1827.] The Jew Slopseller. 367 



so seared it, and there so adorned it with protuberance that his features 

 are like a patch of old wall ; here, shewing a fearful chink and here, 

 tufts of red and brown moss. He stands before us the very embodied idea 

 of unthinking: valour and honesty : there is a reposing strength in his 

 legs, which straggle from each other like two clumps of leafless oaks ; his 

 hands drop before him, like two slabs of red granite ; his hair that is, 

 if he do not nourish the coxcombry of a pigtail mightily resembles 

 bell-wire in a tangle; his very hat seems dropped upon his head (as 

 though for a wager) from the main-top. This man appears a hard creature 

 to digest ; and yet our Slopseller shall swallow him, as though he were a 

 man of paste the mere sugared image of a confectioner. 



Observe, gentle reader and also ye philosophers if here you would see 

 the whole deceit and trickery of the world : if here you would look upon 

 the game where is pitted craft against honesty villainy against igno- 

 rance smiles, assertions, oaths, and pledges of reputation, against the 

 profits of years of toil perhaps of insult and of bloodshed. The bit of 

 gold, for which our tar hath groaned in hopeless agony beneath the sur- 

 geon for which he hath been literally sheeted in his own gore the wages 

 of such pain and terror shall, in a trice, become the gain of the Jew, for a 

 wheedling word a smiling look. Is not this a true representation of 

 the tragedy, or Uemocritus, if you will have it so the comedy of 

 Gain and Loss, played on the world's wide stage, alike by emperors, by 

 lords in waiting, and by chimney-sweepers? Many a veteran hath gone 

 down, a most lean subject, to the grave ; whilst a musk-carrying juvenile, 

 who could sing an amorous ditty at the table of my lord, hath died of 

 indigestion or of apoplexy : the shrill pipe of a boy hath carried it before 

 the indented cicatrice of gray-headed men. We repeat our assertion : 

 Our Sailor and Slopseller may, in their simple selves, represent the whole 

 two parties of the human race< the tricksters and the tricked. Three feet 

 of the forecastle of the Eellona may serve for the whole globe. 



We beg our readers to keep before their eyes the person of our sailor, 

 and also narrowly to observe the movements of the Israelite, now preparing 

 to assail and attack the huge round tower before him. See, how the varlet 

 makes towards the tar ! how he curls and bends himself up, as though he 

 would absolutely make himself into a ball, and roll into the confidence of the 

 betrayed ! Now this Proteus of pinchbeck and stained glass alternately flut- 

 ters and stoops, and his eye burns with brightness not with a common bril- 

 liancy it is not the ray of honest satisfaction but the gleam of a spear's 

 point held to the heart of the devoted. As yet, however, the contest has 

 been held at a distance : the Slopseller has only attacked with greetings, 

 gentle inquiries, and salutations ; the pike is only hooked the grand 

 beauty of tha art is yet to be displayed in playing with him, and bringing 

 him panting to the shore. Jack himself throws a dash of the ridiculous into 

 the business ; he checquers with individual whim the else unrelieved baseness 

 of the Slopseller. As the Jew advances, the Sailor (and we would be 

 sworn he has never read Sterne) seems " pre-determined not to give him a 

 single sous." Jack straightway becomes blunt and bristling : he puts his 

 memory on hard duty, and summons to his aid a recollection of the grievous 

 wrongs he has before endured from "the tribe;" he, moreover, doubly 

 arms himself with the legendary iniquities of every slopseller, from Wap- 

 ping to Spithead; and thus strengthened, Jack receives, with deadly 

 determination, the first advances of the aquatic merchant. Vain man ! 

 weak in your vanity lost in your conceit! Bound and delivered up to the 



