La defense est un charme; on dit qu'elle assaisonne les plaisirs, et surtout ceux que l'amour nous donne=--Prohibition acts as a charm; it is said to give a zest to pleasures, especially to those which love imparts.
~Urbanity.~--Poor wine at the table of a rich host is an insult without an apology. Urbanity ushers in water that needs no apology, and gives a zest to the worst vintage.--_Zimmermann._
"Fancy his having the insolence to confound me with the official detective force! This incident gives zest to our investigation, however, and I only trust that our little friend will not suffer from her imprudence in allowing this brute to trace her. And now, Watson, we shall order breakfast, and afterwards I shall walk down to Doctors' Commons, where I hope to get some data which may help us in this matter."
In the autumn of 1806 everybody had again begun talking of the war with Napoleon with even greater warmth than the year before. Orders were given to raise recruits, ten men in every thousand for the regular army, and besides this, nine men in every thousand for the militia. Everywhere Bonaparte was anathematized and in Moscow nothing but the coming war was talked of. For the Rostov family the whole interest of these preparations for war lay in the fact that Nicholas would not hear of remaining in Moscow, and only awaited the termination of Denisov's furlough after Christmas to return with him to their regiment. His approaching departure did not prevent his amusing himself, but rather gave zest to his pleasures. He spent the greater part of his time away from home, at dinners, parties, and balls.
"By the way, a Bulgarian I met lately in Moscow," Ivan went on, seeming not to hear his brother's words, "told me about the crimes committed by Turks and Circassians in all parts of Bulgaria through fear of a general rising of the Slavs. They burn villages, murder, outrage women and children, they nail their prisoners by the ears to the fences, leave them so till morning, and in the morning they hang them--all sorts of things you can't imagine. People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it. These Turks took a pleasure in torturing children, too; cutting the unborn child from the mother's womb, and tossing babies up in the air and catching them on the points of their bayonets before their mothers' eyes. Doing it before the mothers' eyes was what gave zest to the amusement. Here is another scene that I thought very interesting. Imagine a trembling mother with her baby in her arms, a circle of invading Turks around her. They've planned a diversion: they pet the baby, laugh to make it laugh. They succeed, the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk points a pistol four inches from the baby's face. The baby laughs with glee, holds out its little hands to the pistol, and he pulls the trigger in the baby's face and blows out its brains. Artistic, wasn't it? By the way, Turks are particularly fond of sweet things, they say."
If his object in singling out Drummle were to bring him out still more, it perfectly succeeded. In a sulky triumph, Drummle showed his morose depreciation of the rest of us, in a more and more offensive degree, until he became downright intolerable. Through all his stages, Mr. Jaggers followed him with the same strange interest. He actually seemed to serve as a zest to Mr. Jaggers's wine.
After Prince Andrew's engagement to Natasha, Pierre without any apparent cause suddenly felt it impossible to go on living as before. Firmly convinced as he was of the truths revealed to him by his benefactor, and happy as he had been in perfecting his inner man, to which he had devoted himself with such ardor--all the zest of such a life vanished after the engagement of Andrew and Natasha and the death of Joseph Alexeevich, the news of which reached him almost at the same time. Only the skeleton of life remained: his house, a brilliant wife who now enjoyed the favors of a very important personage, acquaintance with all Petersburg, and his court service with its dull formalities. And this life suddenly seemed to Pierre unexpectedly loathsome. He ceased keeping a diary, avoided the company of the Brothers, began going to the club again, drank a great deal, and came once more in touch with the bachelor sets, leading such a life that the Countess Helene thought it necessary to speak severely to him about it. Pierre felt that she was right, and to avoid compromising her went away to Moscow.
This sudden blaze of popularity, kindled by a single essay, is partly to be explained by the dearth of literary criticism in England at that epoch. For, though a higher note had already been sounded by Hazlitt and Coleridge, it had not yet taken hold of the public mind, which was still satisfied with the feeble appreciations of the _Retrospective Review_, or the dashing and damnatory improvisation of Wilson in _Blackwood_ or Jeffrey in the _Edinburgh_. Still, allowance being made for the barbarous partisanship of the established critical tribunals of the period, it seems surprising that a social success so signal should have been the consequence of a single article. The explanation is that the writer of the article on Milton was, unlike most authors, also a brilliant conversationalist. There has never been a period when an amusing talker has not been in great demand at London tables; but when Macaulay made his debut witty conversation was studied and cultivated as it has ceased to be in the more busy age which has succeeded. At the university Macaulay had been recognized as pre-eminent for inexhaustible talk and genial companionship among a circle of such brilliant young men as Charles Austin, Romilly, Praed and Villiers. He now displayed these gifts on a wider theatre. Launched on the best that London had to give in the way of society, Macaulay accepted and enjoyed with all the zest of youth and a vigorous nature the opportunities opened for him. He was courted and admired by the most distinguished personages of the day. He was admitted at Holland House, where Lady Holland listened to him with deference, and scolded him with a circumspection which was in itself a compliment. Samuel Rogers spoke of him with friendliness and to him with affection. He was treated with almost fatherly kindness by "Conversation" Sharp. Entry: MACAULAY
_Essence or Essential Oil of Lemon._--The essential oil contained in the rind of the lemon occurs in commerce as a distinct article. It is manufactured chiefly in Sicily, at Reggio in Calabria, and at Mentone and Nice in France. The small and irregularly shaped fruits are employed while still green, in which state the yield of oil is greater than when they are quite ripe. In Sicily and Calabria the oil is extracted in November and December as follows. A workman cuts three longitudinal slices off each lemon, leaving a three-cornered central core having a small portion of rind at the apex and base. These pieces are then divided transversely and cast on one side, and the strips of peel are thrown in another place. Next day the pieces of peel are deprived of their oil by pressing four or five times successively the outer surface of the peel (zest or flavedo) bent into a convex shape, against a flat sponge held in the palm of the left hand and wrapped round the forefinger. The oil vesicles in the rind, which are ruptured more easily in the fresh fruit than in the state in which lemons are imported, yield up their oil to the sponge, which when saturated is squeezed into an earthen vessel furnished with a spout and capable of holding about three pints. After a time the oil separates from the watery liquid which accompanies it, and is then decanted. By this process four hundred fruits yield 9 to 14 oz. of essence. The prisms of pulp are afterwards expressed to obtain lemon juice, and then distilled to obtain the small quantity of volatile oil they contain. At Mentone and Nice a different process is adopted. The lemons are placed in an _écuelle à piquer_, a shallow basin of pewter about 8½ in. in diameter, having i a lip for pouring on one side and a closed tube at the bottom about 5 in. long and 1 in. in diameter. A number of stout brass pins stand up about half an inch from the bottom of the vessel. The workman rubs a lemon over these pins, which rupture the oil vesicles, and the oil collects in the tube, which when it becomes full is emptied into another vessel that it may separate from the aqueous liquid mixed with it. When filtered it is known as _Essence de citron au zeste_, or, in the English market, as perfumers' essence of lemon, inferior qualities being distinguished as druggists' essence of lemon. An additional product is obtained by immersing the scarified lemons in warm water and separating the oil which floats off. _Essence de citron distillée_ is obtained by rubbing the surface of fresh lemons (or of those which have been submitted to the action of the _écuelle à piquer_) on a coarse grater of tinned iron, and distilling the grated peel. The oil so obtained is colourless, and of inferior fragrance, and is sold at a lower price, while that obtained by the cold processes has a yellow colour and powerful odour. Entry: 1
Sebastian Münster, on the other hand, in his _Cosmographia universalis_ of 1544, paid no regard to the mathematical basis of geography, but, following the model of Strabo, described the world according to its different political divisions, and entered with great zest into the question of the productions of countries, and into the manners and costumes of the various peoples. Thus early commenced the separation between what were long called mathematical and political geography, the one subject appealing mainly to mathematicians, the other to historians. Entry: HISTORY
Sir William Harcourt was one of the great parliamentary figures of the Gladstonian Liberal period. He was essentially an aristocratic type of late 19th century Whig, with a remarkable capacity for popular campaign fighting. He had been, and remained, a brilliant journalist in the non-professional sense. He was one of those who really made the _Saturday Review_ in its palmy days, and in the period of his own most ebullient vigour, while Mr Gladstone was alive, his sense of political expediency and platform effectiveness in controversy was very acute. But though he played the game of public life with keen zest, he never really touched either the country or his own party with the faith which creates a personal following, and in later years he found himself somewhat isolated and disappointed, though he was free to express his deeper objections to the new developments in church and state. A tall, fine man, with the grand manner, he was, throughout a long career, a great personality in the life of his time. (H. Ch.) Entry: HARCOURT
In the "Waldstein" sonata, _op._ 53, we see Beethoven's second manner literally displacing his first; that is to say, we reach a state of things at which the two can no longer form an artistic contrast. The work, as we know it, is not only perfect, but has all the qualities of art in which the newest elements have long been familiar. The opening is on the same harmonic train of thought as that of the sonata, _op._ 31, No. 1, but there is no longer the slightest need for a paradoxical or jocular manner. On the contrary, the harmonies are held together by an orderly sequence in the bass, and the onrush is that of some calm diurnal energy of nature. The short introduction to the finale is harmonically and emotionally the most profound thing in the sonata, while the finale itself uses every new resource in the triumphant attainment of a leisure more splendid than any conceivable in the most spacious of Mozart's rondos. Yet it is well known that Beethoven originally intended the beautiful _andante_ in F, afterwards published separately, to be the slow movement of this sonata. That andante is, like the finale, a spacious and gorgeous rondo, which probably Beethoven himself could not have written at an earlier period. The modulation to D flat in its principal theme, and that to G flat near the end, are its chief harmonic effects and stand out in beautiful relief within its limits. After the first movement of the Waldstein sonata they would be flat and colourless. The sketch-books show that Beethoven, when he first planned the sonata, was by no means inattentive to the balance of harmonic colour in the whole scheme, but that at first he did not realize how far that scheme was going to carry him. He originally thought of the slow movement as in E major, a remote key to which, however, he soon assigned the more intimate position of complementary key in the first movement. He then worked at the slow movement in F with such zest that he did not discover until the whole sonata was finished that he had raised the first and last movements to an altogether higher plane of thought, though the redundancy of the two rondos in juxtaposition and the unusual length of the sonata were so obvious that his friends ventured to point them out. Beethoven's revision of his earliest works is now known to have been extensive and drastic; but this is the first instance, and _Fidelio_ and the quartet in B flat, _op._ 131, are the only other instances, of any later work needing important alteration after it was completely executed. From this point up to _op._ 101 we may study Beethoven's second manner entirely free from any survivals of his first, even as a legitimate contrast; though it is as impossible to fix a point before which his third manner cannot be traced as it is to ignore the premonitions of his second manner in his early works. The distinguishing features in Beethoven's second style are the result of a condition of art in which enormous new possibilities have become so well known that there is no need for stating them abruptly, paradoxically or emphatically, but also no need for working them out to remote conclusions. Hence these works have become for most people the best-known and best-loved type of classical music. In their perfect fusion of untranslatable dramatic emotion with every beauty of musical design and tone they have never been equalled, nor is it probable that any other art can show a wider range of thought embodied in a more perfect form. In music itself there is nothing else of so wide a range without grave artistic defects from which Beethoven is entirely free. Wagnerian opera aims at an ideal as truly artistic, and in so far of wider range than Beethoven's that it passes beyond the bounds of pure music altogether. Within those bounds Beethoven remained, and even the apparent exceptions (such as _Fidelio_ and his two great examples of "programme music," the _Pastoral Symphony_ and the sonata, _Les Adieux_) only show how universal his conception of pure music is. Extraneous ideas had here struck him as magnificent material for instrumental music, and he never troubled to argue whether instrumental music is the better or worse for expressing extraneous ideas. To describe the works of Beethoven's second period here would be to describe a library of well-known classics, and we must refer the reader for further details to the articles on SONATA FORMS, CONTRAPUNTAL FORMS, HARMONY and INSTRUMENTATION. It remains for us to attempt to indicate the essential features of his third style, and to conclude with a survey of his influence on the history of music. Entry: BEETHOVEN
When systematic fence came over to England it was already much simplified (it should be noted that improvement in the art, from its earliest days down to the present time, seems always to have been in the direction of simplification); yet, for more than a century from the appearance of the first real treatise, simplification never reached that point which would render impossible a belief in the undoubted efficacy of those "secret thrusts," of that "universal parry," of those ineluctable passes, which every master professed to teach. These precious secrets remain long, among a certain shady class of swordsmen, an object of untiring study, carried on with much the same faith and zest as the quest of the alchemist for his powder of projection, or of the Merchant Adventurer for El Dorado. There can, of course, be no such thing as an insuperable pass, a secret thrust or parry; every attack _can_ be parried, every parry can be deceived by suitable movements. Yet there was some justification for the belief in the existence of secrets of swordsmanship in days when, as a rule, lessons of fence were given in jealous privacy; constant practice at one particular pass, especially with the long rapier, which required a great deal of muscular strength, might render any peculiarly fierce, sudden and audacious stroke excessively dangerous to one who did not happen to have opposed that stroke before. Undoubtedly there was little in Elizabethan fencing-schools of what we understand in modern days by loose-play between the pupils; practice was almost invariably conducted between scholar and teacher in private; and thus the opportunities for watching or testing any particular fencer's play were few. Such an opportunity would, as a rule, only occur on occasions of an earnest fight; and the possessor of a specially handy thrust (if it came off at all) would of course take good care that his opponent should not live to ponder over the secret. The secret, such as it was, remained. In this guise it was inevitable that an almost superstitious belief in "secret foynes," in the _botte secrète_ of certain practised duellists, should arise. Entry: FENCING
BÖRNE, KARL LUDWIG (1786-1837), German political writer and satirist, was born on the 6th of May 1786 at Frankfort-On-Main, where his father, Jakob Baruch, carried on the business of a banker. He received his early education at Giessen, but as Jews were ineligible at that time for public appointments in Frankfort, young Baruch was sent to study medicine at Berlin under a physician, Markus Herz, in whose house he resided. Young Baruch became deeply enamoured of his patron's wife, the talented and beautiful Henriette Herz (1764-1847), and gave vent to his adoration in a series of remarkable letters. Tiring of medical science, which he had subsequently pursued at Halle, he studied constitutional law and political science at Heidelberg and Giessen, and in 1811 took his doctor's degree at the latter university. On his return to Frankfort, now constituted as a grand duchy under the sovereignty of the prince bishop Karl von Dalberg, he received (1811) the appointment of police actuary in that city. The old conditions, however, returned in 1814 and he was obliged to resign his office. Embittered by the oppression under which the Jews suffered in Germany, he engaged in journalism, and edited the Frankfort liberal newspapers, _Staatsristretto_ and _Die Zeitschwingen_. In 1818 he became a convert to Lutheran protestantism, changing his name from Löb Baruch to Ludwig Börne. This step was taken less out of religious conviction than, as in the case of so many of his descent, in order to improve his social standing. From 1818 to 1821 he edited _Die Wage_, a paper distinguished by its lively political articles and its powerful but sarcastic theatrical criticisms. This paper was suppressed by the police authorities, and in 1821 Börne quitted for a while the field of publicist writing and led a retired life in Paris, Hamburg and Frankfort. After the July Revolution (1830), he hurried to Paris, expecting to find the newly-constituted state of society somewhat in accordance with his own ideas of freedom. Although to some extent disappointed in his hopes, he was not disposed to look any more kindly on the political condition of Germany; this lent additional zest to the brilliant satirical letters (_Briefe aus Paris_, 1830-1833, published Paris, 1834), which he began to publish in his last literary venture, _La Balance_, a revival under its French name of _Die Wage_. The _Briefe aus Paris_ was Börne's most important publication, and a landmark in the history of German journalism. Its appearance led him to be regarded as one of the leaders of the new literary party of "Young Germany." He died at Paris on the 12th of February 1837. Entry: BÖRNE
After the decline of Roman power, the Gothic and Scandinavian races who replaced the Romans in central and northern Europe brought with them their own forms and types of drinking vessels. These, from about the 4th century, replaced the well-known Roman vessels. The northern barbarians were as great drinkers as fighters, and their literature recites with equal zest the richness of their drinking cups as the power and deadly qualities of their arms. Fortunately the practice of burying with the dead warrior all his property, or at least as much of it as he would be supposed to need, has preserved to our day the actual vessels in use by the pagan northmen who pervaded northern Europe from the 4th century onward. Saxon graves in Britain have furnished great numbers of drinking cups and horns, in many cases quite unbroken. From the remains, of which the chief series are in the British and Liverpool Museums, we can learn a great deal to amplify the references in literature. The richest single interment that has yet been found was within the present churchyard at Taplow. Here under a huge mound lay buried a Saxon chieftain surrounded by his belongings; arms defensive and offensive, his drinking cups, and even his game of draughts. The drinking vessels consisted of five cows' horns and four glass cups. The former were of great size, 2 ft. long, richly mounted at the mouth and at the point with silver bands embossed and gilt. The glasses also were of great size and of a type familiar in Saxon interments. Each was of a trumpet shape, with a small foot, while the sides were ornamented with hollow pointed tubes bent downwards, and open on the inner side, so that the liquid would fill them. Such a plan is most unpractical, and it must have been very difficult to keep the vessels clean. Glasses of this uncommon form have not been found elsewhere than in Saxon graves, either in England or in the north of the continent. Other types are perhaps nearly as characteristic, though of simpler construction. One of these is a simple cone of glass, sometimes quite plain, at others ornamented with an applied spiral glass thread, or more rarely with festoons of white glass embedded in the body of the vessel. A third form is a plain cup or bowl widely expanded at the mouth and with a rounded base, so that it could only be set down when empty, in fact a true "tumbler." This feature is in fact a very common one in the drinking vessels of the Saxon race. There are many other varieties, plain cylindrical goblets, generally with ornamental glass threads on the outside, and a more usual type has a rounded body somewhat of the shape of an orange with a wide plain mouth. Many of all these classes were found in the famous cemetery known as the King's Field at Faversham in Kent (the relics from which are now in the British Museum), at Chessel Down in the Isle of Wight, and in the cemetery within the ancient camp on High Down, near Worthing. In Belgium, France and Germany the same types occur, and even as far north as Scandinavia, where they are found in association with Roman coins of the 4th century. On the continent, however, additional types are found that do not occur in Britain--one of these is a drinking glass in the form of a hunting horn with glass threads forming an ornamental design on the outside. From the wide distribution of these types, it seems certain that they sprang originally from a common centre, and the slender evidence available on the subject seems to point to that centre having been somewhere on the lower Rhine. Although glass seems to have been popular and by no means rare as a material for drinking vessels, other materials also were used. A large number of the smaller pottery vessels would serve such a purpose, and in one grave at Broomfield in Essex two small wooden cups were found which, from their small size and thinness, were no doubt used for liquid. Entry: DRINKING
The friendship, consecrated by the most delightful of biographies, and one of the most gorgeous feasts in the whole banquet of letters, was not so ill-assorted as has been inconsiderately maintained. Boswell's freshness at the table of conversation gave a new zest to every maxim that Johnson enunciated, while Boswell developed a perfect genius for interpreting the kind of worldly philosophy at which Johnson was so unapproachable. Both men welcomed an excuse for avoiding the task-work of life. Johnson's favourite indulgence was to talk; Boswell's great idea of success to elicit memorable conversation. Boswell is almost equally admirable as a reporter and as an interviewer, as a collector and as a researcher. He prepared meetings for Johnson, he prepared topics for him, he drew him out on questions of the day, he secured a copy of his famous letter to Lord Chesterfield, he obtained an almost verbatim report of Johnson's interview with the king, he frequented the tea-table of Miss Williams, he attended the testy old scholar on lengthy peregrinations in the Highlands and in the midlands. "Sir," said Johnson to his follower, "you appear to have only two subjects, yourself and me, and I am sick of both." Yet thorough as the scheme was from the outset, and admirable as was the devotedness of the biographer, Boswell was far too volatile a man to confine himself to any one ambition in life that was not consistent with a large amount of present fame and notoriety. He would have liked to Boswellize the popular idol Wilkes, or Chatham, or Voltaire, or even the great Frederick himself. As it was, during his continental tour he managed in the autumn of 1765 to get on terms with Pasquale di Paoli, the leader of the Corsican insurgents in their unwise struggle against Genoa. After a few weeks in Corsica he returned to London in February 1766, and was received by Johnson with the utmost cordiality. In accordance with the family compact referred to, he was now admitted advocate at Edinburgh, and signalized his return to the law by an enthusiastic pamphlet entitled _The Essence of the Douglas Cause_ (November 1767), in which he vigorously repelled the charge of imposture from the youthful claimant. In the same year he issued a little book called _Dorando_, containing a history of the Douglas cause in the guise of a Spanish tale, and bringing the story to a conclusion by the triumph of Archibald Douglas in the law courts. Editors who published extracts while the case was still _sub judice_ were censured severely by the court of session; but though his identity was notorious the author himself escaped censure. In the spring of 1768 Boswell published through the Foulis brothers of Glasgow his _Account of Corsica, Journal of a Tour to that Island, and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli_. The liveliness of personal impression which he managed to communicate to all his books gained for this one a deserved success, and the _Tour_ was promptly translated into French, German, Italian and Dutch. Walpole and others, jeered, but Boswell was talked about everywhere, as Paoli Boswell or Paoli's Englishman, and to aid the mob in the task of identifying him at the Shakespeare jubilee of 1769 he took the trouble to insert a placard in his hat bearing the legend "Corsica Boswell." The amazing costume of "a Corsican chief" which he wore on this occasion was described at length in the magazines. Entry: BOSWELL