Part 91

In this inquiry, concerning the discoveries and thoughts of the ancients attributed to the moderns, it has appeared advisable that their views of the mind, or intellectual system, should precede their consideration of sensible qualities, and the system of the universe. To persons unaccustomed to such investigations, the succeeding papers will be more interesting.

* * * * *

DISTRESSES OF MEN OF GENIUS.

Pope Urban VIII. erected an hospital for the benefit of decayed authors, and called it “The Retreat of the Incurables,” intimating that it was equally impossible to reclaim the patients from poverty or poetry.

Homer is the first poet and beggar of note among the ancients: he was blind, sung his ballads about the streets, and his mouth was oftener filled with verses than with bread.

Plautus, the comic poet, was better off; for he had two trades: he was a poet for his diversion, and helped to turn a mill in order to gain a living.

Terence was a slave, and Boethius died in a jail.

Among the Italians, Paulo Burghese, almost as good a poet as Tasso, knew fourteen different trades, and yet died because he could get no employment in either of them.

Tasso was often obliged to borrow a crown from a friend, to pay for a month’s subsistence. He has left us a pretty sonnet to his cat, in which he begs the light of her eyes to write by, being too poor to buy a candle.

Bentivoglio, whose comedies will last with the Italian language, dissipated a noble fortune in acts of benevolence, fell into poverty in his old age, and was refused admittance into an hospital which, in his better days, he had himself paid for building.

In Spain, the great Cervantes died of hunger; and Camoens, equally celebrated in Portugal, ended his days in an hospital.

In France, Vaugelas was surnamed “the Owl,” from having been obliged to keep within all day, and only venturing out by night, through fear of his creditors. In his last will, he bequeathed every thing towards the discharge of his debts, and desired his body to be sold, to that end.

Cassander was one of the greatest geniuses of his time, but barely able to procure his livelihood.

In England, the last days of Spenser, Otway, Butler, and Dryden are our national reproach.

S. S. S.

* * * * *

ON CHANGE.

No. II.

_For the Table Book._

NOAH is now a tailor, No. 63, Pall-mall.

HAM, a watchmaker, No. 47, Skinner-street, Snow-hill.

ISAAC, a fishmonger, No. 8, Cullum-street.

JACOB, an umbrella and parasol maker, No. 42, Burlington Arcade.

ISRAEL is a surgeon in Keppell-street, Russel-square.

JOSEPH is a pencil manufacturer, No. 7, Oxford-street.

JOSHUA, a grocer, No. 155, Regent-street.

SIMON, a ship broker, No. 123, Fenchurch-street.

JOEL, an auctioneer, No. 44, Clifton-street, Finsbury.

PAUL, a manufacturer of mineral waters, No. 5, Bow-street, Covent-garden.

MATTHEW, a brush maker, No. 106, Upper Thames-street.

MARK, a malt factor, No. 74, _Mark_-lane.

LUKE, a boot maker, No. 142, Cheapside; and

JOHN, a solicitor, No. 6, Palsgrave-place, Temple-bar.

_July, 1827_

SAM SAM’S SON.

* * * * *

THE GRETNA GREEN PARSONS.

The first person that twined the bands of Hymen this way is supposed to have been a man named Scott, who resided at the Rigg, a few miles from the village of Gretna, about 1750 or 1760. He was accounted a shrewd, crafty fellow, and little more is known of him.

George Gordon, an old soldier, started up as his successor. He always appeared on marriage occasions in an antiquated full military costume, wearing a large cocked hat, red coat, jack boots, and a ponderous sword dangling at his side. If at any time he was interrogated “by what authority he joined persons in wedlock?” he boldly answered, “I have a special license from government, for which I pay fifty pounds per annum.” He was never closely examined on the subject, and a delusion prevailed during his life, that a privilege of the kind really existed.

Several persons afterwards attempted to establish themselves in the same line, but none were so successful as Joseph Paisley, who secured by far the greatest run of business, in defiance of every opposition. It was this person who obtained the appellation of the “Old blacksmith,” probably on account of the mythological conceit of Vulcan being employed in rivetting the hymeneal chains. Paisley was first a smuggler, then a tobacconist, but never, at any time, a blacksmith. He commenced his mock pontifical career about 1789. For many years he was careful not to be publicly seen on such occasions, but stole through by-paths to the house where he was called to officiate, and he there gave a certificate miserably written, and the orthography almost unintelligible, with a feigned signature. An important trial arose out of one of his marriages; and on being summoned to London in consequence, to undergo an examination, he was so much alarmed that he was induced to consult a gentleman of the Scotch bar on the occasion. His legal adviser stated as his opinion, that using a feigned name was decidedly a misdemeanour, and recommended the mock parson to effect, if possible, the destruction of the original certificate, and substitute another in which he should appear by his own name, and merely as a witness to the parties’ declaration that they were married persons. Afterwards, he invariably adopted the plan of merely subscribing his own name as a witness in future; and this has been the usual course of his successors. From that period he made no secret of his profession, but openly walked the street when called upon to officiate, dressed in his canonicals, with the dignity of a bishop! He was long an object of curiosity to travellers. He was tall, and had been well proportioned, but at his death he was literally an overgrown mass of fat, weighing twenty-five stone. He was grossly ignorant, and insufferably coarse in his manners, and possessed a constitution almost proof against the ravages of spirituous liquors; for though an habitual drinker, he was rarely ever seen drunk: for the last forty years of his life he daily discussed a Scotch pint, equal to two English quarts, of brandy. On one occasion, a bottle companion, named “Ned the turner,” sat down with him on a Monday morning to an anker of strong cogniac, and before the evening of the succeeding Saturday they kicked the empty cask out at the door; neither of them were at any of the time drunk, nor had they had the assistance of any one in drinking.

After the decease of Paisley, the field lay more open for competition in the trade, and the different candidates resorted to different means to acquire the best share. Ultimately the post-boys were taken into partnership, who had the power of driving to whichever house they pleased: each mock-parson had his stated rendezvous; and so strong did this description of opposition run, that at last the post-boys obtained one entire half of the fees, and the business altogether got worse. The rates were lowered to a trifle, and the occupation may now be said, in common with others, to have shared the effects of bad times and starvation prices.

There are two principal practitioners at present, one of whom was originally a chaise-driver; the other, David Laing, an old soldier, who figured as a witness on the trial of the Wakefields. At home they exhibit no parade of office; they may be seen in shabby clothes at the kitchen firesides of the pot-houses of the village, the companions of the sots of the country, and disrespected by every class.

* * * * *

A BLACK DREAM.

A number of years bygone, a black man, named Peter Cooper, happened to marry one of the fair towns-women of Greenock, who did not use him with that tenderness that he conceived himself entitled to. Having tried all other arts to retrieve her lost affections in vain, Peter at last resolved to work upon her fears of punishment in another world for her conduct in this. Pretending, therefore, to awake one morning extravagantly alarmed, his helpmate was full of anxiety to know what was the matter; and having sufficiently, as he thought, whetted her curiosity, by mysteriously hinting that “he could a tale unfold,” at length Peter proceeded as follows:--“H--ll ob a dream last night. I dream I go to Hebben and rap at de doa, and a gent’man com to de doa wid black coat and powda hair. Whoa dere?--Peeta Coopa.--Whoa Peeta Coopa? Am not know you.--Not knowa Peeta Coopa! Look de book, sa.--He take de book, and he look de book, and he could’na find Peeta Coopa.--Den I say, Oh! lad, oh! look again, finda Peeta Coopa in a corna.--He take de book, an he look de book, an at last he finda Peeta Coopa in lilly, lilly (little) corna.--‘Peeta Coopa,--cook ob de _Royal Charlotte_ ob Greenock.’ Walk in, sa.--Den I walk in, and dere was every ting--all kind of vittal--collyflower too--an I eat, an I drink, an I dant, an I ting, an I neva be done; segar too, by Gum.--Den I say, Oh! lad, oh! look for Peeta Coopa wife. He take de book, an he look all oba de book, many, many, many a time, corna an all; an he couldna finda Peeta Coopa wife. Den I say, Oh! lad, oh! look de black book; he take de black book, an he look de black book, and he finda Peeta Coopa wife fust page,--‘Peeta-Coopa-wife, buckra-woman, bad-to-her-husband.’”[291]

[291] Times, July 7, 1827, from Greenock Advertiser.

* * * * *

A MUCH-INJURED MAN.

George Talkington, once a celebrated horse-dealer at Uttoxeter, who died on the 8th of April, 1826, at Cheadle, Cheshire, in his eighty-third year, met with more accidents than probably ever befell any other human being. Up to the year 1793 they were as follows:--Right shoulder broken; skull fractured, and trepanned; left arm broken in two places; three ribs on the left side broken; a cut on the forehead; lancet case, flue case, and knife forced into the thigh; three ribs broken on the right side; and the right shoulder, elbow, and wrist dislocated; back seriously injured; cap of the right knee kicked off; left ancle dislocated; cut for a fistula; right ancle dislocated and hip knocked down; seven ribs broken on the right and left sides; kicked in the face, and the left eye nearly knocked out; the back again seriously injured; two ribs and breast-bone broken; got down and kicked by a horse, until he had five holes in his left leg; the sinew just below the right knee cut through, and two holes in that leg, also two shocking cuts above the knee; taken apparently dead seven times out of different rivers.

Since 1793, (when a reference to these accidents was given to Mr. Madely, surgeon, of Uttoxeter,) right shoulder dislocated and collar-bone broken; seven ribs broken; breast-bone laid open, and right shoulder dislocated; left shoulder dislocated, and left arm broken; two ribs broken; and right thigh much bruised near the pope’s eye. In 1819, then in his seventy-sixth year, a lacerated wound in the calf of the leg, which extended to the foot, mortification of the wound took place, which exposed all the flexor tendons of the foot, also the capsular ligaments of the ancle joint; became delirious, and so continued upwards of three weeks: his wonderful recovery from this accident was attributed chiefly to the circumstance of a friend having supplied him with a quantity of old Madeira, a glass of which he took every two hours for eight weeks, and afterwards occasionally. Since then, in 1823, in his eightieth year he had a mortification of the second toe of the right foot, with exfoliation of the bone, from which he recovered, and at last died from gradually declining old age. He was the father of eighteen children, by one wife, in fifteen years, all of whom he survived, and married again at the age of seventy-four.[292]

[292] Oxford and University Herald, April 29, 1896. Communicated by J. J. A. F.

* * * * *

GRAMMATICAL CONSTRUCTION.

A farmer’s son, just returned from a boarding school, was asked “if he knew _grammar_?”--“Oh yes, father!” said the pupil, “I know _her_ very well;--_Grammer_ sits in the chair fast asleep.”

P.

Vol. II.--32.

Man loves knowledge, and the beams of Truth More welcome touch his understanding’s eye. Than all the blandishments of sound his ear, Than all of taste his tongue.

_Akenside._

* * * * *

A LOVER OF ART TO HIS SON.

MY DEAR ALFRED,

Could you see my heart you would know my anxious feelings for your progress in study. If I could express myself in words of fire I would burn in lessons upon your mind, that would inflame it to ardent desire, and thorough conviction, of attaining success.

Our talented friend, who permits you the use of his collection of models and casts, and does you the honour to instruct you by his judgment, assures me that your outlines evince an excellent conception of _form_. To be able to make a true outline of a _natural_ form, is to achieve the first great step in drawing.

You remember my dissatisfaction towards some engravings of hands and feet that were given you by the person who would have continued to instruct you, if I had not been dissatisfied. The hands in these prints were beautifully finished, but their form was incorrect; the feet were not representations of any thing in nature; and yet these deformities were placed before you to begin with. If I had not taught you from your infancy the value and use of sincerity, and the folly and mischief of falsehood, you might have been at this time a liar, and become a depraved and vicious character; instead of being, as you are, an upright and honest youth, and becoming, as I hope you will, a virtuous and honourable man. Had you continued the copying of engraved _lies_ of the limbs, your drawings would have been misrepresentations of the human figure. You will discover my meaning if you consider an old precept, “Never begin any thing without considering the end thereof.”

Your affectionate father,

*

* * * * *

~Garrick Plays.~

No. XXVIII.

[From the “Devil’s Law Case,” a Tragi-Comedy, by John Webster, 1623.]

_Clergy-comfort._

I must talk to you, like a Divine, of patience.--

I have heard some talk of it very much, and many Times to their auditors’ impatience; but I pray, What practice do they make on’t in their lives? They are too full of choler with living honest,-- And some of them not only impatient Of their own slightest injuries, but stark mad At one another’s preferment.

_Sepulture._

_Two Bellmen, a Capuchin; Romelio, and others._

_Cap._ For pity’s sake, you that have tears to shed, Sigh a soft requiem, and let fall a bead, For two unfortunate Nobles,[293] whose sad fate Leaves them both dead and excommunicate. No churchman’s pray’r to comfort their last groans No sacred seed of earth to hide their bones; But as their fury wrought them out of breath, The Canon speaks them guilty of their own death. _Rom._ Denied Christian burial! I pray, what does that? Or the dead lazy march in the funeral? Or the flattery in the epitaph?--which shows More sluttish far than all the spiders’ webs, Shall ever grow upon it: what do these Add to our well-being after death? _Cap._ Not a scruple. _Rom._ Very well then-- I have a certain meditation, (If I can think of,) somewhat to this purpose;-- I’ll say it to you, while my mother there Numbers her beads.-- “You that dwell near these graves and vaults, Which oft do hide physicians’ faults, Note what a small room does suffice To express men’s goods: their vanities Would fill more volume in small hand, Than all the evidence of Church Land. Funerals hide men in civil wearing, And are to the Drapers a good hearing; Make th’ Heralds laugh in their black rayment; And all die Worthies, die with payment To th’ Altar offerings: tho’ their fame, And all the charity of their name, ’Tween heav’n and this, yield no more light Than rotten trees, which shine in th’ night. O look the last Act be best in th’ Play, And then rest gentle bones! yet pray, That when by the Precise you’re view’d, A supersedeas be not sued; To remove you to a place more airy, That in your stead they may keep chary Stockfish, or seacoal; for the abuses Of sacrilege have turn’d graves to vilder uses. How then can any monument say, Here rest these bones to the Last Day; When Time, swift both of foot and feather, May bear them the Sexton knows not whither?-- What care I then, tho’ my last sleep Be in the desart, or in the deep; No lamp, nor taper, day and night, To give my charnel chargeable light? I have there like quantity of ground; And at the last day I shall be found.”[294]

_Immature Death._

Contarino’s dead.

O that he should die so soon!

Why, I pray, tell me: Is not the shortest fever best? and are not Bad plays the worse for their length?

_Guilty preferment._

I have a plot, shall breed, Out of the death of these two noblemen; Th’ advancement of our house--

Oh take heed A grave is a rotten foundation.

_Mischiefs_

are like the visits of Franciscan friars, They never come to prey upon us single.

_Last Love strongest._

-- as we love our youngest children best, So the last fruit of our affection, Wherever we bestow it, is most strong, Most violent, most irresistible; Since ’tis indeed our latest harvest home, Last merryment ’fore winter; and we Widows, As men report of our best picture-makers, We love the Piece we are in hand with better. Than all the excellent work we have done before.

_Mother’s anger._

_Leonora._ Ha, my Son! I’ll be a fury to him; like an Amazon lady, I’d cut off this right pap that gave him suck, To shoot him dead. I’ll no more tender him, Than had a wolf stol’n to my teat in th’ night, And robb’d me of my milk.

_Distraction from guilt._

_Leonora_ (_sola_). Ha, ha! What say you? I do talk to somewhat methinks; it may be. My Evil Genius.--Do not the bells ring? I’ve a strange noise in my head. Oh, fly in Come, age, and wither me into the malice Of those that have been happy; let me have One property for more than the devil of hell; Let me envy the pleasure of youth heartily; Let me in this life fear no kind of ill, That have no good to hope for. Let me sink, Where neither man nor memory may find me. (_falls to the ground_). _Confessor_ (_entering_). You are well employ’d, I hope; the best pillow in th’ world For this your contemplation is the earth And the best object, Heaven. _Leonora._ I am whispering To a dead friend----

_Obstacles._

Let those, that would oppose this union, Grow ne’er so subtle, and entangle themselves In their own work, like spiders; while we two Haste to our noble wishes; and presume, The hindrance of it will breed more delight,-- As black copartaments shews gold more bright.

_Falling out._

To draw the Picture of Unkindness truly Is, to express two that have dearly loved And fal’n at variance.

* * * * *

[From the “Bride,” a Comedy, by Thomas Nabbs, 1640.]

_Antiquities._

_Horten, a Collector. His friend._

_Friend._ You are learned in Antiquities? _Horten._ A little, Sir. I should affect them more, were not tradition One of the best assurances to show They are the things we think them. What more proofs, Except perhaps a little circumstance, Have we for this or that to be a piece Of Delphos’ ruins? or the marble statues, Made Athens glorious when she was supposed To have more images of men than men? A weather-beaten stone, with an inscription That is not legible but thro’ an optic, Tells us its age; that in some Sibyl’s cave Three thousand years ago it was an altar, Tis satisfaction to our curiosity, But ought not to necessitate belief.-- For Antiquity, I do not store up any under Grecian; Your Roman antiques are but modern toys Compared to them. Besides they are so counterfeit With mouldings, tis scarce possible to find Any but copies. _Friend._ Yet you are confident Of yours, that are of more doubt. _Horten._ Others from their easiness May credit what they please. My trial’s such Of any thing I doubt, all the impostors, That ever made Antiquity ridiculous, Cannot deceive me. If I light upon Ought that’s above my skill, I have recourse To those, whose judgment at the second view (If not the first) will tell me what Philosopher’s That eye-less; nose-less, mouth-less Statue is, And who the workman was; tho’ since his death Thousands of years have been revolved.

_Accidents to frustrate Purpose._

How various are the events that may depend Upon one action, yet the end proposed Not follow the intention! accidents Will interpose themselves; like those rash men, That thrust into a throng, occasioned By some tumultuous difference, where perhaps Their busy curiosity begets New quarrels with new issues.

C. L.

[293] Slain in a duel.

[294] Webster was parish-clerk at St. Andrew’s, Holborn. The anxious recurrence to church-matters; sacrilege; tomb-stones; with the frequent introduction _of dirges_; in this, and his other tragedies, may be traced to his professional sympathies.

* * * * *

NATURAL CURIOSITIES OF DERBYSHIRE.

FURTHER EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF A TOURIST.[295]

_For the Table Book._

_June 1, 1827._

Visited Chatsworth, the princely residence of the duke of Devonshire, three miles to the north-east of Bakewell. As soon as the summit of the neighbouring hill is attained, the house and park lie immediately in front in a beautiful valley, watered by the Derwent. An addition is making to the main building, which is large, but not very handsome in its architectural design; on approaching it, I passed over an elegant stone bridge, close to which is an island whereon a fictitious fortress is built. The views on all sides are strikingly fine, and of great variety; hills and dales, mountains and woods, water and verdant pasture lands. It requires “a poet’s lip, or a painter’s eye,” to adequately depict the beauties of this enchanting place. Perhaps no estate in the kingdom furnishes choicer objects for the pencil. I do not think, however, that the grounds in the immediate vicinity of the mansion are so well disposed, or the scenery so rich, nor does the interior offer such magnificent works of art, as at Blenheim. There is much sculpture, of various degrees of merit, distributed about the apartments; but the collection is in its infancy, and a splendid gallery is in progress for its reception. The finest production of the chisel is Canova’s statue of Napoleon’s mother; its natural grace and ease, with the fine flowings of the drapery, and the grave placidity of the countenance, are solemnly majestic--she _looks_ the mother of Napoleon. Among the other great attractions here, are a bust of Petrarch’s Laura, another of his present majesty, by Chantrey; and a portrait of his majesty by sir Thomas Lawrence.