To continue that reference to the drama with which the preceding chapter was concluded, it may be remarked that, when the curtain has fallen thus abruptly on one scene, the spectators do not anticipate that, on its being drawn up again, the eye should be greeted with any continuation of that scene; but rather do they look for some great and decided transition. Our readers therefore will not now be surprised if we take them back again to Neverden and Smatterton. They are pleasant villages, and their inhabitants are for the most part unartificial people.

It is a fact worthy of notice, and we have no doubt that our observant readers have already remarked it, that all the personages in those two villages of whom we have yet spoken, have had that delectable and pleasing feeling of their own importance, by which they have considered that the world has been under infinite obligations to them. To have that feeling strongly and genuinely, is a real happiness; and if there has ever been any human being whom we have envied, it has been P. P., clerk of this parish, especially while he was writing his own memoirs. To endeavour to rob any one of this sense, is cruel, heart-rendingly cruel and barbarous; but fortunately for human happiness, this robbery cannot easily be effected.

But though the good people of these villages had this feeling in a very high and pure degree, yet it is not altogether confined to them; and if the Reverend Mr Darnley, in his vigintennial visits to London, has been rather angry and offended at the rude behaviour of the people in the streets who have jostled and driven against him, without having the grace to move their hats to him, that self-same Mr Darnley has in his turn inflicted upon a distinguished inhabitant of the great metropolis as serious a mortification as his reverence experienced from metropolitan neglect.

We have introduced to our readers the Rev. Charles Pringle; we have now to introduce that gentleman’s first-cousin, Zephaniah Pringle, Esq. This illustrious personage was not a native, but had long been an inhabitant, of the great metropolis, and, according to his own view of the matter, a great ornament to it. He was a literary man. He had been destined by his parents for agricultural pursuits, but his genius was above them. The circumstances, the trifling circumstances, which tend to develope the powers of the mind and to direct the energies into their proper channel, are always worthy of notice. Everybody knows the story of Sir Isaac Newton and the apple. But everybody does not know, but soon will know, the circumstances which made Zephaniah Pringle a critic.

When Zephaniah was about twelve years old he was taken to Smatterton by his father, who had to make a call of business on Mr Kipperson. While Mr Pringle and Mr Kipperson were engaged in looking at some cattle which the latter had to dispose of, young Pringle was gaping about in the library, and admiring with great veneration all its literary wonders; but that which most powerfully arrested his attention was a plaister bust of Dr Johnson. And when the agricultural gentlemen returned to the library, Zephaniah, pointing to the bust, said, “Father, was that there thick-headed man a heathen philosopher?”

Mr Kipperson, who was pleased with the young gentleman’s manifestation of a taste for literature and philosophy, kindly corrected the misapprehension of the youth, and said, “No, my lad, the heathen philosophers did not wear wigs. That is a bust of Dr Johnson, the celebrated critic and lexicographer.”

Zephaniah, with open mouth and expanded eyes, stared his thanks to Mr Kipperson, who immediately asked the young gentleman if he was fond of reading. To which he replied in the affirmative. Whereupon Mr Kipperson kindly lent the youth Boswell’s Life of Dr Johnson.

From that moment young Pringle felt an irresistible impulse to become a man of letters; and with a view to gratify that ambition, his father was kind enough to let him have another quarter’s Latin, in order to give him an opportunity to perfect himself in classical literature.

Thus qualified, the young man in due time went up to London. In the great metropolis he soon divested himself of the rusticity of his manners, and after some few failures in the first instance, for want of knowing the proper knack of writing, he soon acquired a tolerable facility, and absolutely once wrote something that was talked about. From that moment he never saw two people talking together in a bookseller’s shop, without fancying that they were talking about Zephaniah Pringle.

He took great pains to imitate Dr Johnson; but his literary companions detected him and laughed at him. He had but a slender frame and a slender voice; and when he attempted the oracular and the pompous style, it was like playing the Hallelujah Chorus on a fife. He could not adopt the doctor’s Jacobitism, but he took instead of that a double extra super-Eldon high Toryism. And in religion, not that he ever went to church, he was decidedly of opinion that all dissenters and Roman Catholics were convinced that the church of England was the only true church, but that they would not conform merely out of spite. It was his opinion that the Duke of Wellington would never have driven the French out of Spain, had he not always made a point of hearing all his soldiers every day say the church catechism.

He had a praiseworthy and prodigious horror of gymnastics; they came from Greece, and the ancient Greeks were republicans. In his notion of mechanics’ institutes he was exceedingly ungrateful to Mr Kipperson, who patronized him and them too; and when Mr Kipperson once proposed to establish a mechanics’ institute at Smatterton for the benefit of the agricultural operatives, this Zephaniah Pringle had the impudence to write him a long letter on the subject, accusing him of a design to subvert the established church, and convert England into a republic. Mr Kipperson gave up the scheme, not because of this letter, but because, when he assembled the people of the village in one of his barns to read them a lecture on hydrostatics, every soul of them fell fast asleep.

There was another subject on which Mr Zephaniah Pringle had very strong opinions,—viz. West India slavery. He very properly laughed at the absurdity of supposing that negroes have the slightest objection to be flogged to death; and he knew that the only object which the abolitionists had in view, was to overturn the established church.

Mr Zephaniah Pringle had a most exquisite conceit of his own superlative wisdom and penetration. This gentleman must have experienced therefore a sensation of great delight in taking his important self down to Smatterton to visit Mr Kipperson and surprise the natives. But how great must have been his astonishment, when introduced by Mr Kipperson at the rectory of Neverden, to find that Mr Darnley the elder had never heard of the name and fame of Zephaniah Pringle. He consoled himself, however, with the reflection, that many other names great as his own were equally unknown to this obscure village parson.

Finding that the young ladies of Mr Darnley’s family were addicted to reading, the critic kindly administered his gratuitous and unasked commentaries on divers modern and ancient authors. He astonished the daughters of the rector of Neverden by opinions hitherto unheard and unthought of. The confidence of his manner passed for wisdom and decided apprehension of the subjects on which he spoke; and as he took care to let it be thoroughly understood that all who differed from him were fools, and as literary young ladies do not like to be considered fools, they of course assented to Zephaniah Pringle’s opinions on literary topics.

In his conversation with Mr Darnley the younger he found that, by talking literature, he did not seem to magnify himself to his heart’s content; for Robert Darnley did not believe that critics were conjurors. The genius then had recourse to talk concerning those persons of high style and dignity with whom he had the honor to be acquainted. Among other great names, he mentioned that of Lord Smatterton, and the scarcely less illustrious name of Lord Spoonbill.

“You are acquainted then with Lord Spoonbill?” said Robert Darnley.

“Oh yes, perfectly well,” replied the critic.

“And pray what kind of man is this Lord Spoonbill? for, though the family resides in the next village, I am totally unacquainted with them.”

“Lord Spoonbill himself is the best creature in the world. The Earl of Smatterton is a proud, haughty man, like the rest of the Whig aristocracy.”

“Then Lord Spoonbill is not so very proud?”

“I cannot say that Lord Spoonbill is altogether without pride. He has very high notions; but his manner is not pompous like his father’s. And he can be very agreeable, though he is by no means a man of any great share of intellect.”

“I have heard him spoken of,” replied Robert Darnley, “as being a very profligate man.”

“I believe,” said the critic, “he is rather gay, but not more so than most young men of his rank. The finest joke in the world is, that his father, the Earl of Smatterton, thinks that he is one of the gravest and steadiest young men of the age, and quotes him as such accordingly. But the fact is, that his lordship has lately taken under his protection a lady, now received at Lord Smatterton’s table.”

Robert Darnley could not believe his own senses. The language which he now heard from Zephaniah Pringle seemed to allude plainly enough to Penelope, but it could not be possible, he thought, that a young lady of such high and pure spirit as Miss Primrose could ever submit to an arrangement so truly humiliating. Suppressing and concealing his agitation as well as he could, he endeavoured to ascertain from the man of letters what was really the fact concerning Lord Spoonbill and this, as yet unnamed, young lady.

“Surely, Mr Pringle, you do not mean to say that Lord Spoonbill has a lady in keeping, whom he introduces to his father’s table? This is really beyond all credence.”

“But indeed, sir, I do mean it,” replied Zephaniah the critic: “and, if you have never heard the story, I can tell you all the particulars.”

“It is no business of mine,” said Darnley, “but I do feel curious to know the particulars of so very singular a case, as a young man bringing a kept lady to his father’s own table.”

“It is not altogether so,” replied Mr Pringle; “but I will tell you exactly how the case stands; I know Spoonbill very intimately.”

This last expression was uttered as everybody would naturally suppose such an expression would be uttered by such a man. After thoroughly enjoying the high and refined satisfaction of having said, “I know Spoonbill very intimately,” the loyal and religious critic proceeded:

“You must remember old Greendale, the rector of Smatterton, who was my cousin’s predecessor in the living. He died a very short time before you returned from India. This old man had a very pretty niece, you know; you must remember her, for I understand that she lived with old Dr Greendale from her infancy.”

“Oh, certainly,” said Darnley, with much effort concealing the agitation which he felt; “I remember her very well, her name is Primrose; but you surely do not mean to say that Miss Primrose is living under the protection of Lord Spoonbill?”

Hereupon Mr Pringle did somewhat hesitate and say, “Why, why—I cannot exactly say that—that she is absolutely living under his protection. She is rather living under the protection of Lady Smatterton as yet. You perhaps may not know that Miss Primrose has a remarkably fine voice, and is in fact a first-rate vocalist: now Lady Smatterton is a great patroness of musical talent, and has taken a fancy to bring Miss Primrose out this season as a public singer, and Lord Spoonbill has made proposals, which I believe have been accepted by the lady; and she is to be under his lordship’s protection as soon as she leaves Lord Smatterton’s house, and that will be very soon. That is the true state of the case. I wonder you have never heard of it before; for though you have been from India a very short time, yet in country places intelligence flies very rapidly.”

“Well, you astonish me,” said Mr Darnley the younger; “I could not have thought that a young lady, brought up by such an exemplary and virtuous man as the late Dr Greendale, should ever condescend to live upon those terms with the first nobleman in the kingdom.”

“Oh, sir,” replied the knowing critic, “you do not understand the heart, especially the female heart. There is something in title and splendour so fascinating to the weaker sex, that few can resist its influence. I have observed and studied the human mind in all its various attitudes, and I have lived in the world long enough to cease to be astonished at anything I hear or see. In such an outlandish place as India you see nothing and learn nothing. London is the only place where the human character can be thoroughly and properly studied.”

Much more to the same purpose did the fluent cousin of the new rector of Smatterton say to the son of the rector of Neverden. But Robert Darnley heard him and heeded him not. Deeply did the intelligence concerning Penelope sink into his mind, and painfully did he revolve the idle gossip of the loyal and religious critic, who had properly and thoroughly studied human nature, in his lodgings in Fetter lane, Holborn.