Part 114

That lucid whitish zone in the firmament among the fixed stars, which we call the “Milky Way,” was supposed by the Pythagoreans to have once been the sun’s path, wherein he had left that trace of white, which we now observe there. The Peripatetics asserted, after Aristotle, that it was formed of exhalations, suspended high in air. These were gross mistakes; but all the ancients were not mistaken. Democritus, without the aid of a telescope, preceded Galileo in remarking, that “what we call the milky way, contained in it an innumerable quantity of fixed stars, the mixture of whose distant rays occasioned the whiteness which we thus denominate;” or, to express it in Plutarch’s words, it was “the united brightness of an immense number of stars.”

THE FIXED STARS--PLURALITY OF WORLDS.

The conceptions of the ancients respecting the fixed stars were not less clear than ours. Indeed, the opinions of the moderns on this subject have been adopted within a century from those great masters, after having been rejected during many ages. It would be reckoned almost an absurdity at present, to doubt of those stars being suns like ours, each respectively having planets of their own, revolving around them, and forming various solar systems, more or less resembling ours. Philosophy, at present, admits this theory, derived from the ancients, and founded on the most solid reasonings of astronomical science. The elegant work of Fontenelle, on the “Plurality of Worlds,” first rendered the conception familiar to common minds.

This notion of a plurality of worlds was generally inculcated by the Greek philosophers. Plutarch, after giving an account of it, says, that “he was so far from finding fault with it, that he thought it highly probable there had been, and were, like this of ours, an innumerable, though not absolutely infinite, multitude of worlds; wherein, as well as here, were land and water, invested by sky.”

Anaximenes was one of the first who taught, that “the stars were immense masses of fire, around which certain terrestrial globes, imperceptible to us, accomplished their periodic revolutions.” By these terrestrial globes, turning round those masses of fire, he evidently meant planets, such as ours, subordinate to their own sun, and forming a solar system.

Anaximenes agreed with Thales in this opinion, which passed from the Ionic to the Italic sect; who held, that every star was a world, containing in itself a sun and planets, all fixed in that immense space, which they called ether.

Heraclides, and all the Pythagoreans likewise taught, that “every star was a world, or solary system, having, like this of ours, its sun and planets, invested with an atmosphere of air, and moving in the fluid ether, by which they were sustained.” This opinion seems to have been of still more ancient origin. There are traces of it in the verses of Orpheus, who lived in the time of the Trojan war, and taught that there was a plurality of worlds; a doctrine which Epicurus also deemed very probable.

Origen treats amply of the opinion of Democritus, saying, that “he taught, that there was an innumerable multitude of worlds, of unequal size, and differing in the number of their planets; that some of them were as large as ours, and placed at unequal distances; that some were inhabited by animals, which he could not take upon him to describe; and that some had neither animals, nor plants, nor any thing like what appeared among us.” The philosophic genius of the illustrious ancient discerned, that the different nature of those spheres necessarily required inhabitants of different kinds.

This opinion of Democritus surprised Alexander into a sudden declaration of his unbounded ambition. Ælian reports, that this young prince, upon hearing Democritus’s doctrine of a plurality of worlds, burst into tears, upon reflecting that he had not yet so much as conquered one of them.

It appears, that Aristotle also held this opinion, as did likewise Alcinoüs, the Platonist. It is also ascribed to Plotinus; who held besides, that the earth, compared to the rest of the universe, was one of the meanest globes in it.

SATELLITES.--VORTICES.

In consequence of the ancient doctrine of the plurality of worlds, Phavorinus remarkably conjectured the possibility of the existence of other planets, besides those known to us. “He was astonished how it came to be admitted as certain, that there were no other _wandering_ stars, or planets, but those observed by the Chaldeans. As for his part, he thought that their number was more considerable than was vulgarly given out, though they had hitherto escaped our notice.” Here he probably alludes to the satellites, which have since been manifested by means of the telescope; but it required singular penetration to be capable of forming the supposition, and of having, as it were, predicted this discovery. Seneca mentions a similar notion of Democritus; who supposed, that there were many more of them, than had yet come within our view.

However unfounded may be the system of vortices promulgated by Descartes, yet, as there is much of genius and fancy in it, the notion obtained great applause, and ranks among those theories which do honour to the moderns, or rather to the ancients, from whom it seems to have been drawn, notwithstanding its apparent novelty. In fact, Leucippus taught, and after him Democritus, that “the celestial bodies derived their formation and motion from an infinite number of atoms, of every sort of figure; which encountering one another, and clinging together, threw themselves into vortices; which being thoroughly agitated and circumvolved on all sides, the most subtile of those particles that went to the composition of the whole mass, made towards the utmost skirts of the circumferences of those vortices; whilst the less subtile, or those of a coarser element, subsided towards the centre, forming themselves into those spherical concretions, which compose the planets, the earth, and the sun.” They said, that “those vortices were actuated by the rapidity of a fluid matter, having the earth at the centre of it; and that the planets were moved, each of them, with more or less violence, in proportion to their respective distance from that centre.” They affirmed also, that the celerity with which those vortices moved, was occasionally the cause of their carrying off one another; the most powerful and rapid attracting, and drawing into itself, whatever was less so, whether planet or whatever else.

Leucippus seems also to have known that grand principle of Descartes, that “all revolving bodies endeavour to withdraw from their centre, and fly off in a tangent.”

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RELIQUIÆ THOMSONIANA.

_To the Editor._

Sir,--The article relating to Thomson, in a recent number of the _Table Book_, cannot fail to have deeply interested many of your readers, and in the hope that further similar communications may be elicited, I beg to offer the little I can contribute.

The biographical memoranda, the subject of the conversation in the article referred to, are said to have been transmitted to the earl of Buchan by Mr. Park. It is not singular that no part of it appears in his lordship’s “Essays on the Lives and Writings of Fletcher of Saltoun, and the Poet Thomson, 1792.” 8vo. Mr. Park’s communication was clearly too late for the noble author’s purpose. The conversation professes to have been in October, 1791; to my own knowledge the volume was finished and ready for publication late in the preceding September, although the date 1792 is affixed to the title.

Thomson, it is believed, first tuned his Doric reed in the porter’s lodge at Dryburgh, more recently the residence of David Stuart Erskine, earl of Buchan; hence the partiality which his lordship evinced for the memory of the poet. At p. 194 of the Essays are verses to Dr. De (la) Cour, in Ireland, on his Prospect of Poetry, which are there ascribed to Thomson, and admitted as such by Dr. Thomson, who directed the volume through the press; although it is certain that Thomson in his lifetime disavowed them. The verses to Dr. De la Cour appeared in the Daily Journal for November 1734; and Cave, the proprietor and editor of the Gentleman’s Magazine, at the end of the poetical department in that miscellany for August, 1736, states himself “assured, from Mr. Thomson, that, though the verses to Dr. De la Cour have some lines from his _Seasons_, he knew nothing of the piece till he saw it in the Daily Journal.”

The appellation of the “oily man of God,” in the Essays, p. 258, was intended by the earl of Buchan for Dr. Murdoch, who was subsequently a biographer of Thomson. Such designations would puzzle a conjuror to elucidate, did not contemporary persons exist to afford a clue to them.

The recent number of the _Table Book_ is not at hand, but from some MS. papers now before me,--James Robertson, surgeon to the household at Kew, who married the sister of Amanda, was the bosom friend of Thomson for more than twenty years. His conversation is said to have been facetious and intelligent, and his character exemplarily respectable. He died at his residence on Richmond Green after four days’ illness, 28th October, 1791, in his eighty-fourth year.

The original MS. of the verses to Miss Young, the poet’s Amanda, on presenting her with his “Seasons,” printed in the Essays, p. 280, were communicated by a Mr. Ramsay, of Ocherlyne, to his lordship. Some other presentation lines, with the Seasons, to the poet Lyttleton, were transcribed from a blank leaf of the book at Hagley, by Johnstone, bishop of Worcester, and transmitted by his son to the earl of Buchan in 1793 or 1794, consequently too late for publication. They follow here:--

Go, little book, and find our friend, Who Nature and the Muses loves; Whose cares the public virtues blend, With all the softness of the groves.

A fitter time thou can’st not choose His fostering friendship to repay:-- Go then, and try, my rural muse, To steal his widowed hours away.

Among the autograph papers which I possess of Ogle, who published certain versifications of Chaucer, as also a work on the Gems of the Ancients, are some verses by Thomson, never yet printed; and their transcripts, Mr. Editor, make their obeisance before you:--

Come, gentle god of soft desire! Come and possess my happy breast; Not fury like, in flames and fire, In rapture, rage, and nonsense drest.

These are the vain disguise of love, And, or bespeak dissembled pains, Or else a fleeting fever prove, The frantic passion of the veins.

But come in Friendship’s angel-guise, Yet dearer thou than friendship art, More tender spirit at thine eyes, More sweet emotions at thy heart.

Oh come! with goodness in thy train; With peace and transport, void of storm. And would’st thou me for ever gain? Put on Amanda’s waning form.

The following, also original, were written by Thomson in commendation of his much loved Amanda:--

Sweet tyrant Love, but hear me now! And cure while young this pleasing smart, Or rather aid my trembling vow, And teach me to reveal my heart.

Tell her, whose goodness is my bane, Whose looks have smil’d my peace away, Oh! whisper how she gives me pain, Whilst undesigning, frank, and gay.

’Tis not for common charms I sigh, For what the vulgar, beauty call; ’Tis not a cheek, a lip, an eye, But ’tis the soul that lights them all.

For that I drop the tender tear, For that I make this artless moan; Oh! sigh it, Love, into her ear, And make the bashful lover known.

In the hope that the present may draw forth further _reliquiæ_ of the poet of the “Seasons” in your excellent publication, I beg leave to subscribe myself,

Sir, &c.

WILL O’ THE WISP.

_Sept. 17, 1827._

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THE BERKSHIRE MISER.

The economy and parsimony of the Rev. Morgan Jones, late curate of Blewbury, a parish about six miles from Wallingford, were almost beyond credibility; he having outdone, in many instances, the celebrated Elwes, of Marcham.

For many of the last years of Mr. Jones’s ministerial labours, he had no servant to attend any of his domestic concerns; and he never had even the assistance of a female within his doors for the last twelve years. The offices of housemaid, chamber-maid, cook, and scullion, and even most part of his washing and mending, were performed by himself; he was frequently known to beg needles and thread at some of the farm-houses, to tack together his tattered garments, at which, from practice, he had become very expert. He was curate of Blewbury upwards of forty-three years; and the same hat and coat served him for his every-day dress during the whole of that period. The brim of his hat had, on one side, (by much handling,) been worn off quite to the crown, but on coming one day from the hamlet of Upton across the fields, he luckily met with an old left-off hat, stuck up for a scarecrow. He immediately secured the prize, and with some tar-twine, substituted as thread, and a piece of the brim, quite repaired the deficiencies of his beloved old one, and ever after wore it in common, although the old one was of a russet brown, and the new brim nearly as black as jet. His coat, when he first came from Ashton Keyns in 1781, was a surtout much the worse for wear; after some time he had it turned inside out, and made up into a common one. Whenever it became rent or torn, it was as speedily tacked together with his own hands: at length pieces fell out and were lost, and, as he found it necessary, he cut pieces off the tail to make good the upper part, until the coat was reduced to a jacket, stuck about with patches of his own applying. In this hat and coat, when at home on working days, he was constantly decorated, but he never wore it abroad or before strangers, except he forgot himself, as he several times had been much vexed at the ridicule his grotesque appearance had excited when seen by those with whom he was not much acquainted. This extraordinary coat (or more properly jacket) is now in the possession of one of the parishioners, and prized as a curiosity. His stockings were washed and mended by himself, and some of them had scarcely a vestige of the original worsted. He had a great store of new shirts, which had never been worn, but for many years his stock became reduced to one in use; his parsimony would not permit him to have this washed more than once in two or three months, for which he reluctantly paid a poor woman fourpence. He always slept without his shirt, that it might not want washing too often, and by that means be worn out; and he always went without one while it was washed, and very frequently at other times. This solitary shirt he mended himself, and as fast as it required to be patched in the body he ingeniously supplied it by cutting off the tail; but, as nothing will last for ever, by this constant clipping it unfortunately became too short to reach down his small-clothes. This, of course, was a sad disaster, and there was some fear least one of the new ones _must_ be brought into use; but, after a diligent search, he fortunately found in one of his drawers the top part of a shirt with a frill on, which had probably lain by ever since his youthful and more gay days. This with his usual sagacity, he tacked on, to the tail of the old one, with the frill downwards, and it was thus worn until the day before he left Blewbury. Latterly his memory became impaired. He several times forgot to change his dress, and was more than once seen at the burial of a corpse dressed in this ludicrous and curious manner, with scarcely a button on any part of his clothes, but tied together in various parts with string. In this state he was by strangers mistaken for a beggar, and barely escaped being offered their charity.

His diet was as singular as his dress, for he cooked his pot only once a week, which was always on a Sunday. For his subsistence he purchased but three articles, which he denominated two necessaries and a luxury:--the necessaries were bread and bacon, the luxury was tea. For many years his weekly allowance of bread was half a gallon per week; and in the season, when his garden produced fruit, or when he once or twice a week procured a meal at his neighbours’, his half-gallon loaf lasted him a day or two of the following week; so that in five weeks he often had no more than four half-gallon loaves. He was also equally abstemious in his other two articles. He frequently ate with his parishioners; yet for the last ten years there was but a solitary instance of a person eating with him in return, and that a particular friend, who obtained only a bit of bread with much difficulty and importunity. For the last fifteen years there was never within his doors any kind of spirits, beer, butcher’s meat, butter, sugar, lard, cheese, or milk; nor any niceties, of which he was particularly fond when they came free of expense, but which he could never find the heart to purchase. His beverage was cold water; and at morning and evening weak tea, without milk or sugar.

However cold the weather, he seldom had a fire, except to cook with, and that was so small that it might easily have been hid under a half-gallon measure. He was often seen roving the churchyard to pick up bits of stick, or busily lopping his shrubs or fruit-trees to make this fire, while his woodhouse was crammed with wood and coal, which he could not prevail upon himself to use. In very cold weather he would frequently get by some of his neighbours’ fires to warm his shivering limbs; and, when evening came, retire to bed for warmth, but generally without a candle, as he allowed himself only the small bits left of those provided for divine service in the church by the parish.

He was never known to keep dog, cat, or any other living creature: and it is certain the whole expenses of his house did not amount to half a crown a week for the last twenty years; and, as the fees exceeded that sum, he always saved the whole of his yearly salary, which never was more than fifty pounds per annum. By constantly placing this sum in the funds, and the interest, with about thirty pounds per annum more, (the rent of two small estates left by some relations,) he, in the course of forty-three years, amassed many thousand pounds, as his bankers, Messrs. Child and Co., of Fleet-street, can testify.

In his youthful days he made free with the good things of this life; and when he first came to Blewbury, he for some time boarded with a person by the week, and during that time was quite corpulent: but, as soon as he boarded and lived by himself, his parsimony overcame his appetite, so that at last he became reduced almost to a living skeleton. He was always an early riser, being seldom in bed after break of day; and, like all other early risers, he enjoyed an excellent state of health; so that for the long space of forty-three years he omitted preaching only two Sundays.

His industry was such, that he composed with his own hand upwards of one thousand sermons; but for the last few years his hand became tremulous, and he wrote but little; he therefore only made alterations and additions to his former discourses, and this generally on the back of old marriage licenses, or across old letters, as it would have been nearly death to him to have purchased paper. His sermons were usually plain and practical, and his funeral discourses were generally admired; but the fear of being noticed, and the dread of expense, was an absolute prohibition to his sending any thing to the press, although he was fully capable, being well skilled in the English and Latin languages. The expense of a penny in the postage of a letter has been known to deprive him of a night’s rest! and yet, at times, pounds did not grieve him. He was a regular and liberal subscriber to the Bible, Missionary, and the other societies for the propagation of the Gospel and the conversion of the Jews; and more than once he was generous enough to give a pound or two to assist a distressed fellow-creature.

Although very fond of ale, he spent only one sixpence on that liquor during the forty-three years he was curate of Blewbury; but it must be confessed he used to partake of it too freely when he could have it without cost, until about ten years ago, when at a neighbour’s wedding, having taken too much of this his favourite beverage, it was noticed and talked of by some of the persons present. Being hurt by this, he made a vow never more to taste a drop of that or any other strong liquor; and his promise he scrupulously and honestly kept, although contrary to his natural desires, and exposed to many temptations.[358]

[358] Devizes Gazette, Sept. 1827.

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A BALLAD.

_For the Table Book._

“A very fine gentleman treads the lawn, He passes our cottage duly; We met in the grove the other morn, And he vow’d to love me truly; He call’d me his dear, his love, his life, And told me his heart was burning; But he never once said--will you be my wife? So I left him his offers spurning.”

“And what were his offers to thee, my child?” Old Woodland said to Nancy-- “Oh many things, which almost beguil’d Your simple daughter’s fancy; He talk’d of jewels, laces, and gold, Of a castle, servants, and carriage; And I could have lov’d the youth so bold, But he never talk’d of marriage.

“So I drew back my hand, and saved my lips, For I cared not for his money; And I thought he was like the bee which sips From ev’ry flower its honey: Vet I think his heart is a little bent Towards me,” said Nancy, “and marriage; For last night, as soon as to sleep I went, I dream’d of a castle and carriage.”

“’Twere wrong, my child,” old Woodland said, “Such idle dream to cherish The roses of life full soon will fade, They never should timeless perish; The flower that’s pluck’d will briefly die, Tho’ placed on a peerless bosom; And ere you look with a loving eye, Think, think on a fading blossom.”

C. COLE.

_August 22, 1827._

Vol. II.--40.

“-------------- ’Twas strange; ’twas passing strange! ’Twas pitiful! ’twas wond’rous pitiful!”

I thought, in the _Every-Day Book_, that I had done with “Hagbush-lane” altogether--the tale of the poor man’s wrongs, when “the proud man’s contumely” grew into open aggression, had passed from me; and I presumed that, for his little while on this side the grave, the oppressed might “go free,” and “hear not the voice of the oppressor”--but when selfishness is unwatched it has a natural tendency to break forth, and a sudden and recent renewal of an outrage, which every honest mind had condemned, furnishes a fresh story. It is well related in the following letter:--

_To the Editor._