INTERCHAPTER XIV.

CONCERNING INTERCHAPTERS.

If we present a mingle-mangle, our fault is to be excused, because the whole world is become a hodge-podge.

LYLY.             

It occurs to me that some of my readers may perhaps desire to be informed in what consists the difference between a Chapter and an Inter Chapter; for that there is a difference no considerate person would be disposed to deny, though he may not be able to discover it. Gentle readers,—readers after my own heart, you for whom this opus was designed long before it was an opus, when as Dryden has said concerning one of his own plays, “it was only a confused mass of thoughts, tumbling over one another in the dark; when the fancy was yet in its first work, moving the sleeping images of things towards the light, there to be distinguished, and then either chosen or rejected by the judgement,”—good-natured readers, you who are willing to be pleased, and whom therefore it is worth pleasing,—for your sakes,

And for because you shall not think that I
Do use the same without a reason why,1

I will explain the distinction.

1 ROBERT GREEN.

It is not like the difference between a Baptist and an Anabaptist, which Sir John Danvers said, is much the same as that between a Whiskey and a Tim-Whiskey, that is to say no difference at all. Nor is it like that between Dryads and Hamadryads, which Benserade once explained to the satisfaction of a learned lady by saying qu'il avait autant de difference qu'entre les Evêques et les Archevêques. Nor is it like the distinction taken by him who divided bread into white bread, brown bread, and French rolls.

A panegyrical poet said of the aforesaid Benserade that he possessed three talents which posterity would hardly be persuaded to believe;

De plaisanter les Grands il ne fit point scrupule,
    Sans qu'ils le prissent de travers;
Il fut vieux et galant sans être ridicule,
    Et s'enrichit à composer des vers.

He used to say, that he was descended and derived his name from the Abencerrages. Upon a similar presumption of etymological genealogy it has been said that Aulus Gellius was the progenitor of all the Gells. An Englishman may doubt this, a Welshman would disbelieve, and a Jew might despise it. So might a Mahommedan, because it is a special prerogative of his prophet to be perfectly acquainted with his whole pedigree; the Mussulmen hold that no other human being ever possessed the same knowledge, and that after the resurrection, when all other pedigrees will be utterly destroyed, this alone will be preserved in the archives of Eternity.

Leaving however Sir William Gell to genealogize, if he pleases, as elaborately as he has topographized, and to maintain the authenticity and dignity of his Roman descent against all who may impugn it, whether Turk, Jew, or Christian, I proceed with my promised explanation.

The Hebrews call chapters and sections and other essential or convenient divisions, the bones of a book. The Latins called them nodi, knots or links; and every philologist knows that articles, whether grammatical, conventional, or of faith, are so denominated as being the joints of language, covenants and creeds.

Now reader, the chapters of this book are the bones wherewith its body is compacted; the knots or links whereby its thread or chain of thoughts is connected; the articulations, without which it would be stiff, lame and disjointed. Every chapter has a natural dependence upon that which precedes, and in like manner a relation to that which follows it. Each grows out of the other. They follow in direct genealogy; and each could no more have been produced without relation to its predecessor, than Isaac could have begotten Jacob unless Abraham had begotten Isaac.

Sometimes indeed it must of necessity happen that a new chapter opens with a new part of the subject, but this is because we are arrived at that part in the natural prosecution of our argument. The disruption causes no discontinuance; it is, (to pursue the former illustration,) as when the direct line in a family is run out, and the succession is continued by a collateral branch; or as in the mineral world, in which one formation begins where another breaks off.

In my chapters, however, where there is no such natural division of the subject matter, I have ever observed that “one most necessary piece of mastership, which is ever performed by those of good skill in music, when they end a suit of lessons in any one key, and do intend presently to begin another in a differing key.” Upon which piece of mastership, the worthy old “Remembrancer of the best practical music, both divine and civil, that has ever been known to have been in the world,” thus instructs his readers.

“They do not abruptly and suddenly begin such new lessons, without some neat and handsome interluding-voluntary-like playing; which may by degrees (as it were) steal into that new and intended key.

“Now that you may be able to do it handsomely, and without blemish, or incompleteness, (for you must know it is a piece of quaintness so to do), you must take notice, that always, when you have made an end of playing upon any one key, (if discourse or some other occasion do not cause a cessation of play for some pretty time, so as the remembrance of that former key may, in a manner, be forgotten), it will be very needful that some care be taken that you leave that key handsomely, and come into that other you intend next to play upon without impertinency.

“For such impertinencies will seem to be very like such a thing as this, which I shall name—to wit—

“That when two or more persons have been soberly and very intently discoursing upon some particular solid matter, musing and very ponderously considering thereof; all on the sudden, some one of them shall abruptly (without any pause) begin to talk of a thing quite of another nature, nothing relating to the aforesaid business.

“Now those by-standers (who have judgement), will presently apprehend that although his matter might be good, yet his manner and his wit might have been better approved of in staying some certain convenient time, in which he might have found out some pretty interluding discourse, and have taken a handsome occasion to have brought in his new matter.

“Just so is it in music, and more particularly in this last-recited-matter; as to chop different things of different natures, and of different keys, one upon the neck of another, impertinently.

“For I would have it taken notice of, that music is (at least) as a language, if it will not be allowed a perfect one; because it is not so well understood as it might be.—

“Having thus far prepared you with an apprehension of the needfulness of the thing, I will now show you how it is to be done without abruption and absurdness.

“First, (as abovesaid) it may be that discourse may take off the remembrance of the last key in which you played, or some occasion of a leaving off for some pretty time, by a string breaking or the like; or if not, then (as commonly it happens) there may be a need of examining the tuning of your lute, for the strings will alter a little in the playing of one lesson, although they have been well stretched. But if lately put on, or have been slacked down by any mischance of pegs slipping, then they will need mending, most certainly.

“I say some such occasion may sometimes give you an opportunity of coming handsomely to your new intended key: but if none of these shall happen, then you ought, in a judicious and masterly way, to work from your last key which you played upon, in some voluntary way till you have brought your matter so to pass that your auditors may be captivated with a new attention; yet so insinuatingly, that they may have lost the remembrance of the foregoing key they know not how; nor are they at all concerned for the loss of it, but rather taken with a new content and delight at your so cunning and complete artifice.”

With strict propriety then may it be said of these my chapters as Wordsworth has said of certain sonnets during his tour in Scotland and on the English border, that they

Have moved in order, to each other bound
By a continuous and acknowledged tie
Tho' unapparent, like those shapes distinct
That yet survive ensculptured on the walls
Of Palace, or of Temple, 'mid the wreck
Of famed Persepolis; each following each,
As might beseem a stately embassy
In set array; these bearing in their hands
Ensign of civil power, weapon of war,
Or gift to be presented at the Throne
Of the Great King; and others as they go
In priestly vest, with holy offerings charged,
Or leading victims dressed for sacrifice.

For an ordinary book then the ordinary division into chapters might very well have sufficed. But this is an extraordinary book. Hath not the Quarterly Review—that Review which among all Reviews is properly accounted facile Princeps,—hath not that great critical authority referred to it κατ᾽ εξοχην as “the extraordinary book called the Doctor?” Yes reader;

                     All things within it
Are so digested, fitted and composed
As it shows Wit had married Order.2

And as the exceptions in grammar prove the rule, so the occasional interruptions of order here are proofs of that order, and in reality belong to it.

2 B. JONSON.

Lord Bacon (then Sir Francis) said in a letter to the Bishop of Ely upon sending him his writing intitled Cogitata et Visa, “I am forced to respect as well my times, as the matter. For with me it is thus, and I think with all men in my case; if I bind myself to an argument it loadeth my mind; but if I rid my mind of the present cogitation it is rather a recreation. This hath put me into these miscellanies, which I purpose to suppress if God give me leave to write a just and perfect volume of philosophy.”

That I am full of cogitations like Lord Bacon the judicious reader must ere this time have perceived; though he may perhaps think me not more worthy on that score to be associated with Bacon, than beans or cabbage or eggs at best. Like him however in this respect I am, however unlike in others; and it is for the reader's recreation as well as mine, and for our mutual benefit, that my mind should be delivered of some of its cogitations as soon as they are ripe for birth.

I know not whence thought comes; who indeed can tell? But this we know, that like the wind it cometh as it listeth. Happily there is no cause for me to say with Sir Philip Sydney,

If I could think how these my thoughts to leave;
    Or thinking still, my thoughts might have good end;
If rebel Sense would Reason's law receive,
    Or Reason foiled would not in vain contend;
Then might I think what thoughts were best to think,
Then might I wisely swim, or gladly sink.

Nor with Des-Portes,

O pensers trop pensez, que rebellez mon ame!
O debile raison! O lacqs! O traits!

thanks to that kind Providence which has hitherto enabled me through good and evil fortune to maintain an even and well-regulated mind. Neither need I say with the pleasant authors of the “Rejected Addresses” in their harmless imitation of a most pernicious author,

Thinking is but an idle waste of thought,
And nought is every thing and every thing is nought.

I have never worked in an intellectual treadmill, which as it had nothing to act on was grinding the wind.

“He that thinks ill,” says Dean Young, (the poet's father,) “prevents the Tempter, and does the Devil's business for him; he that thinks nothing, tempts the Tempter, and offers him possession of an empty room; but he that thinks religiously, defeats the Tempter, and is proof and secure against all his assaults.” I know not whether there be any later example where the word prevent is used as in the Collect in its Latin sense.

It is a man's own fault if he excogitate vain thoughts, and still more if he enunciate and embody them; but it is not always in his power to prevent their influx. Even the preventative which George Tubervile recommends in his monitory rhymes, is not infallible;

Eschew the idle life!
    Flee, flee from doing nought!
For never was there idle brain
    But bred an idle thought.

Into the busiest brain they will sometimes intrude; and the brain that is over-busy breeds them. But the thoughts which are not of our own growth or purchase, and which we receive not from books, society, or visible objects, but from some undiscovered influence, are of all kinds.

                     Who has a breast so pure,
But some uncleanly apprehensions
Keep leets and law days, and in session sit
With meditations lawful?3

I dare not affirm that some are suggestions of the enemy; neither dare I deny it: from all such tela ignea and tela venenata, whatever be their origin, or whencesoever they come, God preserve us! But there are holy inspirations, which philosophy may teach us to expect, and faith to pray for.

3 OTHELLO.

My present business is not with these, but it is with those conceptions which float into the solitary mind, and which if they are unrecorded pass away, like a dream or a rainbow, or the glories of an evening sky. Some of them are no better than motes in the sunbeams, as light, as fleeting, and to all apprehension as worthless. Others may be called seminal thoughts, which if they light not upon a thorny, or stoney, or arid field of intellect, germinate, and bring forth flowers, and peradventure fruit. Now it is in the Interchapters that part of this floating capital is vested; part of these waifs and strays impounded; part of this treasure-trove lodged; part of these chance thoughts and fancies preserved: part I say, because

J'ay mille autres pensers, et mille et mille et mille,
Qui font qu'incessamment mon esprit se distile. 4

4 DES-PORTES.

“There are three things,” says a Welsh triad, “that ought to be considered before some things should be spoken; the manner, the place, and the time.” Touching the manner, I see none whereby they could more conveniently or agreeably be conveyed; and for the place and time these must be allowed to be at my own discretion.

And howsoever, be it well or ill
What I have done, it is mine own; I may
Do whatsoever therewithal I will.5

(Be it remarked in passing that these lines bear a much greater resemblance to Italian poetry than any of those English sonnets which have been called Petrarcal.) One place being (generally speaking) as suitable as another, it has not been necessary for me to deliberate,

Desta antigua preñez de pensamientos
Qual el primero hare, qual el segundo. 6

I have interspersed them where I thought fit, and given them the appellation which they bear, to denote that they are no more a necessary and essential part of this opus, than the voluntary is of the church service.

Εισὶν δὲ περι του;
                         Περὶ Αθηνων, περι Πύλου,
Περι σοῦ, περι ἐμοῦ, περὶ απαντων πραγματων. 7

5 DANIEL.

6 BALBUENA.

7 ARISTOPHANES.

A Chapter is, as has been explained, both procreated and procreative: an Interchapter is like the hebdomad, which profound philosophers have pronounced to be not only παρθένος, but αμητωρ, a motherless as well as a virgin number.

Here too the exception illustrates the rule. There are at the commencement of the third volume four Interchapters in succession, and relating to each other, the first gignitive but not generated; the second and third both generated and gignitive, the fourth generated but not gignitive. They stand to each other in the relation of Adam, Seth, Enoch, Kenan. These are the exceptions. The other chapters are all Melchizedekites.

The gentle Reader will be satisfied with this explanation; the curious will be pleased with it. To the captious one I say in the words of John Bunyan, “Friend, howsoever thou camest by this book, I will assure thee thou wert least in my thoughts when I writ it. I tell thee, I intended the book as little for thee as the goldsmith intended his jewels and rings for the snout of a sow!”

If any be not pleased, let them please themselves with their own displeasure. Je n'ay pas enterpris de contenter tout le monde: mesme Jupiter n'aggree à tous. 8

8 BOUCHET.