Part 15

That Order, of Heroes the dying bequest, Its ribbon that blush'd as it cover'd his breast; The Star and the Badge that tried valour should wear, As if he had earn'd them, he took to his share: Like a pigmy he climb'd up on Honour's high tree, And blazon'd his name with a large K. C. B.

Now the battle of battles was won!!--O'er his foes Triumphant the lion of England arose, And gave peace to the world.--No longer, 'twas plain, The little dark man could his office retain; Reluctant he went, but he pocketed clear, In pension and place, fifteen hundred a year.

He growl'd and intrigued but in vain--he is gone! Soon forgotten by most, and regretted by none: But to sink in oblivion he cannot endure, The moment seems tempting, the victims secure. Strike! strike at your friends! The foul blow it was sped, And with terrible justice recoil'd on his head.

The little dark man then he set up a yell, And the Hundred of Lackford was roused by the spell; He raised up his head, and he raised up his chin, And he grinn'd, and he shouted a horrible grin, And he laugh'd a faint laugh, and his cap up he cast; But pension and sinecure still he holds fast.

When a score and three days make the age of the year, To St. Stephen's, the Lords and the Commons repair: E'er a score and three more, so the King might decree The country another election may see. But the brave men of Suffolk have seen through his plan, And will baffle the arts of the little dark man.

HUMPTY-DUMPTY.

Rich and furr'd was the robe he wore, And a bright gold chain on his breast he bore; But, och! his speaking was far beyond Waithman himself, with his snow-white wand.

"Humpty! do'st thou not fear to stray With the Lady, so far from the King's highway? Are Britain's sons so dull or so cold, As still to be cheated with tinsel for gold?"

"Mistress Dumpty! I feel not the least alarm-- No placemen ever dare do me harm; For though they vote her and me a bore, They love their own heads, and their places more."

On he went--in her coach to ride, While he cozen'd the Lady who sat by his side And lost for ever was she who was led By Humpty's honour--and Dumpty's head!

PARODY.

While Johnny Gale Jones the memorial was keeping, Of penny subscriptions from traitors and thieves, Hard by at his elbow, sly Watson stood peeping, And counting the sums at the end of the leaves. But oh, what a grin on his visage shone bright, When, after perusing whole pages of shame-- 'Midst his _soi-disant_ betters, In vilely-form'd letters, The Doctor beheld little Waddington's name!

"Hail, imp of sedition!" he cried, while he nodded His head, and the spectacles drew from his eyes, "Magnanimous pigmy! since Carlile's been quodded, We wanted some shopman, about of your size! For, though many we've had, yet unbless'd was their lot, When Murray and Sharpe with the constables came, And for want of good bail They were sent off to jail, And their mittimus sign'd with an Alderman's name."

Then come, the last crown of thy toils is remaining, The greatest, the grandest that thou hast yet known; Though proud was thy task my placard-board sustaining, Still prouder to utter placards of thine own! High perch'd on that counter, where Carlile once stood, Issue torrents of blasphemy, treason, and shame, While snug in your box, Well secur'd with two locks, We'll defy them to get little Waddington's name.

"THE YOUNG MAY MOON."

(A PARODY.)

The Old Whig Club is meeting, Duke, 'Tis now the time for eating, Duke, How sweet to joke, To sing and smoke, While these foolish men stand treating, Duke! Then harangue, and not in vain, my Duke, At them again and again, my Duke! The best of all ways To speak in these days, Is to steal a few thoughts from Tom Paine, my Duke!

Now all the Whigs are sleeping, Duke, But the mob, through the casement peeping, Duke, At you and your star, Which we really are Surpris'd at your meanness in keeping, Duke! Go home, your task is done, my Duke, The watchmen's boxes shun, my Duke, Or, in watching the flight Of traitors by night, They may happen to take you for one, my Duke!

DISAPPOINTMENT.

Ye Aldermen! list to my lay-- Oh, list, ere your bumpers ye fill-- Her Majesty's dead!--lack-a-day! She remember'd me not in her will. Oh, folly! oh baneful ill-luck! That I ever to court her begun; She was Queen, and I could not but suck-- But she died, and poor Matty's undone!

Perhaps I was void of all thought, Perhaps it was plain to foresee, That a Queen so complete would be sought By a courtier more knowing than me. But self-love each hope can inspire, It banishes _wisdom_ the while; And I thought she would surely admire My countenance, whiskers, and smile.

She is dead though, and I am undone! Ye that witness the woes I endure, Oh let me instruct you to shun What I cannot instruct you to cure: Beware how you loiter in vain Amid nymphs of a higher degree; It is not for me to explain How fair and how fickle they be.

Alas! that her lawyers e'er met, They alone were the cause of my woes; Their tricks I can never forget-- Those lawyers undid my repose. Yet the _Times_ may diminish my pain, If the _Statesman_ and _Traveller_ agree-- Which I rear'd for her pleasure in vain-- Yes, the _Times_ shall have comfort for me.

Mrs. W--d, ope your doors then apace; To your deepest recesses I fly; I must hide my poor woe-begone face. I must vanish from every eye. But my sad, my deplorable lay, My reed shall resound with it still:-- How her Majesty died t'other day, And remember'd me not in her will.

TENTAMEN.

1820.

TENTAMEN;

OR,

AN ESSAY TOWARDS THE HISTORY

OF

WHITTINGTON,

Some Time

LORD MAYOR OF LONDON.

BY

VICESIMUS BLINKINSOP, L.L.D., F.R.S., A.S.S., &c.

LONDON: PRINTED FOR WILLIAM WRIGHT, 46, FLEET-STREET.

1820.

"Hook had returned to England penniless; but he brought with him stores, the result of increased knowledge of the world and of an observation active under every vicissitude of fortune, which, with his singular facility in composition, were readily reducible to current coin. According, notwithstanding the harassing and protracted business at the Audit-office, he found time to strike off a succession of papers and pamphlets, the proceeds of which for some months formed his sole income. These, for obvious reasons, were published anonymously; and from this fact, and that of their being for the most part mere hits at the politics of the day, they have, with scarcely an exception, been swept from the face of the literary globe, and are only to be met with in the museums of such curious collectors as Tom Hill and the like.

"One of these _jeux d'esprit_, entitled '_Tentamen_; or, an Essay towards the History of Whittington, some time Lord Mayor of London, by Dr. Vicesimus Blinkinsop,' produced no little sensation, and ran rapidly through two or three editions. Hook, however, we believe, was not suspected to be the author. This _opusculum_, which is now extremely rare, and a copy of which would fetch quadruple its original price, was an attack, conducted in a strain of elaborate irony, equal to the happiest efforts of Martinus Scriblerus, upon the worthy Alderman Wood (a portrait of whom adorned the title-page), and his royal _protégée_."--_Barham._

TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS

AUGUSTUS FREDERICK, DUKE OF SUSSEX,

_Earl of Inverness, and Baron Arklow_:

President of the Society of Arts; Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of the Ancient Masons of England; Colonel of the Honourable Artillery Company; Colonel Commandant of the Loyal North Britain Volunteers; Vice President of the Bible Society; of the Infirmary for Asthma, Union Street, Bishopsgate; of the London Dispensary, Artillery Street, Bishopsgate; and of the Public Dispensary, Bishop's Court, Chancery Lane; of the Universal Medical Institution, Ratcliff Highway; of the _Original_ Vaccine Pock Institution, Broad Street, Golden Square; of the Free Masons' Charity, St. George's Fields, and one of the Trustees of the same; Patron of the Mile End Philanthropic Society; Vice Patron of the Westminster General Dispensary, 32, Gerrard Street, Soho; of the Society for the Relief of the Ruptured Poor; of the Universal Dispensary for Children, St. Andrew's Hill, Doctors' Commons; of the Lancasterian School Society, Borough Road; Patron of the Choral Fund, and of the Northern Dispensary, Duke's Road, New Road; Vice President of Queen Charlotte's Lying-in Hospital, Lisson Green; of the Benevolent Institution for delivering Married Women at their own Habitations, Hungerford Coffee House, Strand; and of the General Central Lying-in Charity, Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields; Knight of the Garter; President of the Beef Steak Club; One of His Majesty's _most_ Honourable Privy Council; and a FISHMONGER.[27]

SIR,--Your connexion with the fine arts and the city of London so honourably celebrated in the preceding enumeration of your titles, is a combination of merits wholly unexpected and unprecedented. You alone, Sir, among the members of scientific bodies, can glory in being a Fishmonger; and you alone, among Fishmongers, can boast of being President of the Society of Arts.

Glorious, and more truly honourable, than rank or ribbons, is the list of the numerous charities of which your Royal Highness is the ostensible head. It may seem, at first sight, inconsistent with the Christian precepts to give so much notoriety to benevolent actions; but, even in this view, your Royal Highness's conduct is above all imputation: that precept applies to the hand, and not to the head; and though your Royal Highness gives your great personal weight to the chair of those associations, your worst enemy cannot say that you were ever known to give any thing else. Your left hand (which, agreeably to the scriptural suggestion, is as discerning as your Royal Highness's intellect) does certainly not know of any particular charity, performed by your Royal Highness's right hand.

You are thus enabled, Sir, to extend the sphere of your utility and beneficence. Actual donations must have had a limit; but the charity which costs nothing, may, as we see in your Royal Highness's case, be indefinitely extended, to the great encouragement and increase of the contributions of others.

To all the above mentioned distinctions, equally high, equally honourable, and equally deserved, your Royal Highness, on the principle just stated,--that you have still countenance enough to bestow on meritorious institutions,--has intimated your gracious intention of succeeding Sir Joseph Banks as President of the Royal Society. Amongst your many and obvious claims to this situation, the first is, that you are a _fishmonger_; for thus your Royal Highness will be in a condition to solve that celebrated problem propounded to the Society by its Royal Founder Charles the Second, and which has not been yet satisfactorily explained, relative to the respective gravities of fish, dead or alive. Nor if the late President had been a fishmonger, would the Society have been involved in the failure and disgrace of that experiment which the indignant poet has immortalized by the line

"Fleas are not lobsters--Damn their souls!"

But though I could not avoid touching upon these matters, it is as a citizen of London, and as the condescending friend of our most patriotic magistrates--our modern Whittingtons--that I presume to address your Royal Highness, and to solicit your favour to an essay towards the history of that great man, the honour of which cannot fail to be reflected on his successors; and in addition to this gracious patronage for myself, I am charged by others to solicit your Royal Highness, to be pleased to lend your name as President to a new literary and most useful association, held in Bearbinder Lane, at the back of the Mansion House, called "The Whittington Institution, for teaching Aldermen to read, write, cypher, and dance, on Mr. Lancaster's system."

In humble hope of your Royal Highness's most gracious condescension, I have the honour to remain, Sir,

Your Royal Highness's Most devoted and obedient Servant, VICESIMUS BLINKINSOP.

TENTAMEN, &c.

In looking at the propensities of the age we live in, comparatively with those of times past, one cannot fail to observe a laudable love for the noble science of antiquities: of which it may be truly said, that it is conversant with peaceful and unoffending yesterdays, while the idle votaries of the world are busied about to-day, and the visionaries of ambition are dreaming of to-morrow.

Connected with this grave and useful pursuit is the general inclination to search into the minutiæ of history, which never before prevailed amongst us in so ardent a degree. The smallest information upon traditional points is received with an avidity more salutary and commendable than that which is the result of a commonplace love of novelty; and the smaller the information, the greater the merit of the painstaking author; who, like a skilful clock-maker, or other nice handy-craftsman, is lauded in proportion to the minuteness of his work.

Such are, for instance, the valuable discoveries which that excellent philosopher and novelist Mr. Godwin hath made and edited, of and concerning the great poet Chaucer; and, inasmuch as the nice and small works of clock-makers, which we have mentioned, are carefully placed in huge towers and steeples, beyond malicious or impertinent curiosity, so this prudent philosopher hath disposed his small facts in two tall volumes, equally out of the reach of the vulgar.

Such also are those valuable illustrations of the private lives of public men which have issued from the Press under the titles of "Ana," "Remains," and "Memoirs," and which have so admirably answered the purposes for which they were put forth--namely, that of being sold--while they at the same time maintain a discreet silence on all matters which the ingenious subject of the biography might wish to conceal, agreeably to that excellent maxim, _de mortuis nil nisi bonum_: by these means, such treatises become a delectable kind of reading, wherein nothing is admitted which can hurt the feelings of any of the worthy persons mentioned in the course of the work, particularly if they be deceased. This mode of writing conduces to good humour and charity amongst men, and manifestly tends, as Dr. Johnson observes on another occasion, to raise the general estimate of human nature.

On these principles and considerations have I been induced, at no small cost of time and labour, to endeavour to throw a new light upon the life of Matthew Whittington, some time Mayor (or Lord Mayor, as the courtesy goeth) of this worthy City of London,--a man, whose fame needs no addition, but only to be placed in a proper point of view, to challenge the admiration of a grateful posterity of Mayors and Aldermen.

In humble imitation of my aforesaid friend Mr. Godwin, and of divers other well-reputed authors, I have written this life in one hundred and seventy-eight quires of foolscap paper, in a small and close, but neat hand; which by my computation, having counted the number of words therein contained, as well as the number of words in the learned Bishop Watson's life of himself (which made my excellent friend Dr. Snodgrass, who lent me the same, facetiously declare, that I was the only man he ever knew who could get through it); I say, having counted all these words, I find that my life of Mr. Whittington (including thirteen quires on the general history of Cats) would, if duly printed after the manner of Mr. Davison, who never puts more than sixteen lines into a quarto page, make or constitute five volumes of a similar size and shape to Dr. Watson's life, which, with cuts by Mr. John Britton, author of several curious topographical works, might be sold for the reasonable sum of £31 10_s._, being only six guineas the volume; and if it should please the Legislature, in its wisdom, to repeal the Copy-right Bill (by which costly books are made accessible to poor students at the Universities, who have no business with such sort of works), my said work might be furnished at the reduced price of £31 4_s._ 6_d._

But small as this sum is, it is with grief I say, that such is the badness of the times, occasioned by the return of peace, and the late long succession of plentiful harvests, that I find booksellers strangely reluctant to embark in this transaction with me.[28] They offer indeed to print my work if I can get it previously praised in the _Edinburgh Review_; and the Reviewers say, that they are not unwilling to praise it, but that it must, of a necessity, be previously printed.

I have observed to Mr. Jeffrey in my seventh letter to him on this subject, that this condition is not only new and injurious to me, but, by his own showing, clearly gratuitous and unnecessary; because, for aught that appears in the generality of his articles, he may never have read the work which is the subject-matter of them; nay, it hath sometimes been proved from the context, that he never hath even seen the work at all; and as this little accident hath not hindered his writing an excellent essay under colour of such work, so I contended, that he need not now make the preliminary _sine quâ non_, as to having my work printed; for "de non impressis et de non lectis eadem est ratio."

But I grieve to say, that all my well-grounded reasoning hath been unavailing; and as neither party will give up his notion, I stand at a dead lock between the booksellers and reviewers.

In this dilemma, I should--like Aristotle's celebrated ass--have starved till doomsday; but that, through the kindness and prudent advice of my learned friends Mr. Jonas Backhouse, Jun. of Pocklington, and the Rev. Doctor Snodgrass of Hog's-Norton, I have been put upon a mode of extricating myself, by publishing, in a small form, a tentamen, specimen, or abridgement of part of my great work, which I am told Mr. Jeffrey will not object to review, he being always ready to argue "à particulari ad universale:" so that, in future time, the learned world may have hope of seeing my erudite labours at full length, whereof this dissertation is a short and imperfect sample or pattern.

* * * * *

The whole history of the illustrious Whittington is enveloped in doubt. The mystery begins even before he is born; for no one knows who his mother, and still less who his father, was. We are in darkness as to where he first saw the light, and though it is admitted that he most probably had a Christian name, _adhuc sub judice lis est_, as to what that Christian name was.

This important point, however, my revered friend, the Rev. Dr. Snodgrass of Hog's-Norton hath enabled me to decide.

Tradition has handed down to us that Whittington was a charity boy, as it is called, and received the rudiments of letters at the parish school of Hog's-Norton aforesaid; this clue directed the Doctor's researches, and by that enlightened zeal for which he was conspicuous, he has been so fortunate as to discover rudely carved on the wainscot by some fellow-pupil,

M. W. IS A FOOL; M. W. IS A DUNCE; And one, which is more satisfactory, M----W, W. IS A STUPID DOG, 1772.

This date seems at first sight to apply to a period long posterior to Mr. Whittington; but when we recollect how often the wisest men, the most careful copyists, the most expert printers, mistake dates and transpose figures, we are not to be surprised at a similar error in an unlettered and heedless school-boy; and therefore, as Dr. Snodgrass judiciously advises--(a noble conjecture indeed, which places the critic almost on a level with the original writer)--the mistake may be corrected by the simple change of placing the figures in their obvious proper order, 1277, which, as Mr. Whittington is known to have been Sheriff or Mayor about the year 1330, when he was probably near sixty, shews that he was about seven when at Hog's-Norton; and proves incontestably, that to him and him alone these ancient and fortunately discovered inscriptions refer.

Having established their authenticity, it is easy to show that Mr. Whittington's name was not Richard, as the vulgar fondly imagine; R, and not M, being the initial of Richard; and we might perhaps have doubted between Matthew, Mathias, Moses, Melchisedec or Mark; but the concluding W. of the last inscription seems to settle the matter in favour of Matthew, which is the only name that I know of in ordinary use which begins with M, and ends, as all the world sees, with a W.

I shall say little of an erroneous supposition--built on the strength of the words "fool," "dunce," and "stupid dog;" and on the manifestly mistaken date,--which would refer these characteristic sentences to a worthy alderman now alive; (with whose initials they do, indeed, by a strange accident, agree.) Such a supposition is clearly false and untenable, as may be proved by one decisive observation, _inter alia_; that they appear to be the work of some jealous rival, displeased at Mr. Whittington's superior ability: perhaps they were even engraved by a fraud on the parish furniture, after Mr. Whittington's rise had given some handle to envy; whereas it is well known and universally admitted, to be the happiness of the worthy alderman now alive, that no human being either ever did, or could envy _him_:--this sets that important question asleep for ever.

It may seem to some readers that these epithets,--opprobria, as some may think them,--do not redound to the credit of Mr. Alderman Whittington's intellect; but even if they are not, as before suggested, the production of envy, they are by no means inconsistent with Whittington's successful progress in life; on the contrary, they seem to designate him as a person who would naturally rise to City honours. It is grown to be a proverb, and admitted by the best writers on the subject, that Lord Mayors are "stupid dogs."[29] The City hath a prescription to choose "fools," for places of honour therein; and, as Matthew was at least twice Lord Mayor, he might with great propriety have been twice as great a fool as any of the others.

This leads me to the important consideration of how often the illustrious Matthew had the honour of so worthily filling the Civic throne.

An ancient and well-known ballad has this beautiful, and indeed important, rhyme,--

"---- ---- Whittington, _Twice_ Lord Mayor of London."[30]