voglion costor, nè qui destrezza ha parte Non danno i colpi, or finti, or pieni, or scarsi; Odi le spade orribilmente urtarsi A mezzo il ferro; il piè d'orma non parte Sempre è il piè fermo, e la man sempre in moto Ne scende taglio in van, nè punto a voto."* Here is the real Tybalt for you, when he has gotten an antagonist worthy of his blood-lusty steel. He is a good swordsman; but in his craze for killing he despises carte and tierce and reason demonstrative. Here is Tybalt foaming at the mouth, blind with fury, hacking, hewing, "They wish neither to avoid the combat, to parry the blows, nor to fly. Skill hath no part in the conflict; their thrusts are no make-believes: now straightforward, now oblique. Rage and hatred rob them of the resources of art. Hear the horrible shock of their swords clashing together! Their feet are firm and motionless, their hands always on the move. Not a blow is given in vain; not a thrust is lost." slashing, stabbing away. Surely Shakespeare must have read these burning lines of the old Italian poet, and conjured up the fiery Tybalt from the ringing rhyme. That "Odi le spade orribilmente urtarsi a mezzo il ferro" was surely enough for the clairvoyant. And indeed I am, in this surmise, not winnowing the wind; for there is every likelihood that William Shakespeare did read the lines I have transcribed. They are quoted by Montaigne; and Montaigne's Essays were, we know, from an undoubted autograph, among the favourite reading of our poet. I never heard a burst of laughter from a café that afternoon in Verona without peeping in to see the gallant Mercutio swinging his legs on a marble table, and bantering the love-lorn Romeo sighing over his sugarand-water. I went to see the so-called tomb of the ill-starred lovers; but that apocryphal monument did not help my illusion. The streets were enough for me. What does it matter, I asked myself, whence the master obtained his plot, or who the lovers really were; whether, as Mr. Douce essayed to prove, the original tale comes from a Greek author, one Xenophon Ephesius; or whether the events recorded took place, not at Verona, but at Sienna, Romeo being "a young man of good family, named Mariotto Mignaletti," and Juliet a certain Donna Gianozza? All these are trifles. Whether the romance was of Luigi da Porto's making, or of Bandello's, or of Boisteau's, thence translated by Arthur Bevoke, frets me little. It is enough that Shakespeare, from a lovely legend, was permitted to make an immortal drama; that he has laid the scene in Italy; and that the play is Italian to the very core. In what part of the Continent, if you please, save Italy would that garden-scene have been feasible? Italy is the country where, after the scorching day, comes a cool but temperate night. Italy is the land where young people sit up all night to make love, and where, too, they do tumble into love with one another at first sight. In decorous England, Juliet's sudden passion for Romeo might have been considered improper. In Italy, nothing could be more natural. It is where the sun is so warm that the corn ripens so quickly. And the impromptu masquerade; and the pretty fib told by Juliet that she is going out to confession, when she is bent on being married! In England, a young lady would have told her mamma that she was going to Mudie's, or to Regent Street to purchase two yards and a half of maize-coloured ribbon. And then the changes of scene, the frequent dialogues that take place "in a street," "another street," "a public place"! Italy is the country above all others where people meet in streets and public places to talk together by the hour, to chat, to gossip, to flirt, and to quarrel; for those streets and places, you see, are lined with cool and shady arcades, along whose pavements you can saunter, against whose pillars you can lean, free from dust, or heat, or jostling crowds. But farewell, fair Verona, and Heaven deliver thee speedily from the Austrian corporal's guard and the dominion of the double-headed eagle generally! I must not forget that I am in Oxford Street, and in the |