Part 1

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THE MIRROR OF LITERATURE, AMUSEMENT, AND INSTRUCTION.

Vol. 20 No. 572.] SATURDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1832. [PRICE 2d.

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BIRTHPLACE OF DR. JOHNSON, AT LICHFIELD.

In the large corner house, on the right of the Engraving, SAMUEL JOHNSON was born on the 18th of September, N.S. 1709. We learn from Boswell, that the house was built by Johnson's father, and that the two fronts, towards Market and Broad Market-street stood upon waste land of the Corporation of Lichfield, under a forty years lease; this expired in 1767, when on the 15th of August, "at a common hall of the bailiffs and citizens, it was ordered, (and that without any solicitation,) that a lease should be granted to Samuel Johnson, Doctor of Laws, of the incroachments at his house, for the term of ninety-nine years, at the old rent, which was five shillings. Of which, as town clerk, Mr. Simpson had the honour and pleasure of informing him, and that he was desired to accept it, without paying any fine on the occasion, which lease was afterwards granted, and the doctor died possessed of this property."[1]

[1] Note to Boswell's Life of Johnson, 2nd edition, vol. iii. p. 646.

In the above house, the doctor's father Michael Johnson, a native of Derbyshire, of obscure extraction, settled as a bookseller and stationer. He was diligent in business, and not only "kept shop" at home, but, on market days, frequented several towns in the neighbourhood,[2] some of which were at a considerable distance from Lichfield. "At that time booksellers' shops in the provincial towns of England were very rare, so that there was not one even in Birmingham, in which town old Mr. Johnson used to open a shop every market-day. He was a pretty good Latin scholar, and a citizen so creditable as to be made one of the magistrates of Lichfield; and, being a man of good sense and skill in his trade, he acquired a reasonable share of wealth, of which, however, he afterwards lost the greatest part, by engaging unsuccessfully in the manufacture of parchment."[3] This failure is attributed to the dishonesty of a servant; but it is observable in connexion with an incident in Dr. Johnson's literary history, which has not escaped the keen eye of Mr. Croker, the ingenious annotator of Boswell's _Life_ of the great lexicographer.[4]

[2] To show the great estimation in which the father of our great moralist was held, we may quote a letter, dated "Trentham, St. Peter's Day, 1716," written by the Rev. George Plaxton, then chaplain to Lord Gower:--"Johnson, the Lichfield librarian, is now here. He propagates learning all over this diocese, and advanceth knowledge to its just height. All the clergy here are his pupils, and suck all they have from him; Allen cannot make a warrant without his precedent, nor our quondam John Evans draw a recognizance _sine directione Michaelis_."--_Gent. Mag. Oct. 1791_.

[3] Boswell, vol. i. p. 14.

[4] Johnson, in his Dictionary, defines EXCISE "a hateful tax, levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the _common judges_ of property, but by _wretches_ hired by those to whom excise is paid;" and, in the _Idler_ (No. 65) he calls a _commissioner of excise_ "one of the _lowest_ of all human beings." This violence of language seems so little reasonable, that the editor was induced to suspect some cause of _personal animosity_; this mention of the trade in parchment (an _excisable_ article) afforded a clue, which has led to the confirmation of that suspicion. In the records of the Excise Board is to be found the following letter, addressed to the supervisor of excise at Lichfield:--"July 27, 1725--The commissioners received yours of the 22nd instant; and since the justices would not give judgment against Mr. Michael Johnson, the _tanner_, notwithstanding the facts were fairly against him, the board direct that the next time he offends, you do not lay an information against him, but send an affidavit of the fact, that he may be prosecuted in the Exchequer." It does not appear whether he offended again, but here is sufficient cause of his son's animosity against commissioners of excise, and of the allusion in the Dictionary to the _special_ jurisdiction under which that revenue is administered. The reluctance of the justices to convict will not appear unnatural, when it is recollected that Mr. Johnson was, _this very year_, chief magistrate of the city.--_Note to Boswell, by Croker_, vol. i.

Johnson's mother was a woman of distinguished understanding and piety; and to her must be ascribed those early impressions of religion upon the mind of her son, from which the world afterwards derived so much benefit. Johnson was the elder of two sons, the younger of whom died in his infancy.

Of Johnson's childhood at Lichfield it would not be difficult to assemble many interesting particulars: from his listening to Dr. Sacheverel, when he was but three years old; his being first taught to read English by Dame Oliver, a widow who kept a school for young children in Lichfield, and who gave him a present of gingerbread, and said he was the best scholar she ever had; to his arrival in London with the unfinished tragedy of _Irene_ in his pocket, and the prospect of a slender engagement with Cave of the _Gentleman's Magazine_. One thing is certain, that however unpromising were Johnson's early days at Lichfield, he ever retained a warm affection for his native city, and which, by a sudden apostrophe, under the word _Lich_, he introduces with reverence into his immortal work, the ENGLISH DICTIONARY: _Salve magna parens. (Boswell.)_ His last visit was in his 75th year when he writes to Boswell:--"I came to Lichfield, and found every body glad enough to see me."

The annexed view is of the date 1785, being from the first volume of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for that year. The building to the extreme left is part of the market-cross, erected by dean Denton, but replaced some years since by a light brick building. The church is that of St. Mary, one of the three parishes into which Lichfield is divided: it is a modern structure, of the year 1717, and upon the site of the original church, said to have been founded in the year 885. In the extreme distance of the Engraving is seen the Guild or Town Hall, a neat stone edifice, adorned with the city arms, a bas-relief of the cathedral, &c.

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ANECDOTE GALLERY.

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CLASSICAL ANECDOTES OF CONTINENCE IN MAN.

Many noble instances are recorded by ancient historians of the practice of this noble virtue; but in the reminiscences of our youthful studies, there is no incident that occurs with more freshness to the memory than that of the continence of Scipio Africanus, related by Livy. It appears that the soldiers of Scipio's army, after the taking of new Carthage, brought before him a young lady of great beauty. Scipio inquiring concerning her country and parents, ascertained that she was betrothed to Allutius, prince of the Celtiberians. He immediately ordered her parents and bridegroom to be sent for. In the meantime he was informed that the young prince was so excessively enamoured of his bride, that he could not survive the loss of her. For this reason, as soon as he appeared, and before he spoke to her parents, he took great care to talk with him. "As you and I are both young," said he, "we can converse together with greater freedom. When your bride, who had fallen into the hands of my soldiers, was brought before me, I was informed that you loved her passionately; and, in truth, her perfect beauty left me no room to doubt of it. If I were at liberty to indulge a youthful passion--I mean honourable and lawful wedlock, and were not solely engrossed by the affairs of my republic, I might have hoped to have been pardoned my excessive love for so charming a mistress; but as I am situated, and have it in my power, with pleasure I promote your happiness. Your future spouse has met with as civil and modest treatment from me, as if she had been amongst her own parents, who are soon to be yours too. I have kept her pure, in order to have it in my power to make you a present worthy of you and of me." The magnanimity of his behaviour did not close here, for when the parents of the fair captive brought an immense sum of money to ransom her, they were much surprised at Scipio's noble conduct, and in the ecstacy of joy and gratitude, they pressed him to accept it as a token of thankfulness. Scipio, unable to resist their importunate solicitations, told them he accepted it; but ordering it to be laid at his feet, he thus addressed Allutius:--"To the portion you are to receive from your father-in-law, I add this, and beg you would accept it as a nuptial present:" thus exhibiting in the whole transaction a rare instance of modesty, disinterestedness, and benevolence, well worthy of imperishable record, as a moral lesson for mankind.

When Araspes had commended the fair Panthea to Cyrus, as a beauty worthy his admiration, he replied--"For that very reason I will not see her, lest if by thy persuasion I should see her but once, she herself might persuade me to see her often, and spend more time with her than would be for the advantage of my own affairs."--Alexander the Great would not trust his eyes in the presence of the beauteous Queen of Persia, but kept himself out of the reach of her charms, and treated only with her aged mother. These, as they were peculiar acts of continence, so were they as absolutely checks of curiosity, which never sleeps in youthful breasts when beauty elicits admiration.

Cicero, treating of the many degrees of human commerce and society, places matrimony in the first rank. In fact, marriage is not only a state capable of the highest human felicity, but it is an institution well calculated to destroy those rank and noxious weeds of the passions which, by their pestiferous influence, spread misery and death around the social hemisphere. Marriage is the basis of community, and the cement of society;--it is, or ought to be, that state of perfect friendship in which there are, according to Pythagoras, "two bodies with but one soul." It is in the genial atmosphere of this noble communion of sentiment and affection that the virtue of continence comes forth in all its dazzling splendour. Milton has touched this subject with so chaste and elegant a pen, that the description, one would think, must confirm the husband in his happiness, and reclaim the man of profligate and licentious principles:--

"Hail, wedded love! mysterious law! true source Of human offspring, sole propriety In Paradise, of all things common else. By thee adultrous lust was driven from men, Among the beastial herds to range; by thee, Founded in reason, loyal, just, and pure, Relations dear, and all the charities Of father, son, and brother, first were known. Perpetual fountain of domestic sweets, Whose bed is undefiled and chaste pronounc'd, Present or past, as saints or patriarchs us'd. Here Love his golden shafts employs; here lights His constant lamp, and waves his purple wings: Reigns here, and revels not in the bought smile Of harlots, loveless, joyless, unendear'd, Casual fruition; nor in court amours, Mix'd dance, or wanton mask, or midnight ball; Or serenade, which the starv'd lover sings To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain."

J.P.

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THE GREAT LORD THURLOW.

Of the eloquence of Lord Thurlow, and of his manner in debate, Mr. Butler has given a striking account:--"At times Lord Thurlow was superlatively great. It was the good fortune of the Reminiscent to hear his celebrated reply to the Duke of Grafton, during the inquiry into Lord Sandwich's administration of Greenwich Hospital. His Grace's action and delivery, when he addressed the house, were singularly dignified and graceful; but his matter was not equal to his manner. He reproached Lord Thurlow with his plebeian extraction, and his recent admission into the peerage: particular circumstances caused Lord Thurlow's reply to make a deep impression on the Reminiscent. His lordship had spoken too often, and began to be heard with a civil but visible impatience. Under these circumstances he was attacked in the manner we have mentioned. He rose from the woolsack, and advanced slowly to the place from which the chancellor generally addresses the house; then fixing on the duke the look of Jove when he grasps the thunder, 'I am amazed,' he said, in a level tone of voice, 'at the attack the noble duke has made on me. Yes, my lords,' considerably raising his voice, 'I am amazed at his grace's speech. The noble duke cannot look before him, behind him, or on either side of him, without seeing some noble peer who owes his seat in this house to his successful exertions in the profession to which I belong. Does he not feel that it is as honourable to owe it to these, as to being the accident of an accident? To all these noble lords the language of the noble duke is applicable and as insulting as it is to myself. But I don't fear to meet it single and alone. No one venerates the peerage more than I do;--but, my lords, I must say that the peerage solicited me, not I the peerage;--nay, more, I can say, and will say, that as a peer of parliament, as speaker of this right honourable house, as keeper of the great seal, as guardian of his majesty's conscience, as lord high chancellor of England, nay, even in that character alone in which the noble duke would think it an affront to be considered--as a _Man_, I am at this moment as respectable--I beg leave to add, I am at this time as much respected, as the proudest peer I now look down upon.' The effect of this speech, both within the walls of parliament and out of them, was prodigious. It gave Lord Thurlow an ascendancy in the house which no chancellor had ever possessed: it invested him, in public opinion, with a character of independence and honour; and this, though he was ever on the unpopular side in politics, made him always popular with the people."

The legal talents and acquirements of Lord Thurlow have been the subject of frequent panegyric; but it may, perhaps, be questioned, whether in all cases those eulogiums were just. It has been said--but with what truth it is difficult to form an opinion--that his lordship was much indebted to Mr. Hargrave, for the learning by which his judgments were sometimes distinguished, and that Mr. Hargrave received a handsome remuneration for these services. "As lord chancellor," says a writer who was personally acquainted with his lordship, "from a well-placed confidence in Mr. Hargrave, who was indefatigable in his service, he had occasion to give himself less trouble than any other man in that high station. An old free-speaking companion of his, well known at Lincoln's Inn, would sometimes say to me, 'I met the great law lion this morning going to Westminster; but he was so busily reading in the coach what his provider had supplied him with, that he took no notice of me.'"

The ardent zeal with which Lord Thurlow contested the great question of the regency, led him, if we may credit the narrative of one who was a party to the debate, to be guilty of an act of great disingenuousness. Dr. Watson, the Bishop of Llandaff, in the course of a speech, in which he supported the claims of the Prince of Wales, incidentally cited a passage from Grotius, with regard to the definition of the word _right_. "The chancellor, in his reply," says the bishop in his memoirs, "boldly asserted that he perfectly well remembered the passage I had quoted from Grotius, and that it solely respected natural, but was inapplicable to civil, rights. Lord Loughborough, the first time I saw him after the debate, assured me that before he went to sleep that night he had looked into Grotius, and was astonished to find that the chancellor, in contradicting me, had presumed on the ignorance of the house, and that my quotation was perfectly correct. What miserable shifts do great men submit to, in supporting their parties! The Chancellor Thurlow," continues the bishop, "was an able and upright judge, but as the speaker of the house of lords, he was domineering and insincere. It was said of him, that in the cabinet he opposed everything, proposed nothing, and was ready to support anything. I remember Lord Camden's saying to me one night, when the chancellor was speaking contrary, as he thought, to his own conviction, 'There now! I could not do that: he is supporting what he does not believe a word of.'"

_Roscoe's Lives of Eminent Lawyers--Cabinet Cyclopaedia_.

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MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.

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TORCHLIGHT.

It is an interesting circumstance in the habits of the ancient Romans, that their journeys were pursued very much in the night-time, and by torchlight. Cicero, in one of his letters, speaks of passing through the towns of Italy by night, as a serviceable scheme for some political purpose, either of avoiding too much to publish his motions, or of evading the necessity (else perhaps not avoidable) of drawing out the party sentiments of the magistrates in the circumstances of honour or neglect with which they might choose to receive him. His words, however, imply that the practice was by no means an uncommon one. And, indeed, from some passages in writers of the Augustan era, it would seem that this custom was not confined to people of distinction, but was familiar to a class of travellers so low in rank as to be capable of abusing their opportunities of concealment for the infliction of wanton injury upon the woods and fences which bounded the margin of the high-road. Under the cloud of night and solitude, the mischief-loving traveller was often in the habit of applying his torch to the withered boughs of wood, or to artificial hedges: and extensive ravages by fire, such as now happen not unfrequently in the American woods (but generally from carelessness in scattering the glowing embers of a fire, or even the ashes of a pipe), were then occasionally the result of mere wantonness of mischief. Ovid accordingly notices, as one amongst the familiar images of daybreak, the half-burnt torch of the traveller; and, apparently, from the position which it holds in his description, where it is ranked with the most familiar of all circumstances in all countries--that of the rural labourer going out to his morning tasks it must have been common indeed:

"Semiustamque facem vigilatâ nocte viator Ponet; et ad solitum rusticus ibit opus."

This occurs in the _Fasti_: elsewhere he notices it for its danger.

"Ut facibus sepes ardent, cum forte viator Vel nimis admovit, vel jam sub luce reliquit."

He, however, we see, good-naturedly ascribes the danger to mere carelessness, in bringing the torch too near to the hedge, or tossing it away at daybreak. But Varro, a more matter-of-fact observer, does not disguise the plain truth--that these disasters were often the product of pure malicious frolic. For instance, in recommending a certain kind of quickset fence, he insists upon it as one of its advantages--that it will not readily ignite under the torch of the mischievous wayfarer: "Naturale sepimentum," says he, "quod obseri solet virgultis aut spinis, _praetereuntis lascivi non metuet facem_." It is not easy to see the origin or advantage of this practice of nocturnal travelling, (which must have considerably increased the hazards of a journey,) excepting only in the heats of summer. It is probable, however, that men of high rank and public station may have introduced the practice by way of releasing corporate bodies in large towns from the burdensome ceremonies of public receptions; thus making a compromise between their own dignity and the convenience of the provincial public. Once introduced, and the arrangements upon the road for meeting the wants of travellers once adapted to such a practice, it would easily become universal. It is, however, very possible that mere horror of the heats of daytime may have been the original ground for it. The ancients appear to have shrunk from no hardship as so trying and insufferable as that of heat. And in relation to that subject, it is interesting to observe the way in which the ordinary use of language has accommodated itself to that feeling. Our northern way of expressing effeminacy, is derived chiefly from the hardships of cold. He that shrinks from the trials and rough experience of real life in any department, is described by the contemptuous prefix of _chimney-corner_, as if shrinking from the cold which he would meet on coming out into the open air amongst his fellow men. Thus, a _chimney-corner_ politician for a mere speculator or unpractical dreamer. But the very same indolent habit of aerial speculation, which courts no test of real life and practice, is described by the ancients under the term _umbraticus_, or seeking the cool shade, and shrinking from the heat. Thus an _umbraticus doctor_ is one who has no practical solidity in his teaching. The fatigue and hardship of real life, in short, is represented by the ancients under the uniform image of heat, and by the moderns under that of cold.

_Blackwood's Magazine._

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RETROSPECTIVE GLEANINGS.

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"PROGRESS" OF CHARLES II. AND HIS COURT.

The accompanying memorandum relative to Charles II. and his Court, is copied from an old Family Prayer Book, and from the date of the book, (?) and appearance of the writing, there is little doubt of its authenticity.

W.H.

"King Charles the Second, with his Queen Katharine, the Duke of York, and his Duchess, and Prince Rupert, the Duke of Monmouth, and many others of the nobility did lodge in Wickomb, the 30th day of September, in the yeare 1663. They did come into the town about 4 of the clock the same day. They came from Oxford. The King in his progress going back again to London. The King did go out of the town between v and vi of the clock the next morning, and was at his palace at Whitehall before 9 of the clock in the morning. The Queen did go out about viii of the clock, and dined at Uxbridge, and then went to Whitehall. The King was lodged with his Queen at the _Catharine Wheel_."

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FAT LIVING.

The vicarage of Wyburn, or Winsburn, Cumberland, is of the following tempting value: Fifty shilling per annum, a new surplice, a pair of clogs, and feed on the common for one goose. This favoured church preferment is in the midst of a wild country, inhabited by shepherds. The clerk keeps a pot-house opposite the church. The service is once a fortnight; and when there is no congregation, the Vicar and Moses regale themselves at the bar.

D.P.

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BAD ALE.

In the time of the Saxons, it was a custom in the city of Chester, that any person who brewed bad ale should either be placed in a ducking-chair, and plunged into a pool of muddy water, or, in lieu of that punishment, should forfeit four shillings.

D.P.

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ANCIENT TRADESMEN.