and the presence of others is distinctly superfluous. The lover, for instance, will say in his haste that all men are bores who spoil a tête-à-tête. A man's mood or circumstances, in short, may be such that the unwelcome presence of any other individual may be a subjective bore to him, quite independently of the inherent objective qualities of that individual, whom to class as a bore would be manifestly unphilosophic, and probably unjust.

It would be wrong to imagine, because the people of the eighteenth century failed to coin a word to express the bore, that therefore he was not well known to them. The race existed in considerable numbers and of prodigious dimensions. Dr. Johnson was redeemed only by his love of occasional and prolonged seclusion from figuring in this category; indeed his passion for argument, of all forms of conversation the most wearisome, makes it almost impossible to exclude him from the list. Loud, rude, and impatient, if people got the better of him in dispute he insulted them; if he overcame them he turned them into ridicule. No one was better able to pronounce judgment on a man's social qualities than Horace Walpole.

The more (he says) one hears of Johnson, the more preposterous assemblage he appears of strong common sense, of the lowest bigotry and prejudices, of pride, brutality, fretfulness, and vanity.

66

What reconciled ordinary people to being in company with a man of so many forbidding attributes was the prospect of amusement in seeing others ground to powder. Sometimes the punishment was no more than just, as when a pert young fellow asked Johnson, "What would you give, old gentleman, to be as young and sprightly as I am ?" Why, sir," was the thunderous reply, "I would almost be content to be as foolish." But at other times he would turn and rend inoffensive bystanders. This was to be something more than a bore: it was dangerous, and wearied out his best friends-those of them at least who, like Mrs. Thrale, had any independence of character. One can only wonder that they endured him so long, partly out of pity for his physical infirmity and poverty, and

partly, no doubt, because the man cannot have been destitute of charm who could write as follows:

To let friendship die away by negligence certainly is not wise: it is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of this weary pilgrimage, of which, when it is, as it must be, will wonder how his esteem can be so little.* taken finally away, he that travels on alone

But if Johnson, in virtue of his work and forceful mind, be acquitted, what can be said to prevent his chronicler Boswell being deemed the very worst of bores? Restless, garrulous, flippant, inquisitive, drunken, he has written his character so large in his own hand, that Walpole's evidence is almost superfluous. Yet Walpole has, with infinitely dexterous touch, given such a vivid picture of an incident in his house in Arlington Street that it is hard to refrain from quotation:

Boswell, that quintessence of busybodies, called on me last week, and was let in, which he should not have been could I have foreseen as dry answers as an unbribed oracle, he it. After tapping many topics, to which I made

vented his errand: "Had I seen Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets?" I said, slightly, No, not yet;" and so overlaid his whole impertinence.

There is nothing wanting here to the letter-writer's art. Slightly as it is sketched, many pages of manuscript could have added nothing to our com

prehension of the scene. We can see the pale, dark-eyed, frail Horace receive with icy courtesy the rubicund, fussy tattler, parry innumerable questions, assent to the patter of commonplace, and betray impatience by no more than the nervous fingering of an ivory paper-knife on the table beside him.

It avails not to multiply instances of distinction attained in this walk. Jemmie Boswell may be taken as the typical, the standard bore, by comparison with whom every other may be tested. For just as early in the history of human culture the Ionian school produced men of a range and scope of intellect that has never since been surpassed, so, almost before English society was conscious of the danger to which it was exposed, Boswell blazed upon it-precocious, invulnerable, complete in all the attributes of the bore-the father of the modern race.

So much, and perhaps over-much, on the historical part of the subject; now for what concerns us more nearly-the present distribution and armament of the race. and the condition of our defences against them.

Negative bores are, strangely enough, to be most surely found in literary circles. It might have been expected that this form of culture would prove the most certain to purge a man of selfconsciousness. The ocean of literature is so vast and so profound, it reaches toward such a distant horizon, that he whose business it is to contribute to it must surely be penetrated with the sense of his own insignificance. It is not so, as daily experience must prove, and it may easily be seen that the smaller the bucket to be discharged, the weightier the writer's sense of his own importance. No man was ever freer from self-assertion than Sir Walter Scott, though he laid broader foundations for it than most moderns. See how shrewdly he touched, how gently he condoned, the foible of a smaller confrère, in a letter to Lady Abercorn

I am not surprised that Tom Campbell disappointed your expectations in society. To a mind peculiarly irritable, and galled, I fear, by the consciousness of narrow circumstances, there is added a want of acquaintance with the usual intercourse of the world, which, like many other things, can only be acquired at NEW SERIES.-VOL. LIX., No. 3.

an early period of life. Besides, I have always remarked that literary people think constrained and affected turn in conversathemselves obliged to take somewhat of a tion, seeming to consider themselves as less a part of the company than something which the rest were come to see and wonder at.

This is a good illustration of the negative bore the person to whom society is anxious to show consideration proportioned to his attainments, yet who is exacting and suspicious lest he receive less than he believes his due. Nothing, it is feared, can be done to this sort in the present; prayer and fasting on the part of others avail nothing, and it is of his nature that the culprit cannot be got to pray and fast for his own shortcomings, though very likely he sits permanently in sackcloth and ashes on account of the perverse generation with whom his lot is cast. Nevertheless, something may be done to protect and purify generations yet unborn, and it is clearly a noble part to exert our understanding for them. Children should be trained from tender years in that cardinal maxim of whist which has been embodied in the execrable rhyme :

Regard your hand as to your partner's joined And play, not one alone, but both combined.

The bad whist player who cannot be got to understand that he has to play, not thirteen, but twenty-six cards, is the exact counterpart of the individual whose thoughts cannot detach themselves from the coloring of his own pursuits or circumstances. Ariosto Petrarch Villon Jones has achieved some success in verse; his satchel of sonnets, neatly printed on rough paper with preposterously ragged edges, furnished with a title-page of archaic design and a frontispiece representing the Lothely Ladye in her most abandoned mood, has touched the rare distinction of a third edition. The flowing tide is with him; he is one of the lions of the hour, and no one could complain though he should mildly roar. But, however conscious of, and, as it may be hoped, grateful he may be for the attention paid to him, it is distinctly a blunder when Mr. A. P. V. Jones thinks it safe or in good taste to neglect all the ordinary means of sweetening intercourse with his fellow creatures. Sonnets are, after all, pretty well caviare

24

to the general, and caviare, too, of a kind with which the market is at present rather over- than under-stocked; it is on ordinary men and women whom we must all, even if we are gifted poets, rely as travelling companions, and if they come to look upon the gifted poet as a bore he will be apt to find his earthly sojourn become a trifle solitary. People may continue to buy his books, but they won't put up with Mr. A. P. V. Jones at any price-least of all at his own. The poet's stock-intrade is his imagination; it is strange how often defects in that faculty pre vent him from seeing into the minds of other people-of playing his own hand to suit theirs. The poet's boast is his culture, but true culture is that which reckons with the souls of others as clearly as with one's own. It is imperfect imagination and culture which give Mr. A. P. V. Jones and his sort that dissatisfied, peevish mien which, although hostesses are pleased to receive them at their entertainments, makes men prefer to keep out of their path--makes them bores, in short. Minds of the first order are quick with all-embracing sympathy, but those of inferior ranks are too likely to be tainted with self-consciousness. He who has either touched fame or preserved his obscurity may hold popular applause at its right value; but it often intoxicates one who has attained no more than distinction, and deprives him of common sense.

There is no more common manifestation of the bore than the way some people talk of their bodily ailments. Everybody with a disorder must be painfully conscious of it; there need be no doubt about that. An ordinary cold in the head is probably the uppermost idea in the mind of him afflicted by it, just as the exquisite rhythm of his own sonnets is ever the ruling reflection in that of Mr. A. P. V. Jones. All the more pressing is the duty of marshalling one's ideas before offering them to the notice of an acquaintance. A sensitive person will do so instinctively-from delicacy of perception, a sensible one consciously from a rational desire to please. Both will be influenced by a thought which might be put thus into words: Of what possible greater concern can my catarrh be to So and so

66

than the million and odd other catarrhs now being endured by the people of these islands" Unhappily there are many persons neither sensitive nor sensible, and these be the very people out of which bores are fashioned; there is nothing commoner than to meet people anxious to dwell at great length on all the phases of their disorders. There comes to mind a certain lady, who, not very many years ago, was of the sort a man might well be content to take a very long journey and endure much inconvenience to have the privilege of seeing. Her eyes were tender and deeply, darkly, beautifully blue;" her complexion a divine almalgam of ivory and rose; her laughter so low and soft one didn't know what to do; and her talk was that mixture of sentiment and persiflage which sways more minds than all the prosings of the schools. Time has laid its finger gently on this lady's charms-her cheeks are not hollow, her eyes not faded, the accents are the same; but the aches and pains which visit her fair frame have become the staple of her confidence; one wearies in listening to moans about the obstinacy of ailments and the futility of treatment: not to meet her would the long journey now be taken, but rather to escape the charm of taking her to dinner. She has, in short, become a perfect bore.

It is rather odd that this infirmity should have escaped Molière's keen perception when he penned the amusing comedy-ballet Les Facheux. His country was a full century in advance of ours in experience of the good and ill of civilization; he not only anticipated us by two centuries in devising the term fâcheux to express what we mean by a bore, but he has collected into one short piece a very comprehensive assortment of different kinds. Some of the types are immortal-Alcidor, for instance, who bustles into the playhouse and, fixing on Eraste, who is only putting off the time before a rendezvous

* How much the want of a convenient term was felt in English may be seen in a translation of Cardinal Richelieu's L'Art de plaire dans la Conversation, published in London in 1722. The French and English versions are printed side by side, and on p. 95 the sen. tence, "Quoi! vous excuser pouvez fâcheux," etc., is translated You can then excuse these Troublesomes," etc.

"

ces

with Orphise, talks louder than the actors and explains the plot in advance. Tu n'as pas vu ceci, Marquis? Ah, Dieu me damne!

Je le trouve assez drôle, et je ne suis pas âne : Je sais par quelles lois un ouvrage est parfait, Et Corneille me vient lire tout ce qu'il fait. Là-dessus de la pièce il m'a fait un sommaire,

Scène à scène averti de ce qui s'alloit faire, Et jusques à des vers qu'il en savoit par cœur Il me les récitoit tout haut avant l'acteur.

Lisandre, perpetually singing and tripping his last new coranto, is one of Disraeli's ideal bores-the man of one subject; Alcippe we know, with his interminable explanation of disputed card play; Caritides the pedant, and Dorant the hunting bore-all these are good enough. But Molière fails in scientific analysis in the same way that Oliver Holmes failed in his comprehensive definition. Alcandre, who interferes with Eraste's tête-à-tête by asking him to carry a challenge, is unfairly classed among the fâcheux; he is at most only an instance of a subjective and temporary bore; and as for the valet, La Montagne, he is no more of a bore than Sam Weller, and not half as much so as the sententious Sancho. The philosophy is delightful with which he soothes his master, ruffled by an encounter with the odious Alcidor:

Le ciel veut qu'ici bas chacun ait ses fâcheux, Et les hommes seroient sans cela trop heureux. There is another mischance incident to human life which, though it be necessary to allude to it sometimes, is much more commonly dwelt upon by sufferers than there is any need for. It is usually called poverty, but really consists in no more than the necessity of denying one's self certain pleasant but superfluous luxuries. It would, of course, be a very fine world if every one were able to keep two pairs of carriage-horses and a good cook; but it is a great mistake for any one to suppose that, so long as he can keep a roof over his head and a coat on his back, it is a matter of the slightest interest to anybody else-anybody, that is, whose regard is worth retaining whether his income be £500 a year, or £5000, or £50,000. It is just as ill-advised to make the smallness of your means a topic of conversation as the affluence of them. This is specially the case in this country, where we are

sadly deficient in the graces of expression. It is necessary of course, sometimes, though not half so often as is supposed, to mention one's inability to incur such and such expense. You happen to speak anxiously in the presence of a friend about your wife's health.

66

66

My dear fellow," he says earnestly, you ought to take that in time. Chests are not to be trifled with, especially in these days of influenza. Take her away at once, and, if you will follow my advice, let it be to take a villa there for the winter, and you'll never repent it."

Oh, it's all very well for you to give advice," you reply with a mien of virtuous austerity, "but I can't afford it, you know. Why, look here, my rents are down five-and-twenty or thirty per cent (that comes off free income, mind), I have three boys at school, and then there's the governess at home," etc. If your friend is well-bred and sympathetic you will very likely be tempted to enter at some length upon your misfortunes, but none the less will he be bored with you. This is essentially a moment to

Give thy thoughts no tongue

Nor any unproportioned thought his act.

It sounds heartless to say so, but men are impatient with poor acquaintances, not because of their narrow fortune, not because they apprehend appeals to their liberality, but simply because the story is ungracefully told. Plenty of people are poor and yet not bores, because they can bear and even talk of their poverty without wearying others, just as there are sweet old men with whom to be is a delight as great as the burden of being with others. It is the way the mantle is carried, not its texture or trimming, that makes the wearer look knightly or beggarly. The truth is, we Englishspeaking people have not the gift to trick out harsh truth in lightsome phrase. They possess that art in Naples. Children of the sun and sea-breeze, needy and mendacious more than the populace of most towns, they can tell the truth about their narrow means more poetically than any others. There are no milk-carts in Naples, the cows and goats are driven in each day from the country and milked at the house

66

doors of customers. It often happens that a poor housewife has not the needful coppers to pay for the day's supply; passa la vacca-let the cow pass on-is then the word; and passa la vacca has become a well-understood metaphor among all classes for " I can't afford it." Such a phrase has a reflex effect upon him who utters it; he is snapping his fingers at untoward circumstance; there is a lordly nonchalance in his tone as different as can be from the beggar's whine. Yet when begging is his occasion none understands it better than the Neapolitan.

Verbal expression-spoken intercourse between a man and his fellowsis sure to degenerate without watchful culture. The English tongue, though inferior in harmony to some continental languages, is pliant and melodious enough to bring minds into very intimate communion, but it must not be carelessly used, and it will not stand pranks being played with it. There are some people who think it engaging, or once thought it so, and have contracted a horrible habit to mispronounce words. You know by experience the vocables which they are accustomed to torture, and you wince at what is coming. Such people may be expected to talk of "mutting" for mutton, homblibus" for "omnibus," and so on. You are certain that when they leave you they will say 66 addoo" for adieu, or eau reservoir for au revoir. It is a very contagious trick, this kind of linguistic grimace, and it is just as offensive to warp words, which are indeed holy things, as if one should be perpetually screwing up the nose or putting out the tongue. Condillac knew how easily the edge of speech is blunted, and declared, in seeming paradox, that by studying to speak accurately one acquired the habit of thinking rightly.

66

99 66

Well, we have passed in review a few who have taken service in the great army of bores; we have sorted them roughly into combatant and non-combatant ranks, noting the various uniforms by which they may be identified, and, taking account in an unprofessional way of their armament, have come to the somewhat Hibernian conclusion that the best way to encounter them is to keep out of their way altogether. It is certain you cannot meet them on equal

"Oh, but I assure you that is not so. When I married her, twenty years ago, she was the sweetest and brightest girl in the country, and so sympathetic.

"Precisely; she sympathized with all your projects, listened to all your long stories, gave up all her own little schemes; and how did you requite her? You were rude to some of her old friends because they did not happen to suit you; you sulked because she said long walks round the home farm tired her; and music being her ruling passion, you told her you would not have those greasy, long-haired fiddler fellows in your house any more. Morning callers are not, as a class, a very lively lot, yet day after day you left her to receive them, while you went off to your club, or your House of Commons, or your match at Lord's. Poor thing, she played her hand to yours as long as the cards held out, but you would not respond it is not her fault if the rubber ends in failure. What united strength you might have shown if you had bestowed a thought upon the suits in which she was strong, and been at half the pains to draw them out which she was at to support you! It is you that have made her a bore, by neglecting or repressing every independent idea she possessed. Bores are made, not born; and if a man finds his wife a bore, rely upon it she is one of his own creation."

There remains one other variety of bore to be alluded to, and it is one that peculiarly abounds in, if indeed it be not the product of, the present day. This is the earnest-eyed, intense being whose normal mood is to ordinary human nature what Mr. Burne-Jones's dingy-lipped, jointless maidens are to the glorious women whom the Venetian painters loved to limn. It exists of