Finding the Manuscript Diary of John Evelyn Page 7. Click to ENLARGE

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BOOKS AND AUTHORS:

Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches

EDINBURGH:
WILLIAM P. NIMMO.

EDINBURGH: MURRAY AND GIBB,
PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY’S STATIONERY OFFICE.

 1

CONTENTS

6

NOTE.

This collection of anecdotes, illustrative sketches, and
memorabilia generally, relating to the ever fresh and
interesting subject of Books and Authors, is not
presented as complete, nor even as containing all the
choice material of its kind. The field from which one
may gather is so wide and fertile, that any collection
warranting such a claim would far exceed the compass
of many volumes, much less of this little book. It
has been sought to offer, in an acceptable and convenient
form, some of the more remarkable or interesting
literary facts or incidents with which one
individual, in a somewhat extended reading, has been
struck; some of the passages which he has admired;
some of the anecdotes and jests that have amused him
and may amuse others; some of the reminiscences
that it has most pleased him to dwell upon. For no
very great portion of the contents of this volume, is
the claim to originality of subject-matter advanced.
The collection, however, is submitted with some confidence
that it may be found as interesting, as accurate,
and as much guided by good taste, as it has
been endeavoured to make it.

7

BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

CURIOUS FACTS AND CHARACTERISTIC SKETCHES.

THE FINDING OF JOHN EVELYN’S MS. DIARY
AT WOTTON.¹

The MS. Diary, or “Kalendarium,” of the celebrated
John Evelyn lay among the family papers at Wotton,
in Surrey, from the period of his death, in 1706, until
their rare interest and value were discovered in the
following singular manner.

The library at Wotton is rich in curious books, with
notes in John Evelyn’s handwriting, as well as papers
on various subjects, and transcripts of letters by the
philosopher, who appears never to have employed an
amanuensis. The arrangement of these treasures was,
many years since, entrusted to the late Mr. Upcott,
of the London Institution, who made a complete catalogue
of the collection.

One afternoon, as Lady Evelyn and a female8
companion were seated in one of the fine old apartments of
Wotton, making feather tippets, her ladyship pleasantly
observed to Mr. Upcott, “You may think this feather-work
a strange way of passing time: it is, however,
my hobby; and I dare say you, too, Mr. Upcott, have
your hobby.” The librarian replied that his favourite
pursuit was the collection of the autographs of eminent
persons. Lady Evelyn remarked, that in all probability
the MSS. of “Sylva” Evelyn would afford
Mr. Upcott some amusement. His reply may be
well imagined. The bell was rung, and a servant
desired to bring the papers from a lumber-room of
the old mansion; and from one of the baskets so produced
was brought to light the manuscript Diary of
John Evelyn—one of the most finished specimens
of autobiography in the whole compass of English
literature.

The publication of the Diary, with a selection of
familiar letters, and private correspondence, was entrusted
to Mr. William Bray, F.S.A.; and the last
sheets of the MS., with a dedication to Lady Evelyn,
were actually in the hands of the printer at the hour
of her death. The work appeared in 1818; and a
volume of Miscellaneous Papers, by Evelyn, was subsequently
published, under Mr. Upcott’s editorial
superintendence.

Wotton House, though situate in the angle of two
valleys, is actually on part of Leith Hill, the rise from
thence being very gradual. Evelyn’s “Diary” contains
a pen-and-ink sketch of the mansion as it appeared
in 1653.9

FAMILIES OF LITERARY MEN.

A Quarterly Reviewer, in discussing an objection to
the Copyright Bill of Mr. Sergeant Talfourd, which
was taken by Sir Edward Sugden, gives some curious
particulars of the progeny of literary men. “We are
not,” says the writer, “going to speculate about the
causes of the fact; but a fact it is, that men distinguished
for extraordinary intellectual power of
any sort rarely leave more than a very brief line of
progeny behind them. Men of genius have scarcely
ever done so; men of imaginative genius, we might
say, almost never. With the one exception of the
noble Surrey, we cannot, at this moment, point out a
representative in the male line, even so far down as the
third generation, of any English poet; and we believe
the case is the same in France. The blood of beings
of that order can seldom be traced far down, even in
the female line. With the exception of Surrey and
Spenser, we are not aware of any great English author
of at all remote date, from whose body any living
person claims to be descended. There is no real English
poet prior to the middle of the eighteenth century;
and we believe no great author of any sort, except
Clarendon and Shaftesbury, of whose blood we have
any inheritance amongst us. Chaucer’s only son died
childless; Shakspeare’s line expired in his daughter’s
only daughter. None of the other dramatists of that
age left any progeny; nor Raleigh, nor Bacon, nor
Cowley, nor Butler. The grand-daughter of Milton
was the last of his blood. Newton, Locke, Pope,10
Swift, Arbuthnot, Hume, Gibbon, Cowper, Gray,
Walpole, Cavendish (and we might greatly extend
the list), never married. Neither Bolingbroke, nor
Addison, nor Warburton, nor Johnson, nor Burke,
transmitted their blood. One of the arguments
against a perpetuity in literary property is, that it
would be founding another noblesse. Neither jealous
aristocracy nor envious Jacobinism need be under such
alarm. When a human race has produced its ‘bright,
consummate flower’ in this kind, it seems commonly
to be near its end.”

THE BLUE-STOCKING CLUB.

Towards the close of the last century, there met at Mrs.
Montague’s a literary assembly, called “The Blue-Stocking
Club,” in consequence of one of the most
admired of the members, Mr. Benjamin Stillingfleet,
always wearing blue stockings. The appellation soon
became general as a name for pedantic or ridiculous
literary ladies. Hannah More wrote a volume in verse,
entitled The Bas Bleu: or Conversation. It proceeds
on the mistake of a foreigner, who, hearing of the
Blue-Stocking Club, translated it literally Bas Bleu.
Johnson styled this poem “a great performance.” The
following couplets have been quoted, and remembered,
as terse and pointed:—

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DR. JOHNSON AND HANNAH MORE

When Hannah More came to London in 1773, or
1774, she was domesticated with Garrick, and was
received with favour by Johnson, Reynolds, and
Burke. Her sister has thus described her first interview
with Johnson:—

“We have paid another visit to Miss Reynolds; she
had sent to engage Dr. Percy, (‘Percy’s Collection,’ now
you know him), quite a sprightly modern, instead of
a rusty antique, as I expected: he was no sooner gone
than the most amiable and obliging of women, Miss
Reynolds, ordered the coach to take us to Dr. Johnson’s
very own house: yes, Abyssinian Johnson!
Dictionary Johnson! Ramblers, Idlers, and Irene
Johnson! Can you picture to yourselves the palpitation
of our hearts as we approached his mansion?
The conversation turned upon a new work of his just
going to the press (the ‘Tour to the Hebrides’), and his
old friend Richardson. Mrs. Williams, the blind
poet, who lives with him, was introduced to us. She
is engaging in her manners, her conversation lively
and entertaining. Miss Reynolds told the Doctor of
all our rapturous exclamations on the road. He shook
his scientific head at Hannah, and said she was ‘a
silly thing.’ When our visit was ended, he called
for his hat, as it rained, to attend us down a very long
entry to our coach, and not Rasselas could have acquitted
himself more en cavalier. I forgot to mention,
that not finding Johnson in his little parlour when we
came in, Hannah seated herself in his great chair12
hoping to catch a little ray of his genius: when he
heard it, he laughed heartily, and told her it was a
chair on which he never sat. He said it reminded
him of Boswell and himself when they stopped a night,
as they imagined, where the weird sisters appeared to
Macbeth. The idea so worked on their enthusiasm,
that it quite deprived them of rest. However, they
learned the next morning, to their mortification, that
they had been deceived, and were quite in another
part of the country.”

MISS MITFORD’S FAREWELL TO THREE MILE CROSS.

When Miss Mitford left her rustic cottage at Three
Mile Cross, and removed to Reading, (the Belford
Regis of her novel), she penned the following beautiful
picture of its homely joys—

“Farewell, then, my beloved village! the long,
straggling street, gay and bright on this sunny, windy
April morning, full of all implements of dirt and mire,
men, women, children, cows, horses, wagons, carts,
pigs, dogs, geese, and chickens—busy, merry, stirring
little world, farewell! Farewell to the winding, up-hill
road, with its clouds of dust, as horsemen and carriages
ascend the gentle eminence, its borders of turf,
and its primrosy hedges! Farewell to the breezy
common, with its islands of cottages and cottage-gardens;
its oaken avenues, populous with rooks; its
clear waters fringed with gorse, where lambs are
straying; its cricket-ground where children already
linger, anticipating their summer revelry; its pretty13
boundary of field and woodland, and distant farms;
and latest and best of its ornaments, the dear and
pleasant mansion where dwelt the neighbours, the
friends of friends; farewell to ye all! Ye will easily
dispense with me, but what I shall do without you, I
cannot imagine. Mine own dear village, farewell!”

SMOLLETT’S “HUGH STRAP.”

In the year 1809 was interred, in the churchyard of
St. Martin’s-in-the Fields, the body of one Hew Hewson,
who died at the age of 85. He was the original of
Hugh Strap, in Smollett’s Roderick Random. Upwards
of forty years he kept a hair-dresser’s shop in St.
Martin’s parish; the walls were hung round with
Latin quotations, and he would frequently point out to
his customers and acquaintances the several scenes in
Roderick Random pertaining to himself, which had
their origin, not in Smollett’s inventive fancy, but in
truth and reality. The meeting in a barber’s shop at
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the subsequent mistake at the
inn, their arrival together in London, and the assistance
they experienced from Strap’s friend, are all
facts. The barber left behind an annotated copy of
Roderick Random, showing how far we are indebted
to the genius of the author, and to what extent the incidents
are founded in reality.

COLLINS’S POEMS.

Mr. John Ragsdale, of Richmond, in Surrey, who
was the intimate friend of Collins, states that some of
his Odes were written while on a visit at his, Mr.14
Ragsdale’s house. The poet, however, had such a poor
opinion of his own productions, that after showing
them to Mr. Ragsdale, he would snatch them from
him, and throw them into the fire; and in this way,
it is believed, many of Collins’s finest pieces were
destroyed. Such of his Odes as were published,
on his own account in 1746, were not popular; and,
disappointed at the slowness of the sale, the poet burnt
the remaining copies with his own hands.

CAPTAIN MORRIS’S SONGS.

Alas! poor Morris—writes one—we knew him well.
Who that has once read or heard his songs, can
forget their rich and graceful imagery; the fertile
fancy, the touching sentiment, and the “soul reviving”
melody, which characterize every line of these delightful
lyrics? Well do we remember, too, his “old
buff waistcoat,” his courteous manner, and his gentlemanly
pleasantry, long after this Nestor of song had
retired to enjoy the delights of rural life, despite the
prayer of his racy verse:

Captain Morris was born about the middle of the last
century, and outlived the majority of the bon vivant
society which he gladdened with his genius, and lit up
with his brilliant humour.

Yet, many readers of the present generation may15
ask, “Who was Captain Morris?” He was born of
good family, in the celebrated year 1745, and appears
to have inherited a taste for literary composition; for
his father composed the popular song of Kitty Crowder.

For more than half a century, Captain Morris moved
in the first circles. He was the “sun of the table” at
Carlton House, as well as at Norfolk House; and
attaching himself politically, as well as convivially, to
his dinner companions, he composed the celebrated
ballads of “Billy’s too young to drive us,” and “Billy
Pitt and the Farmer,” which continued long in fashion,
as brilliant satires upon the ascendant politics of their
day. His humorous ridicule of the Tories was, however,
but ill repaid by the Whigs upon their accession
to office; at least, if we may trust the beautiful ode of
“The Old Whig Poet to his Old Buff Waistcoat.” We
are not aware of this piece being included in any
edition of the “Songs.” It bears date “G. R., August
1, 1815;” six years subsequent to which we saw it
among the papers of the late Alexander Stephens.

Captain Morris’s “Songs” were very popular. In
1830, we possessed a copy of the 24th edition; we
remember one of the ditties to have been “sung by
the Prince of Wales to a certain lady,” to the air of
“There’s a difference between a beggar and a queen.”
Morris’s finest Anacreontic, is the song Ad Poculum,
for which he received the gold cup of the Harmonic
Society:

Of the famous Beefsteak Club, (at first limited to
twenty-four members, but increased to twenty-five, to
admit the Prince of Wales,) Captain Morris was the
laureat; of this “Jovial System” he was the intellectual
centre. In the year 1831, he bade adieu to the
club, in some spirited stanzas, though penned at “an
age far beyond mortal lot.” In 1835, he was permitted
to revisit the club, when they presented him with a
large silver bowl, appropriately inscribed.

It would not be difficult to string together gems
from the Captain’s Lyrics. In “The Toper’s Apology,”
one of his most sparkling songs, occurs this brilliant
version of Addison’s comparison of wits with flying
fish:—

Many years since, Captain Morris retired to a villa
at Brockham, near the foot of Box Hill, in Surrey.
This property, it is said, was presented to him by his
old friend, the Duke of Norfolk. Here the Captain
“drank the pure pleasures of the rural life” long after
many a bright light of his own time had flickered out,
and become almost forgotten; even “the sweet, shady
side of Pall Mall” had almost disappeared, and with it17
the princely house whereat he was wont to shine. He
died July 11, 1835, in his ninety-third year, of internal
inflammation of only four days.

Morris presented a rare combination of mirth and
prudence, such as human conduct seldom offers for our
imitation. He retained his gaieté de cœur to the last;
so that, with equal truth and spirit, he remonstrated:

Captain Morris left his autobiography to his family;
but it has not been published.

LITERARY DINNERS.

Incredible as it may appear, it is sometimes stated
very confidently, that English authors and actors who
give dinners, are treated with greater indulgence by
certain critics than those who do not. But, it has
never been said that any critical journal in England,
with the slightest pretensions to respectability, was in
the habit of levying black mail in this Rob Roy
fashion, upon writers or articles of any kind. Yet it
is alleged, on high authority, that many of the French
critical journals are or were principally supported
from such a source. For example, there is a current
anecdote to the effect that when the celebrated singer
Nourrit died, the editor of one of the musical reviews
waited on his successor, Duprez, and, with a profusion
of compliments and apologies, intimated to him that
Nourrit had invariably allowed 2000 francs a year to
the review. Duprez, taken rather aback, expressed18
his readiness to allow half that sum. “Bien, monsieur,”
said the editor, with a shrug, “mais, parole
d’honneur, j’y perds mille francs.“

POPULARITY OF THE PICKWICK PAPERS.

Mr. Davy, who accompanied Colonel Cheney up the
Euphrates, was for a time in the service of Mehemet
Ali Pacha. “Pickwick” happening to reach Davy
while he was at Damascus, he read a part of it to the
Pacha, who was so delighted with it, that Davy was,
on one occasion, called up in the middle of the night
to finish the reading of the chapter in which he and the
Pacha had been interrupted. Mr. Davy read, in
Egypt, upon another occasion, some passages from
these unrivalled “Papers” to a blind Englishman, who
was in such ecstasy with what he heard, that he exclaimed
he was almost thankful he could not see he
was in a foreign country; for that while he listened,
he felt completely as though he were again in England.—Lady
Chatterton.

SWIFT’S DISAPPOINTMENT.

“I remember when I was a little boy, (writes Swift
in a letter to Bolingbroke,) I felt a great fish at the end
of my line, which I drew up almost on the ground,
but it dropt in, and the disappointment vexes me to
this day; and I believe it was the type of all my
future disappointments.”

“This little incident,” writes Percival, “perhaps19
gave the first wrong bias to a mind predisposed to such
impressions; and by operating with so much strength
and permanency, it might possibly lay the foundation
of the Dean’s subsequent peevishness, passion, misanthropy,
and final insanity.”

LEIGH HUNT AND THOMAS CARLYLE.

The following characteristic story of these two “intellectual
gladiators” is related in “A New Spirit of
the Age.”

Leigh Hunt and Carlyle were once present among
a small party of equally well known men. It chanced
that the conversation rested with these two, both first-rate
talkers, and the others sat well pleased to listen.
Leigh Hunt had said something about the islands of
the Blest, or El Dorado, or the Millennium, and
was flowing on in his bright and hopeful way, when
Carlyle dropt some heavy tree-trunk across Hunt’s
pleasant stream, and banked it up with philosophical
doubts and objections at every interval of the speaker’s
joyous progress. But the unmitigated Hunt never
ceased his overflowing anticipations, nor the saturnine
Carlyle his infinite demurs to those finite flourishings.
The listeners laughed and applauded by turns; and
had now fairly pitted them against each other, as
the philosopher of Hopefulness and of the Unhopeful.
The contest continued with all that ready wit and
philosophy, that mixture of pleasantry and profundity,
that extensive knowledge of books and character, with
their ready application in argument or illustration, and20
that perfect ease and good-nature, which distinguish
each of these men. The opponents were so well matched,
that it was quite clear the contest would never come
to an end. But the night was far advanced, and the
party broke up. They all sallied forth; and leaving
the close room, the candles and the arguments behind
them, suddenly found themselves in presence of a most
brilliant star-light night. They all looked up. “Now,”
thought Hunt, “Carlyle’s done for!—he can have no
answer to that!” “There!” shouted Hunt, “look up
there! look at that glorious harmony, that sings with
infinite voices an eternal song of hope in the soul of
man.” Carlyle looked up. They all remained silent
to hear what he would say. They began to think he
was silenced at last—he was a mortal man. But out
of that silence came a few low-toned words, in a broad
Scotch accent. And who, on earth, could have anticipated
what the voice said? “Eh! it’s a sad
sight!”——Hunt sat down on a stone step. They all
laughed—then looked very thoughtful. Had the finite
measured itself with infinity, instead of surrendering
itself up to the influence? Again they laughed—then
bade each other good night, and betook themselves
homeward with slow and serious pace. There might
be some reason for sadness, too. That brilliant firmament
probably contained infinite worlds, each full of
struggling and suffering beings—of beings who had
to die—for life in the stars implies that those bright
worlds should also be full of graves; but all that life,
like ours, knowing not whence it came, nor whither it
goeth, and the brilliant Universe in its great Movement21
having, perhaps, no more certain knowledge of
itself, nor of its ultimate destination, than hath one of
the suffering specks that compose this small spot we
inherit.

COWPER’S POEMS.

Johnson, the publisher in St. Paul’s Churchyard, obtained
the copyright of Cowper’s Poems, which proved
a great source of profit to him, in the following manner:—One
evening, a relation of Cowper’s called upon
Johnson with a portion of the MS. poems, which he
offered for publication, provided Johnson would publish
them at his own risk, and allow the author to have
a few copies to give to his friends. Johnson read the
poems, approved of them, and accordingly published
them. Soon after they had appeared, there was
scarcely a reviewer who did not load them with the
most scurrilous abuse, and condemn them to the butter
shops; and the public taste being thus terrified or
misled, these charming effusions stood in the corner of
the publisher’s shop as an unsaleable pile for a long
time.

At length, Cowper’s relation called upon Johnson
with another bundle of the poet’s MS, which was
offered and accepted upon the same terms as before.
In this fresh collection was the poem of the “Task.”
Not alarmed at the fate of the former publication, but
thoroughly assured of the great merit of the poems,
they were published. The tone of the reviewers became
changed, and Cowper was hailed as the first poet22
of the age. The success of this second publication set
the first in motion. Johnson immediately reaped the
fruits of his undaunted judgment; and Cowper’s
poems enriched the publisher, when the poet was
in languishing circumstances. In October, 1812, the
copyright of Cowper’s poems was put up to sale among
the London booksellers, in thirty-two shares. Twenty
of the shares were sold at 212l. each. The work, consisting
of two octavo volumes, was satisfactorily proved
at the sale to net 834l. per annum. It had only two
years of copyright; yet this same copyright produced
the sum of 6764l.

HEARNE’S LOVE OF ALE.

Thomas Warton, in his Account of Oxford, relates that
at the sign of Whittington and his Cat, the laborious antiquary,
Thomas Hearne, “one evening suffered himself
to be overtaken in liquor. But, it should be remembered,
that this accident was more owing to his love of antiquity
than of ale. It happened that the kitchen where he and
his companion were sitting was neatly paved with sheep’s
trotters disposed in various compartments. After one
pipe, Mr. Hearne, consistently with his usual gravity
and sobriety, rose to depart; but his friend, who was
inclined to enjoy more of his company, artfully observed,
that the floor on which they were then sitting
was no less than an original tesselated Roman pavement.
Out of respect to classic ground, and on recollection
that the Stunsfield Roman pavement, on which
he had just published a dissertation, was dedicated to23
Bacchus, our antiquary cheerfully complied; an enthusiastic
transport seized his imagination; he fell on
his knees and kissed the sacred earth, on which, in a
few hours, and after a few tankards, by a sort of sympathetic
attraction, he was obliged to repose for some
part of the evening. His friend was, probably, in the
same condition; but two printers accidentally coming
in, conducted Mr. Hearne, between them, to Edmund’s
Hall, with much state and solemnity.”

SHERIDAN’S WIT.

Sheridan’s wit was eminently brilliant, and almost
always successful; it was, like all his speaking, exceedingly
prepared, but it was skilfully introduced and
happily applied; and it was well mingled, also, with
humour, occasionally descending to farce. How little
it was the inspiration of the moment all men were
aware who knew his habits; but a singular proof of
this was presented to Mr. Moore, when he came to
write his life; for we there find given to the world,
with a frankness which must have almost made their
author shake in his grave, the secret note-books of this
famous wit; and are thus enabled to trace the jokes, in
embryo, with which he had so often made the walls of
St. Stephen’s shake, in a merriment excited by the
happy appearance of sudden unpremeditated effusion.—Lord
Brougham.

Take an instance from this author, giving extracts
from the common-place book of the wit:—”He employs
his fancy in his narrative, and keeps his recollections24
for his wit.” Again, the same idea is expanded
into “When he makes his jokes, you applaud the accuracy
of his memory, and ’tis only when he states his
facts that you admire the flights of his imagination.”
But the thought was too good to be thus wasted on
the desert air of a common-place book. So, forth it
came, at the expense of Kelly, who, having been a
composer of music, became a wine-merchant. “You
will,” said the ready wit, “import your music and
compose your wine.” Nor was this service exacted
from the old idea thought sufficient; so, in the House
of Commons, an easy and, apparently, off-hand parenthesis
was thus filled with it, at Mr. Dundas’s cost
and charge, “who generally resorts to his memory for
his jokes, and to his imagination for his facts.”

SMOLLETT’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

This man of genius among trading authors, before he
began his History of England, wrote to the Earl of
Shelburne, then in the Whig Administration, offering,
if the Earl would procure for his work the patronage
of the Government, he would accommodate his politics
to the Ministry; but if not, that he had high promises
of support from the other party. Lord Shelburne, of
course, treated the proffered support of a writer of
such accommodating principles with contempt; and
the work of Smollett, accordingly, became distinguished
for its high Toryism. The history was published
in sixpenny weekly numbers, of which 20,000
copies were sold immediately. This extraordinary25
popularity was created by the artifice of the publisher.
He is stated to have addressed a packet of the specimens
of the publication to every parish-clerk in England,
carriage-free, with half-a-crown enclosed as a
compliment, to have them distributed through the
pews of the church: this being generally done,
many people read the specimens instead of listening
to the sermon, and the result was an universal demand
for the work.

MAGNA CHARTA RECOVERED.

The transcript of Magna Charta, now in the British
Museum, was discovered by Sir Robert Cotton in the
possession of his tailor, who was just about to cut the
precious document out into “measures” for his customers.
Sir Robert redeemed the valuable curiosity at the
price of old parchment, and thus recovered what had
long been supposed to be irretrievably lost.

FOX AND GIBBON.

When Mr. Fox’s furniture was sold by auction, after
his decease in 1806, amongst his books there was the
first volume of his friend Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire: by the title-page, it appeared to
have been presented by the author to Fox, who, on
the blank leaf, had written this anecdote of the historian:—”The
author, at Brookes’s, said there was no
salvation for this country until six heads of the principal
persons in administration were laid upon the
table. Eleven days after, this same gentleman accepted26
a place of lord of trade under those very ministers, and
has acted with them ever since!” Such was the avidity
of bidders for the most trifling production of Fox’s
genius, that, by the addition of this little record, the
book sold for three guineas.

DR. JOHNSON’S PRIDE.

Sir Joshua Reynolds used to relate the following characteristic
anecdote of Johnson:—About the time of
their early acquaintance, they met one evening at the
Misses Cotterell’s, when the Duchess of Argyll and
another lady of rank came in. Johnson, thinking
that the Misses Cotterell were too much engrossed
by them, and that he and his friend were neglected
as low company, of whom they were somewhat
ashamed, grew angry, and, resolving to shock their
suspected pride, by making the great visitors imagine
they were low indeed, Johnson addressed himself in
a loud tone to Reynolds, saying, “How much do you
think you and I could get in a week if we were to
work as hard as we could?” just as though they were
ordinary mechanics.

LORD BYRON’S “CORSAIR.”

The Earl of Dudley, in his Letters, (1814) says:—”To
me Byron’s Corsair appears the best of all his
works. Rapidity of execution is no sort of apology
for doing a thing ill, but when it is done well, the
wonder is so much the greater. I am told he wrote27
this poem at ten sittings—certainly it did not take him
more than three weeks. He is a most extraordinary person,
and yet there is G. Ellis, who don’t feel his merit.
His creed in modern poetry (I should have said contemporary)
is Walter Scott, all Walter Scott, and nothing
but Walter Scott. I cannot say how I hate this petty, factious
spirit in literature—it is so unworthy of a man so
clever and so accomplished as Ellis undoubtedly is.”

BOOKSELLERS IN LITTLE BRITAIN.

Little Britain, anciently Breton-street, from the
mansion of the Duke of Bretagne on that spot, in
more modern times became the “Paternoster-row”
of the booksellers; and a newspaper of 1664 states
them to have published here within four years, 464
pamphlets. One Chiswell, resident here in 1711, was
the metropolitan bookseller, “the Longman” of his
time: and here lived Rawlinson (“Tom Folio” of The
Tatler, No. 158), who stuffed four chambers in Gray’s
Inn so full, that his bed was removed into the passage.
John Day, the famous early printer, lived “over
Aldersgate.”

RECONCILING THE FATHERS.

A Dean of Gloucester having some merry divines at
dinner with him one day, amongst other discourses
they were talking of reconciling the Fathers on some
points; he told them he could show them the best way
in the world to reconcile them on all points of difference;
so, after dinner, he carried them into his study,28
and showed them all the Fathers, classically ordered,
with a quart of sack betwixt each of them.

DR. PARR AND SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH.

Sir James once asked Dr. Parr to join him in a drive
in his gig. The horse growing restive—”Gently,
Jemmy,” the Doctor said; “don’t irritate him; always
soothe your horse, Jemmy. You’ll do better without
me. Let me down, Jemmy!” But once safe on the
ground—”Now, Jemmy,” said the Doctor, “touch him
up. Never let a horse get the better of you. Touch
him up, conquer him, do not spare him. And now
I’ll leave you to manage him; I’ll walk back.”

SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH’S HUMOUR.

Sir James Mackintosh had a great deal of humour;
and, among many other examples of it, he kept a
dinner-party at his own house for two or three hours
in a roar of laughter, playing upon the simplicity of
a Scotch cousin, who had mistaken the Rev. Sydney
Smith for his gallant synonym, the hero of Acre.

WRITINGS OF LOPE DE VEGA.

The number of Lope de Vega’s works has been strangely
exaggerated by some, but by others reduced to about
one-sixth of the usual statement. Upon this computation
it will be found that some of his contemporaries
were as prolific as himself. Vincent Mariner, a friend
of Lope, left behind him 360 quires of paper full of
his own compositions, in a writing so exceedingly29
small, and so exceedingly bad, that no person but himself
could read it. Lord Holland has given a fac-simile
of Lope’s handwriting, and though it cannot be
compared to that of a dramatist of late times, one of
whose plays, in the original manuscript, is said to be a
sufficient load for a porter, it is evident that one of
Mariner’s pages would contain as much as a sheet of his
friend’s, which would, as nearly as possible, balance the
sum total. But, upon this subject, an epigram by Quarles
may be applied, written upon a more serious theme:

With regard to the quantity of Lope’s writings, a
complete edition of them would not much, if at all,
exceed those of Voltaire, who, in labour of composition,
for he sent nothing into the world carelessly,
must have greatly exceeded Lope. And the labours
of these men shrink into insignificance when compared
to those of some of the schoolmen and of the Fathers.

POPULARITY OF LOPE DE VEGA.

Other writers, of the same age with Lope de Vega,
obtained a wider celebrity. Don Quixote, during the
life of its ill-requited author, was naturalized in
countries where the name of Lope de Vega was not
known, and Du Bartas was translated into the language
of every reading people. But no writer ever
has enjoyed such a share of popularity.30

“Cardinal Barberini,” says Lord Holland, “followed
Lope with veneration in the streets; the king
would stop to gaze at such a prodigy; the people
crowded round him wherever he appeared; the learned
and studious thronged to Madrid from every part of
Spain to see this phœnix of their country, this monster
of literature; and even Italians, no extravagant admirers,
in general, of poetry that is not their own,
made pilgrimages from their country for the sole purpose
of conversing with Lope. So associated was the
idea of excellence with his name, that it grew, in common
conversation, to signify anything perfect in its
kind; and a Lope diamond, a Lope day, or a Lope
woman, became fashionable and familiar modes of expressing
their good qualities.”

Lope’s death produced an universal commotion in
the court and in the whole kingdom. Many ministers,
knights, and prelates were present when he expired;
among others, the Duke of Sesa, who had been the
most munificent of his patrons, whom he appointed his
executor, and who was at the expense of his funeral, a
mode by which the great men in that country were
fond of displaying their regard for men of letters. It
was a public funeral, and it was not performed till the
third day after his death, that there might be time for
rendering it more splendid, and securing a more
honourable attendance. The grandees and nobles
who were about the court were all invited as mourners;
a novenary or service of nine days was performed for
him, at which the musicians of the royal chapel assisted;
after which there were exequies on three31
successive days, at which three bishops officiated in full
pontificals; and on each day a funeral sermon was
preached by one of the most famous preachers of the
age. Such honours were paid to the memory of
Lope de Vega, one of the most prolific, and, during
his life, the most popular, of all poets, ancient or
modern.

SWIFT’S LOVES.

The first of these ladies, whom Swift romantically
christened Varina, was a Miss Jane Waryng, to whom
he wrote passionate letters, and whom, when he had
succeeded in gaining her affections, he deserted, after
a sort of seven years’ courtship. The next flame of
the Dean’s was the well-known Miss Esther Johnson,
whom he fancifully called Stella. Somehow, he had
the address to gain her decided attachment to him,
though considerably younger, beautiful in person, accomplished,
and estimable. He dangled upon her, fed
her hopes of an union, and at length persuaded her to
leave London and reside near him in Ireland. His
conduct then was of a piece with the rest of his life:
he never saw her alone, never slept under the same
roof with her, but allowed her character and reputation
to be suspected, in consequence of their intimacy;
nor did he attempt to remove such by marriage until
a late period of his life, when, to save her from dissolution,
he consented to the ceremony, upon condition
that it should never be divulged; that she should live
as before; retain her own name, &c.; and this32
wedding, upon the above being assented to, was performed
in a garden! But Swift never acknowledged her till
the day of his death. During all this treatment of
his Stella, Swift had ingratiated himself with a young
lady of fortune and fashion in London, whose name
was Vanhomrig, and whom he called Vanessa. It is
much to be regretted that the heartless tormentor
should have been so ardently and passionately beloved,
as was the case with the latter lady. Selfish, hardhearted
as was Swift, he seemed but to live in disappointing
others. Such was his coldness and brutality
to Vanessa, that he may be said to have caused her
death.

COLERIDGE’S “WATCHMAN.”

Coleridge, among his many speculations, started
a periodical, in prose and verse, entitled The Watchman,
with the motto, “that all might know the truth,
and that the truth might make us free.” He watched
in vain! Coleridge’s incurable want of order and
punctuality, and his philosophical theories, tired out
and disgusted his readers, and the work was discontinued
after the ninth number. Of the unsaleable
nature of this publication, he relates an amusing illustration.
Happening one morning to rise at an earlier
hour than usual, he observed his servant-girl putting
an extravagant quantity of paper into the grate, in
order to light the fire, and he mildly checked her for
her wastefulness: “La! sir,” replied Nanny; “why,
it’s only Watchmen.”33

IRELAND’S SHAKSPEARE FORGERIES.

Mr. Samuel Ireland, originally a silk merchant in
Spitalfields, was led by his taste for literary antiquities
to abandon trade for those pursuits, and published
several tours. One of them consisted of an excursion
upon the river Avon, during which he explored, with
ardent curiosity, every locality associated with Shakspeare.
He was accompanied by his son, a youth of
sixteen, who imbibed a portion of his father’s Shakspearean
mania. The youth, perceiving the great importance
which his parent attached to every relic of
the poet, and the eagerness with which he sought for
any of his MS. remains, conceived that it would not
be difficult to gratify his father by some productions
of his own, in the language and manner of Shakspeare’s
time. The idea possessed his mind for a certain period;
and, in 1793, being then in his eighteenth year, he
produced some MSS. said to be in the handwriting of
Shakspeare, which he said had been given him by a
gentleman possessed of many other old papers. The
young man, being articled to a solicitor in Chancery,
easily fabricated, in the first instance, the deed of mortgage
from Shakspeare to Michael Fraser. The ecstasy
expressed by his father urged him to the fabrication of
other documents, described to come from the same
quarter. Emboldened by success, he ventured upon
higher compositions in prose and verse; and at length
announced the discovery of an original drama, under
the title of Vortigern, which he exhibited, act by act,
written in the period of two months. Having34
provided himself with the paper of the period, (being the
fly-leaves of old books,) and with ink prepared by a
bookbinder, no suspicion was entertained of the deception.
The father, who was a maniac upon such subjects,
gave such éclat to the supposed discovery, that
the attention of the literary world, and all England,
was drawn to it; insomuch that the son, who had
announced other papers, found it impossible to retreat,
and was goaded into the production of the series which
he had promised.

The house of Mr. Ireland, in Norfolk-street, Strand,
was daily crowded to excess by persons of the highest
rank, as well as by the most celebrated men of letters.
The MSS. being mostly decreed genuine, were considered
to be of inestimable worth; and at one time it
was expected that Parliament would give any required
sum for them. Some conceited amateurs in literature
at length sounded an alarm, which was echoed by
certain of the newspapers and public journals; notwithstanding
which, Mr. Sheridan agreed to give
600l. for permission to play Vortigern at Drury-lane
Theatre. So crowded a house was scarcely ever seen
as on the night of the performance, and a vast number
of persons could not obtain admission. The predetermined
malcontents began an opposition from the
outset: some ill-cast characters converted grave scenes
into ridicule, and there ensued between the believers
and sceptics a contest which endangered the property.
The piece was, accordingly, withdrawn.

The juvenile author was now so beset for information,
that he found it necessary to abscond from his
father’s house; and then, to put an end to the wonderful35
ferment which his ingenuity had created, he published
a pamphlet, wherein he confessed the entire
fabrication. Besides Vortigern, young Ireland also
produced a play of Henry II.; and, although there
were in both such incongruities as were not consistent
with Shakspeare’s age, both dramas contain
passages of considerable beauty and originality.

The admissions of the son did not, however, screen
the father from obloquy, and the reaction of public
opinion affected his fortunes and his health. Mr.
Ireland was the dupe of his zeal upon such subjects;
and the son never contemplated at the outset the unfortunate
effect. Such was the enthusiasm of certain
admirers of Shakspeare, (among them Drs. Parr and
Warton,) that they fell upon their knees before the
MSS.; and, by their idolatry, inspired hundreds of
others with similar enthusiasm. The young author
was filled with astonishment and alarm, which at that
stage it was not in his power to check. Sir Richard
Phillips, who knew the parties, has thus related the
affair in the Anecdote Library.

In the Catalogue of Dr. Parr’s Library at Hatton,
(Bibliotheca Parriana,) we find the following attempted
explanation by the Doctor:—

“Ireland’s (Samuel) ‘Great and impudent forgery,
called,’ Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments,
under the hand and seal of William Shakspeare, folio
1796.

“I am almost ashamed to insert this worthless and
infamously trickish book. It is said to include the
tragedy of King Lear, and a fragment of Hamlet.
Ireland told a lie when he imputed to me the words36
which Joseph Warton used, the very morning I called
on Ireland, and was inclined to admit the possibility
of genuineness in his papers. In my subsequent conversation,
I told him my change of opinion. But I
thought it not worth while to dispute in print with a
detected impostor.—S. P.”

Mr. Ireland died about 1802. His son, William
Henry, long survived him; but the forgeries blighted
his literary reputation for ever, and he died in straitened
circumstances, about the year 1840. The reputed
Shakspearean MSS. are stated to have been seen for
sale in a pawnbroker’s window in Wardour-street, Soho.

HOOLE, THE TRANSLATOR OF TASSO.
THE GHOST PUZZLED.

Hoole was born in a hackney-coach, which was conveying
his mother to Drury-lane Theatre, to witness
the performance of the tragedy of Timanthes, which
had been written by her husband. Hoole died in 1839,
at a very advanced age. In early life, he ranked
amongst the literary characters that adorned the last
century; and, for some years before his death, had outlived
most of the persons who frequented the conversazioni
of Dr. Johnson. By the will of the Doctor,
Mr. Hoole was enabled to take from his library and
effects such books and furniture as he might think
proper to select, by way of memorial of that great
personage. He accordingly chose a chair in which37
Dr. Johnson usually sat, and the desk upon which he
had written the greater number of the papers of the
Rambler; both these articles Mr. Hoole used constantly
until nearly the day of his death.

Hoole was near-sighted. He was partial to the
drama; and, when young, often strutted his hour at
an amateur theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Upon
one occasion, whilst performing the ghost in Hamlet,
Mr. Hoole wandered incautiously from off the trap-door
through which he had emerged from the nether
world, and by which it was his duty to descend. In
this dilemma he groped about, hoping to distinguish
the aperture, keeping the audience in wonder why he
remained so long on the stage after the crowing of the
cock. It was apparent from the lips of the ghost that
he was holding converse with some one at the wings.
He at length became irritated, and “alas! poor ghost!”
ejaculated, in tones sufficiently audible, “I tell you I
can’t find it.” The laughter that ensued may be imagined.
The ghost, had he been a sensible one, would
have walked off; but no—he became more and more
irritated, until the perturbed spirit was placed, by some
of the bystanders, on the trap-door, after which it
descended, with due solemnity, amid roars of laughter.

LORD BYRON’S VANITY

During the residence of Lord Byron at Venice, a
clerk was sent from the office of Messrs. Vizard and
Co., of Lincoln’s Inn, to procure his lordship’s signature38
to a legal instrument. On his arrival, the clerk
sent a message to the noble poet, who appointed to receive
him on the following morning. Each party was
punctual to the minute. His lordship had dressed
himself with the most studious care; and, on the
opening of the door of his apartment, it was evident
that he had placed himself in what he thought a
becoming pose. His right arm was displayed over
the back of a splendid couch, and his head was gently
supported by the fingers of his left hand. He bowed
slightly as his visitor approached him, and appeared
anxious that his recumbent attitude should remain for
a time undisturbed. After the signing of the deed,
the noble bard made a few inquiries upon the politics
of England, in the tone of a finished exquisite. Some
refreshment which was brought in afforded the messenger
an opportunity for more minute observation.
His lordship’s hair had been curled and parted on the
forehead; the collar of his shirt was thrown back, so
that not only the throat but a considerable portion of
his bosom was exposed to view, though partially concealed
by some fanciful ornament suspended round the
neck. His waistcoat was of costly velvet, and his legs
were enveloped in a superb wrapper. It is to be regretted
that so great a mind as that of Byron could
derive satisfaction from things so trivial and unimportant,
but much more that it was liable to be disturbed
by a recollection of personal imperfections. In
the above interview, the clerk directed an accidental
glance at his lordship’s lame foot, when the smile that
had played upon the visage of the poet became39
suddenly converted into a frown. His whole frame appeared
discomposed; his tone of affected suavity became
hard and imperious; and he called to an attendant to
open the door, with a peevishness seldom exhibited
even by the most irritable.

LORD BYRON’S APOLOGY.

No one knew how to apologize for an affront with
better grace, or with more delicacy, than Lord
Byron. In the first edition of the first canto of Childe
Harold, the poet adverted in a note to two political
tracts—one by Major Pasley, and the other by Gould
Francis Leckie, Esq.; and concluded his remarks by
attributing “ignorance on the one hand, and prejudice
on the other.” Mr. Leckie, who felt offended at the
severity and, as he thought, injustice of the observations,
wrote to Lord Byron, complaining of the affront.
His lordship did not reply immediately to the letter;
but, in about three weeks, he called upon Mr. Leckie,
and begged him to accept an elegantly-bound copy of
a new edition of the poem, in which the offensive passage
was omitted.

FINE FLOURISHES.

Lord Brougham, in an essay published long ago in
the Edinburgh Review, read a smart lesson to Parliamentary
wits. “A wit,” says his lordship, “though
he amuses for the moment, unavoidably gives frequent
offence to grave and serious men, who don’t think
public affairs should be lightly handled, and are40
constantly falling into the error that when a person is
arguing the most conclusively, by showing the gross
and ludicrous absurdity of his adversary’s reasoning,
he is jesting, and not arguing; while the argument is,
in reality, more close and stringent, the more he shows
the opposite picture to be grossly ludicrous—that is,
the more effective the wit becomes. But, though all
this is perfectly true, it is equally certain that danger
attends such courses with the common run of plain
men.

“Nor is it only by wit that genius offends: flowers
of imagination, flights of oratory, great passages, are
more admired by the critic than relished by the worthy
baronets who darken the porch of Boodle’s—chiefly
answering to the names of Sir Robert and Sir John—and
the solid traders, the very good men who stream
along the Strand from ‘Change towards St. Stephen’s
Chapel, at five o’clock, to see the business of the
country done by the Sovereign’s servants. A pretty
long course of observation on these component parts of
a Parliamentary audience begets some doubt if noble
passages, (termed ‘fine flourishes,’) be not taken by
them as personally offensive.”

Take, for example, “such fine passages as Mr. Canning
often indulged himself and a few of his hearers
with; and which certainly seemed to be received as
an insult by whole benches of men accustomed to distribute
justice at sessions. These worthies, the dignitaries
of the empire, resent such flights as liberties
taken with them; and always say, when others force
them to praise—’Well, well, but it was out of place;41
we have nothing to do with king Priam here, or
with a heathen god, such as Æolus; those kind of
folk are all very well in Pope’s Homer and Dryden’s
Virgil; but, as I said to Sir Robert, who sat next me,
what have you or I to do with them matters? I like
a good plain man of business, like young Mr. Jenkinson—a
man of the pen and desk, like his father was
before him—and who never speaks when he is not
wanted: let me tell you, Mr. Canning speaks too
much by half. Time is short—there are only twenty
four hours in the day, you know.”

MATHEMATICAL SAILORS.

Nathaniel Bowditch, the translator of Laplace’s
Mécanique Céleste, displayed in very early life a taste
for mathematical studies. In the year 1788, when he
was only fifteen years old, he actually made an almanack
for the year 1790, containing all the usual tables,
calculations of the eclipses, and other phenomena, and
even the customary predictions of the weather.

Bowditch was bred to the sea, and in his early
voyages taught navigation to the common sailors about
him. Captain Prince, with whom he often sailed,
relates, that one day the supercargo of the vessel said
to him, “Come, Captain, let us go forward and hear
what the sailors are talking about under the lee of the
long-boat.” They went forward accordingly, and the
captain was surprised to find the sailors, instead of
spinning their long yarns, earnestly engaged with
book, slate, and pencil, discussing the high matters of42
tangents and secants, altitudes, dip, and refraction.
Two of them, in particular, were very zealously disputing,—one
of them calling out to the other, “Well,
Jack, what have you got?” “I’ve got the sine,” was
the answer. “But that ain’t right,” said the other;
“I say it is the cosine.”

LEWIS’S “MONK.”

This romance, on its first appearance, roused the attention
of all the literary world of England, and even
spread its writer’s name to the continent. The author—”wonder-working
Lewis,” was a stripling under
twenty when he wrote The Monk in the short space
of ten weeks! Sir Walter Scott, probably the most
rapid composer of fiction upon record, hardly exceeded
this, even in his latter days, when his facility of
writing was the greatest.

THOMSON’S RECITATIONS.

Thomson, the author of the “Seasons,” was a very
awkward reader of his own productions. His patron,
Doddington, once snatched a MS. from his hand,
provoked by his odd utterance, telling him that he did
not understand his own verses! A gentleman of
Brentford, however, told the late Dr. Evans, in 1824,
that there was a tradition in that town of Thomson
frequenting one of the inns there, and reciting his
poems to the company.43

GOLDSMITH’S “SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER.”

Goldsmith, during the first performance of this
comedy, walked all the time in St. James’ Park in
great uneasiness. Finally, when he thought that it
must be over, hastening to the theatre, hisses assailed
his ears as he entered the green-room. Asking in
eager alarm of Colman the cause—”Pshaw, pshaw!”
said Colman, “don’t be afraid of squibs, when we
have been sitting on a barrel of gunpowder for two
hours.” The comedy had completely triumphed—the
audience were only hissing the after farce. Goldsmith
had some difficulty in getting the piece on the
stage, as appears from the following letter to Colman:—”I
entreat you’ll relieve me from that state of
suspense in which I have been kept for a long time.
Whatever objections you have made, or shall make, to
my play, I will endeavour to remove, and not argue
about them. To bring in any new judges either of its
merits or faults, I can never submit to. Upon a former
occasion, when my other play was before Mr. Garrick,
he offered to bring me before Mr. Whitehead’s tribunal,
but I refused the proposal with indignation. I hope
I shall not experience as hard treatment from you, as
from him. I have, as you know, a large sum of money
to make up shortly; by accepting my play, I can
readily satisfy my creditor that way; at any rate, I
must look about to some certainty to be prepared.
For God’s sake take the play, and let us make the
best of it; and let me have the same measure at
least which you have given as bad plays as mine.”44

SILENCE NOT ALWAYS WISDOM.

Coleridge once dined in company with a person who
listened to him, and said nothing for a long time; but
he nodded his head, and Coleridge thought him intelligent.
At length, towards the end of the dinner,
some apple dumplings were placed on the table, and
the listener had no sooner seen them than he burst
forth, “Them’s the jockeys for me!” Coleridge adds:
“I wish Spurzheim could have examined the fellow’s
head.”

Coleridge was very luminous in conversation, and
invariably commanded listeners; yet the old lady
rated his talent very lowly, when she declared she had
no patience with a man who would have all the talk to
himself.

DR. CHALMERS IN LONDON.

When Dr. Chalmers first visited London, the hold
that he took on the minds of men was unprecedented.
It was a time of strong political feeling; but even that
was unheeded, and all parties thronged to hear the
Scottish preacher. The very best judges were not
prepared for the display that they heard. Canning
and Wilberforce went together, and got into a pew
near the door. The elder in attendance stood alone
by the pew. Chalmers began in his usual unpromising
way, by stating a few nearly self-evident propositions,
neither in the choicest language, nor in the most impressive
voice. “If this be all,” said Canning to his
companion, “it will never do.” Chalmers went on—the45
shuffling of the conversation gradually subsided. He
got into the mass of his subject; his weakness became
strength, his hesitation was turned into energy; and,
bringing the whole volume of his mind to bear upon
it, he poured forth a torrent of the most close and
conclusive argument, brilliant with all the exuberance
of an imagination which ranged over all nature for
illustrations, and yet managed and applied each of
them with the same unerring dexterity, as if that single
one had been the study of a whole life. “The tartan
beats us,” said Mr. Canning; “we have no preaching
like that in England.”

ROMILLY AND BROUGHAM.

Hallam’s History of the Middle Ages was the last
book of any importance read by Sir Samuel Romilly.
Of this excellent work he formed the highest opinion,
and recommended its immediate perusal to Lord
Brougham, as a contrast to his dry Letter on the
Abuses of Charities, in respect of the universal interest
of the subject. Yet, Sir Samuel undervalued the
Letter, for it ran through eight editions in one month.

PHYSIOGNOMY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONISTS.

It is remarkable, (says Bulwer, in his Zanoni,) that
most of the principal actors of the French Revolution
were singularly hideous in appearance—from the
colossal ugliness of Mirabeau and Danton, or the46
villanous ferocity in the countenances of David and
Simon, to the filthy squalor of Marat, and the sinister
and bilious meanness of the Dictator’s features. But
Robespierre, who was said to resemble a cat, and had
also a cat’s cleanliness, was prim and dainty in dress,
shaven smoothness, and the womanly whiteness of his
hands. Réné Dumas, born of reputable parents, and
well educated, despite his ferocity, was not without a
certain refinement, which perhaps rendered him the
more acceptable to the precise Robespierre. Dumas
was a beau in his way: his gala-dress was a blood-red
coat, with the finest ruffles. But Henriot had been a
lacquey, a thief, a spy of the police; he had drank the
blood of Madame de Lamballe, and had risen for no
quality but his ruffianism; and Fouquier Tinville,
the son of a provincial agriculturist, and afterwards a
clerk at the bureau of the police, was little less base in
his manners, and yet more, from a certain loathsome
buffoonery, revolting in his speech; bull-headed, with
black, sleek hair, with a narrow and livid forehead,
and small eyes that twinkled with sinister malice;
strongly and coarsely built, he looked what he was,
the audacious bully of a lawless and relentless bar.

DEATH OF SIR CHARLES BELL.

This distinguished surgeon died suddenly on April 29,
1842, at Hallow Park, near Worcester, while on his
way to Malvern. He was out sketching on the 28th,
being particularly pleased with the village church, and
some fine trees which are beside it; observing that he47
should like to repose there when he was gone. Just
four days after this sentiment had been expressed, his
mortal remains were accordingly deposited beside the
rustic graves which had attracted his notice, and so
recently occupied his pencil. There is a painful admonition
in this fulfilment.

CLASSIC PUN.

It was suggested to a distinguished gourmet, what a
capital thing a dish all fins (turbot’s fins) might be
made. “Capital,” said he; “dine with me on it to-morrow.”
“Accepted.” Would you believe it? when
the cover was removed, the sacrilegious dog of an
Amphytrion had put into the dish “Cicero De finibus”
“There is a work all fins,” said he.

POETRY OF THE SEA.

Campbell was a great lover of submarine prospects.
“Often in my boyhood,” says the poet, “when the
day has been bright and the sea transparent, I have
sat by the hour on a Highland rock admiring the
golden sands, the emerald weeds, and the silver shells
at the bottom of the bay beneath, till, dreaming about
the grottoes of the Nereids, I would not have exchanged
my pleasure for that of a connoisseur poring
over a landscape by Claude or Poussin. Enchanting
nature! thy beauty is not only in heaven and earth, but
in the waters under our feet. How magnificent a medium
of vision is the pellucid sea! Is it not like poetry,
that embellishes every object that we contemplate?”48

“FELON LITERATURE.”

One of the most stinging reproofs of perverted literary
taste, evidently aimed at Newgate Calendar literature,
appeared in the form of a valentine, in No.
31 of Punch, in 1842.

The valentine itself reminds one of Churchill’s muse;
and it needs no finger to tell where its withering satire
is pointed:—

“Illustrious scribe! whose vivid genius strays
‘Mid Drury’s stews to incubate her lays,
And in St. Giles’s slang conveys her tropes,
Wreathing the poet’s lines with hangmen’s ropes;
You who conceive ’tis poetry to teach
The sad bravado of a dying speech;
Or, when possessed with a sublimer mood,
Show “Jack o’Dandies” dancing upon blood!
Crush bones—bruise flesh, recount each festering sore—
Rake up the plague-pit, write—and write in gore!
Or, when inspired to humanize mankind,
Where doth your soaring soul its subjects find?
Not ‘mid the scenes that simple Goldsmith sought,
And found a theme to elevate his thought;
But you, great scribe, more greedy of renown,
From Hounslow’s gibbet drag a hero down.
Imbue his mind with virtue; make him quote
Some moral truth before he cuts a throat.
Then wash his hands, and soaring o’er your craft—
Refresh the hero with a bloody draught:
And, fearing lest the world should miss the act,
With noble zeal italicize the fact.
Or would you picture woman meek and pure,
By love and virtue tutor’d to endure,
With cunning skill you take a felon’s trull,
Stuff her with sentiment, and scrunch her skull!
Oh! would your crashing, smashing, mashing pen were mine,
That I could “scorch your eyeballs” with my words,

My Valentine.”

 49

DEATH BED REVELATIONS.

Men before they die see and comprehend enigmas
hidden from them before. The greatest poet, and one
of the noblest thinkers of the last age, said on his death-bed:—”Many
things obscure to me before, now clear
up and become visible.”

STAMMERING WIT.

Stammering, (says Coleridge,) is sometimes the cause
of a pun. Some one was mentioning in Lamb’s presence
the cold-heartedness of the Duke of Cumberland,
in restraining the duchess from rushing up to the
embrace of her son, whom she had not seen for a considerable
time, and insisting on her receiving him in
state. “How horribly cold it was,” said the narrator.
“Yes,” said Lamb, in his stuttering way; “but you
know he is the Duke of Cu-cum-ber-land.”

ORIGIN OF BOTTLED ALE.

Alexander Newell, Dean of St. Paul’s, and Master
of Westminster School, in the reign of Queen Mary,
was an excellent angler. But Fuller says, while Newell
was catching of fishes, Bishop Bonner was catching of
Newell, and would certainly have sent him to the
shambles, had not a good London merchant conveyed
him away upon the seas. Newell was fishing upon
the banks of the Thames when he received the first
intimation of his danger, which was so pressing, that
he dared not go back to his own house to make any50
preparation for his flight. Like an honest angler, he
had taken with him provisions for the day; and when,
in the first year of England’s deliverance, he returned
to his country, and to his own haunts, he remembered
that on the day of his flight he had left a bottle of beer
in a safe place on the bank: there he looked for it,
and “found it no bottle, but a gun—such the sound at
the opening thereof; and this (says Fuller) is believed
(casualty is mother of more invention than industry)
to be the original of bottled ale in England.”

BAD’S THE BEST.

Canning was once asked by an English clergyman, at
whose parsonage he was visiting, how he liked the
sermon he had preached that morning. “Why, it
was a short sermon,” quoth Canning. “O yes,”
said the preacher, “you know I avoid being tedious.”
“Ah, but,” replied Canning, “you were tedious.”

LUDICROUS ESTIMATE OF MR. CANNING.

The Rev. Sydney Smith compares Mr. Canning in
office to a fly in amber: “nobody cares about the fly:
the only question is, how the devil did it get there?”
“Nor do I,” continues Smith, “attack him for the
love of glory, but from the love of utility, as a burgomaster
hunts a rat in a Dutch dyke, for fear it should
flood a province. When he is jocular, he is strong;
when he is serious, he is like Samson in a wig. Call
him a legislator, a reasoner, and the conductor of the51
affairs of a great nation, and it seems to me as absurd
as if a butterfly were to teach bees to make honey.
That he was an extraordinary writer of small poetry,
and a diner-out of the highest lustre, I do most readily
admit. After George Selwyn, and perhaps Tickell,
there has been no such man for the last half-century.”

THE AUTHORSHIP OF “WAVERLEY.”

Mrs. Murray Keith, a venerable Scotch lady, from
whom Sir Walter Scott derived many of the traditionary
stories and anecdotes wrought up in his novels,
taxed him one day with the authorship, which he, as
usual, stoutly denied. “What!” exclaimed the old
lady, “d’ye think I dinna ken my ain groats among
other folk’s kail?”

QUID PRO QUO.

Campbell relates:—”Turner, the painter, is a ready
wit. Once at a dinner where several artists, amateurs,
and literary men were convened, a poet, by way of
being facetious, proposed as a toast the health of the
painters and glaziers of Great Britain. The toast
was drunk; and Turner, after returning thanks for it,
proposed the health of the British paper-stainers.”

HOPE’S “ANASTASIUS.”

Lord Byron, in a conversation with the Countess of
Blessington, said that he wept bitterly over many pages
of Anastasius, and for two reasons: first, that he had52
not written it; and secondly, that Hope had; for it
was necessary to like a man excessively to pardon his
writing such a book; as, he said, excelling all recent
productions, as much in wit and talent as in true
pathos. Lord Byron added, that he would have given
his two most approved poems to have been the author
of Anastasius.

SMART REPARTEE.

Walpole relates, after an execution of eighteen malefactors,
a woman was hawking an account of them,
but called them nineteen. A gentleman said to her,
“Why do you say nineteen? there were but eighteen
hanged.” She replied, “Sir, I did not know you had
been reprieved.”

COLTON’S “LACON.”

This remarkable book was written upon covers of
letters and scraps of paper of such description as was
nearest at hand; the greater part at a house in
Princes-street, Soho. Colton’s lodging was a penuriously-furnished
second-floor, and upon a rough
deal table, with a stumpy pen, our author wrote.

Though a beneficed clergyman, holding the vicarage
of Kew, with Petersham, in Surrey, Colton was a well-known
frequenter of the gaming-table; and, suddenly
disappearing from his usual haunts in London about
the time of the murder of Weare, in 1823, it was
strongly suspected he had been assassinated. It was,
however, afterwards ascertained that he had absconded53
to avoid his creditors; and in 1828 a successor was
appointed to his living. He then went to reside in
America, but subsequently lived in Paris, a professed
gamester; and it is said that he thus gained, in two
years only, the sum of 25,000l. He blew out his
brains while on a visit to a friend at Fontainebleau, in
1832; bankrupt in health, spirits, and fortune.

BUNYAN’S COPY OF “THE BOOK OF MARTYRS.”

There is no book, except the Bible, which Bunyan is
known to have perused so intently as the Acts and
Monuments of John Fox, the martyrologist, one of the
best of men; a work more hastily than judiciously
compiled, but invaluable for that greater and far more
important portion which has obtained for it its popular
name of The Book of Martyrs. Bunyan’s own copy
of this work is in existence, and valued of course as
such a relic of such a man ought to be. It was purchased
in the year 1780, by Mr. Wantner, of the
Minories; from him it descended to his daughter,
Mrs. Parnell, of Botolph-lane; and it was afterwards
purchased, by subscription, for the Bedfordshire General
Library.

This edition of The Acts and Monuments is of the
date 1641, 3 vols, folio, the last of those in the black-letter,
and probably the latest when it came into
Bunyan’s hands. In each volume he has written his
name beneath the title-page, in a large and stout print-hand.
Under some of the woodcuts he has inserted
a few rhymes, which are undoubtedly his own composition;54
and which, though much in the manner of the
verses that were printed under the illustrations of his
own Pilgrim’s Progress, when that work was first
adorned with cuts, (verses worthy of such embellishments,)
are very much worse than even the worst of
those. Indeed, it would not be possible to find specimens
of more miserable doggerel.

Here is one of the Tinker’s tetrasticks, penned in
the margin, beside the account of Gardiner’s death:—

One of the signatures bears the date of 1662; but the
verses must undoubtedly have been some years earlier,
before the publication of his first tract. These curious
inscriptions must have been Bunyan’s first attempts in
verse: he had, no doubt, found difficulty enough in
tinkering them to make him proud of his work when
it was done; otherwise, he would not have written
them in a book which was the most valuable of all his
goods and chattels. In later days, he seems to have
taken this book for his art of poetry. His verses are
something below the pitch of Sternhold and Hopkins.
But if he learnt there to make bad verses, he entered
fully into the spirit of its better parts, and received that
spirit into as resolute a heart as ever beat in a martyr’s
bosom.²55

LITERARY LOCALITIES.

Leigh Hunt pleasantly says:—”I can no more pass
through Westminster, without thinking of Milton;
or the Borough, without thinking of Chaucer and
Shakspeare; or Gray’s Inn, without calling Bacon to
mind; or Bloomsbury-square, without Steele and
Akenside; than I can prefer brick and mortar to wit
and poetry, or not see a beauty upon it beyond architecture
in the splendour of the recollection. I once
had duties to perform which kept me out late at night,
and severely taxed my health and spirits. My path
lay through a neighbourhood in which Dryden lived,
and though nothing could be more common-place, and
I used to be tired to the heart and soul of me, I never
hesitated to go a little out of the way, purely that I
might pass through Gerard-street, and so give myself
the shadow of a pleasant thought.”

CREED OF LORD BOLINGBROKE.

Lord Brougham says:—”The dreadful malady under
which Bolingbroke long lingered, and at length sunk—a
cancer in the face—he bore with exemplary fortitude,
a fortitude drawn from the natural resources of
his vigorous mind, and unhappily not aided by the
consolations of any religion; for, having early cast off
the belief in revelation, he had substituted in its stead
a dark and gloomy naturalism, which even rejected
those glimmerings of hope as to futurity not untasted
by the wiser of the heathens.”56

Lord Chesterfield, in one of his letters, which has been
published by Earl Stanhope, says that Bolingbroke
only doubted, and by no means rejected, a future state.

BUNYAN’S PREACHING.

It is said that Owen, the divine, greatly admired Bunyan’s
preaching; and that, being asked by Charles II.
“how a learned man such as he could sit and listen to
an itinerant tinker?” he replied: “May it please
your Majesty, could I possess that tinker’s abilities
for preaching, I would most gladly relinquish all my
learning.”

HONE’S “EVERY-DAY BOOK.”

This popular work was commenced by its author after
he had renounced political satire for the more peaceful
study of the antiquities of our country. The publication
was issued in weekly sheets, and extended through
two years, 1824 and 1825. It was very successful,
the weekly sale being from 20,000 to 30,000 copies.

In 1830, Mr. Southey gave the following tribute to
the merits of the work, which it is pleasurable to record;
as these two writers, from their antipodean politics,
had not been accustomed to regard each other’s productions
with any favour. In closing his Life of John
Bunyan, Mr. Southey says:—

“In one of the volumes, collected from various quarters,
which were sent to me for this purpose, I observe
the name of William Hone, and notice it that I may
take the opportunity of recommending his57 Every-day
Book and Table Book to those who are interested in
the preservation of our national and local customs.
By these curious publications, their compiler has rendered
good service in an important department of
literature; and he may render yet more, if he obtain
the encouragement which he well deserves.”

BUNYAN’S ESCAPES.

Bunyan had some providential escapes during his
early life. Once, he fell into a creek of the sea,
once out of a boat into the river Ouse, near Bedford,
and each time he was narrowly saved from drowning.
One day, an adder crossed his path. He stunned
it with a stick, then forced open its mouth with
a stick and plucked out the tongue, which he supposed
to be the sting, with his fingers; “by which
act,” he says, “had not God been merciful unto
me, I might, by my desperateness, have brought
myself to an end.” If this, indeed, were an adder,
and not a harmless snake, his escape from the fangs
was more remarkable than he himself was aware of.
A circumstance, which was likely to impress him
more deeply, occurred in the eighteenth year of his
age, when, being a soldier in the Parliament’s army,
he was drawn out to go to the siege of Leicester, in
1645. One of the same company wished to go in
his stead; Bunyan consented to exchange with him,
and this volunteer substitute, standing sentinel one
day at the siege, was shot through the head with a
musket-ball. “This risk,” Sir Walter Scott observes,58
“was one somewhat resembling the escape of Sir
Roger de Coverley, in an action at Worcester, who
was saved from the slaughter of that action, by having
been absent from the field.”—Southey.

DROLLERY SPONTANEOUS.

More drolleries are uttered unintentionally than by
premeditation. There is no such thing as being “droll
to order.” One evening a lady said to a small wit,
“Come, Mr. ——, tell us a lively anecdote;” and the
poor fellow was mute the rest of the evening.

“Favour me with your company on Wednesday
evening—you are such a lion,” said a weak party-giver
to a young littérateur. “I thank you,” replied the
wit, “but, on that evening I am engaged to eat fire at
the Countess of ——, and stand upon my head at
Mrs. ——.”

ORIGIN OF COWPER’S “JOHN GILPIN.”

It happened one afternoon, in those years when Cowper’s
accomplished friend, Lady Austen, made a part of
his little evening circle, that she observed him sinking
into increased dejection; it was her custom, on these
occasions, to try all the resources of her sprightly
powers for his immediate relief. She told him the
story of John Gilpin, (which had been treasured in
her memory from her childhood), to dissipate the
gloom of the passing hour. Its effects on the fancy
of Cowper had the air of enchantment. He informed59
her the next morning that convulsions of laughter,
brought on by his recollection of her story, had kept
him waking during the greatest part of the night!
and that he had turned it into a ballad. So arose the
pleasant poem of John Gilpin. To Lady Austen’s
suggestion, also, we are indebted for the poem of “the
Task.”

HARD FATE OF AUTHORS.

Sir E. B. (now Lord) Lytton, in the memoir which he
prefixed to the collected works of Laman Blanchard,
draws the following affecting picture of that author’s
position, after he had parted from an engagement upon
a popular newspaper:—

“For the author there is nothing but his pen, till that and life
are worn to the stump: and then, with good fortune, perhaps
on his death-bed he receives a pension—and equals, it may be,
for a few months, the income of a retired butler! And, so on
the sudden loss of the situation in which he had frittered away
his higher and more delicate genius, in all the drudgery that a
party exacts from its defender of the press, Laman Blanchard
was thrown again upon the world, to shift as he might and subsist
as he could. His practice in periodical writing was now
considerable; his versatility was extreme. He was marked by
publishers and editors as a useful contributor, and so his livelihood
was secure. From a variety of sources thus he contrived,
by constant waste of intellect and strength, to eke out his income,
and insinuate rather than force his place among his contemporary
penmen. And uncomplainingly, and with patient
industry, he toiled on, seeming farther and farther off from the
happy leisure, in which ‘the something to verify promise was to
be completed.’ No time had he for profound reading, for
lengthened works, for the mature development of the conceptions
of a charming fancy. He had given hostages to fortune.
He had a wife and four children, and no income but that which
he made from week to week. The grist must be ground, and
the wheel revolve. All the struggle, all the toils, all the weariness60
of brain, nerve, and head, which a man undergoes in his
career, are imperceptible even to his friends—almost to himself;
he has no time to be ill, to be fatigued; his spirit has no holiday;
it is all school-work. And thus, generally, we find in
such men that the break up of the constitution seems sudden
and unlooked-for. The causes of disease and decay have been
long laid; but they are smothered beneath the lively appearances
of constrained industry and forced excitement.”

JAMES SMITH, ONE OF THE AUTHORS OF
“REJECTED ADDRESSES.”

A writer in the Law Quarterly Magazine says:—To
the best of our information, James’s coup d’essai in
literature was a hoax in the shape of a series of letters
to the editor of the Gentleman’s Magazine, detailing
some extraordinary antiquarian discoveries and facts in
natural history, which the worthy Sylvanus Urban
inserted without the least suspicion. In 1803, he became
a constant contributor to the Pic-Nic and Cabinet
weekly journals, in conjunction with Mr. Cumberland,
Sir James Bland Burgess, Mr. Horatio Smith, and
others. The principal caterer for these publications
was Colonel Greville, on whom Lord Byron has conferred
a not very enviable immortality—

One of James Smith’s favourite anecdotes related to
him. The Colonel requested his young ally to call at
his lodgings, and in the course of their first interview
related the particulars of the most curious circumstance
in his life. He was taken prisoner during the61
American war, along with three other officers of the
same rank; one evening they were summoned into
the presence of Washington, who announced to them
that the conduct of their Government, in condemning
one of his officers to death as a rebel, compelled him
to make reprisals; and that, much to his regret, he
was under the necessity of requiring them to cast lots,
without delay, to decide which of them should be
hanged. They were then bowed out, and returned to
their quarters. Four slips of paper were put into a
hat, and the shortest was drawn by Captain Asgill,
who exclaimed, “I knew how it would be; I never
won so much as a hit of backgammon in my life.”
As Greville told the story, he was selected to sit up
with Captain Asgill, under the pretext of companionship,
but, in reality, to prevent him from escaping, and
leaving the honour amongst the remaining three.
“And what,” inquired Smith, “did you say to comfort
him?” “Why, I remember saying to him, when
they left us, D—— it, old fellow, never mind;” but it
may be doubted (added Smith) whether he drew much
comfort from the exhortation. Lady Asgill persuaded
the French minister to interpose, and the captain
was permitted to escape.

Both James and Horatio Smith were also contributors
to the Monthly Mirror, then the property of Mr.
Thomas Hill, a gentleman who had the good fortune
to live familiarly with three or four generations
of authors; the same, in short, with whom the subject
of this memoir thus playfully remonstrated: “Hill, you
take an unfair advantage of an accident; the register62
of your birth was burnt in the great fire of London,
and you now give yourself out for younger than you
are.”

The fame of the Smiths, however, was confined to
a limited circle until the publication of the Rejected
Addresses, which rose at once into almost unprecedented
celebrity.

James Smith used to dwell with much pleasure on
the criticism of a Leicestershire clergyman: “I do
not see why they (the Addresses) should have been
rejected: I think some of them very good.” This,
he would add, is almost as good as the avowal of the
Irish bishop, that there were some things in Gulliver’s
Travels which he could not believe.

Though never guilty of intemperance, James was a
martyr to the gout; and, independently of the difficulty
he experienced in locomotion, he partook largely
of the feeling avowed by his old friend Jekyll, who
used to say that, if compelled to live in the country,
he would have the drive before his house paved like
the streets of London, and hire a hackney-coach to
drive up and down all day long.

He used to tell, with great glee, a story showing
the general conviction of his dislike to ruralities. He
was sitting in the library at a country-house, when a
gentleman proposed a quiet stroll into the pleasure-grounds:—

His bachelorship is thus attested in his niece’s
album:

The two following are amongst the best of his good
things. A gentleman with the same Christian and
surname took lodgings in the same house. The consequence
was, eternal confusion of calls and letters.
Indeed, the postman had no alternative but to share the
letters equally between the two. “This is intolerable,
sir,” said our friend, “and you must quit.” “Why am
I to quit more than you?” “Because you are
James the Second—and must abdicate.”

Mr. Bentley proposed to establish a periodical publication,
to be called The Wit’s Miscellany. Smith
objected that the title promised too much. Shortly
afterwards, the publisher came to tell him that he had
profited by the hint, and resolved on calling it Bentley’s
Miscellany. “Isn’t that going a little too far the
other way?” was the remark.

A capital pun has been very generally attributed to
him. An actor, named Priest, was playing at one of
the principal theatres. Some one remarked at the
Garrick Club, that there were a great many men in
the pit. “Probably, clerks who have taken Priest’s
orders.” The pun is perfect, but the real proprietor64
is Mr. Poole, one of the best punsters as well as one
of the cleverest comic writers and finest satirists of the
day. It has also been attributed to Charles Lamb.

Formerly, it was customary, on emergencies, for the
judges to swear affidavits at their dwelling-houses.
Smith was desired by his father to attend a judge’s
chambers for that purpose, but being engaged to dine
in Russell-square, at the next house to Mr. Justice
Holroyd’s, he thought he might as well save himself
the disagreeable necessity of leaving the party at eight
by dispatching his business at once: so, a few minutes
before six, he boldly knocked at the judge’s, and requested
to speak to him on particular business. The
judge was at dinner, but came down without delay,
swore the affidavit, and then gravely asked what was
the pressing necessity that induced our friend to disturb
him at that hour. As Smith told the story, he
raked his invention for a lie, but finding none fit for
the purpose, he blurted out the truth:—

Smith was rather fond of a joke on his own branch
of the profession; he always gave a peculiar emphasis
to the line in his song on the contradiction of names:

and would frequently quote Goldsmith’s lines on65
Hickey, the associate of Burke and other distinguished
cotemporaries:

The following playful colloquy in verse took place
at a dinner-table between Sir George Rose and himself,
in allusion to Craven-street, Strand, where he
resided:—

CONTEMPORARY COPYRIGHTS.

The late Mr. Tegg, the publisher in Cheapside, gave
the following list of remunerative payments to distinguished
authors in his time; and he is believed to
have taken considerable pains to verify the items:

Fragments of History, by Charles Fox, sold by
Lord Holland, for 5000 guineas. Fragments of History,
by Sir James Mackintosh, 500l. Lingard’s History
of England, 4683l. Sir Walter Scott’s Bonaparte
was sold, with the printed books, for 18,000l.; the net
receipts of copyright on the first two editions only
must have been 10,000l. Life of Wilberforce, by his66
sons, 4000 guineas. Life of Byron, by Moore, 4000l.
Life of Sheridan, by Moore, 2000l. Life of Hannah
More, 2000l. Life of Cowper, by Southey, 1000l.
Life and Times of George IV., by Lady C. Bury,
1000l. Byron’s Works, 20,000l. Lord of the Isles,
half share, 1500l. Lalla Rookh, by Moore, 3000l.
Rejected Addresses, by Smith, 1000l. Crabbe’s Works,
republication of, by Mr. Murray, 3000l. Wordsworth’s
Works, republication of, by Mr. Moxon,
1050l. Bulwer’s Rienzi, 1600l. Marryat’s Novels, 500l.
to 1500l. each. Trollope’s Factory Boy, 1800l. Hannah
More derived 30,000l. per annum for her copyrights,
during the latter years of her life. Rundell’s Domestic
Cookery, 2000l. Nicholas Nickleby, 3000l. Eustace’s
Classical Tour, 2100l. Sir Robert Inglis obtained for
the beautiful and interesting widow of Bishop Heber,
by the sale of his journal, 5000l.

MISS BURNEY’S “EVELINA.”

The story of Evelina being printed when the authoress
was but seventeen years old is proved to have been
sheer invention, to trumpet the work into notoriety;
since it has no more truth in it than a paid-for newspaper
puff. The year of Miss Burney’s birth was long
involved in studied obscurity, and thus the deception
lasted, until one fine day it was ascertained, by reference
to the register of the authoress’ birth, that she
was a woman of six or seven-and-twenty, instead of a
“Miss in her teens,” when she wrote Evelina. The67
story of her father’s utter ignorance of the work
being written by her, and recommending her to read
it, as an exception to the novel class, has also been
essentially modified. Miss Burney, (then Madame
D’Arblay,) is said to have taken the characters in her
novel of Camilla from the family of Mr. Lock, of
Norbury Park, who built for Gen. D’Arblay the
villa in which the work was written, and which to
this day is called “Camilla Lacy.” By this novel,
Madame D’Arblay is said to have realized 3000
guineas.

EPITAPH ON CHARLES LAMB.

Lamb lies buried in Edmonton churchyard, and the
stone bears the following lines to his memory, written
by his friend, the Rev. H. F. Cary, the erudite translator
of Dante and Pindar:—

Lamb survived his earliest friend and school-fellow,
Coleridge, only a few months. One morning he showed
to a friend the mourning ring which the author of
Christabelle had left him. “Poor fellow!” exclaimed68
Lamb, “I have never ceased to think of him from the
day I first heard of his death.” Lamb died in five days
after—December 27, 1834, in his fifty-ninth year.

“TOM CRINGLE’S LOG.”

The author of this very successful work, (originally
published in Blackwood’s Magazine,) was a Mr. Mick
Scott, born in Edinburgh in 1789, and educated at
the High School. Several years of his life were spent
in the West Indies. He ultimately married, returned
to his native country, and there embarked in commercial
speculations, in the leisure between which he wrote
the Log. Notwithstanding its popularity in Europe
and America, the author preserved his incognito to
the last. He survived his publisher for some years,
and it was not till Mr. Scott’s death that the sons of
Mr. Blackwood were aware of his name.

CHANCES FOR THE DRAMA.

The royal patent, by which the performance of the
regular drama was restricted to certain theatres, does
not appear to have fostered this class of writing. Dr.
Johnson forced Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer
into the theatre. Tobin died regretting that he could
not succeed in hearing the Honeymoon performed.
Lillo produced George Barnwell (an admirably written
play) at an irregular theatre, after it had been rejected
by the holders of the patents. Douglas was cast on
Home’s hands. Fielding was introduced as a dramatist69
at an unlicensed house; and one of Mrs. Inchbald’s
popular comedies had lain two years neglected, when,
by a trifling accident, she was able to obtain the
manager’s approval.

FULLER’S MEMORY.

Marvellous anecdotes are related of Dr. Thomas
Fuller’s memory. Thus, it is stated that he undertook
once, in passing to and from Temple Bar to the
farthest conduit in Cheapside, to tell at his return every
sign as they stood in order on both sides of the way,
repeating them either backward or forward. This
must have been a great feat, seeing that every house
then bore a sign. Yet, Fuller himself decried this
kind of thing as a trick, no art. He relates that one
(who since wrote a book thereof) told him, before
credible people, that he, in Sidney College, had taught
him (Fuller) the art of memory. Fuller replied that
it was not so, for he could not remember that he had
ever seen him before; “which, I conceive,” adds
Fuller, “was a real refutation;” and we think so, too.

LORD HERVEY’S WIT.

Horace Walpole records Lord Hervey’s memorable
saying about Lord Burlington’s pretty villa at Chiswick,
now the Duke of Devonshire’s, that it was “too
small to inhabit, and too large to hang to your watch;”
and Lady Louisa Stuart has preserved a piece of
dandyism in eating, which even Beau Brummell might70
have envied—”When asked at dinner whether he
would have some beef, he answered, ‘Beef? oh, no!
faugh! don’t you know I never eat beef, nor horse,
nor any of those things?'”—The man that said these
things was the successful lover of the prettiest maid
of honour to the Princess of Wales—the person held
up to everlasting ridicule by Pope—the vice-chamberlain
whose attractions engaged the affections of the
daughter of the Sovereign he served; and the peer
whose wit was such that it “charmed the charming
Mary Montague.”

ANACREONTIC INVITATION, BY MOORE.

The following, one of the latest productions of the
poet Moore, addressed to the Marquis of Lansdowne,
shows that though by that time inclining to threescore
and ten, he retained all the fire and vivacity of early
youth. It is full of those exquisitely apt allusions and
felicitous turns of expression in which the English
Anacreon excels. It breathes the very spirit of classic
festivity. Such an invitation to dinner is enough to
create an appetite in any lover of poetry:—

THE POETS IN A PUZZLE.

Cottle, in his Life of Coleridge, relates the following
amusing incident:—

“I led the horse to the stable, when a fresh perplexity
arose. I removed the harness without difficulty;
but, after many strenuous attempts, I could not
remove the collar. In despair, I called for assistance,
when aid soon drew near. Mr. Wordsworth brought
his ingenuity into exercise; but, after several unsuccessful
efforts, he relinquished the achievement, as a
thing altogether impracticable. Mr. Coleridge now
tried his hand, but showed no more grooming skill
than his predecessors; for, after twisting the poor
horse’s neck almost to strangulation and the great72
danger of his eyes, he gave up the useless task, pronouncing
that the horse’s head must have grown (gout
or dropsy?) since the collar was put on; for he said ‘it
was a downright impossibility for such a huge os
frontis to pass through so narrow a collar!’ Just at
this instant, a servant-girl came near, and, understanding
the cause of our consternation, ‘La! master,’ said
she, ‘you don’t go about the work in the right way.
You should do like this,’ when, turning the collar
completely upside down, she slipped it off in a moment,
to our great humiliation and wonderment, each satisfied
afresh that there were heights of knowledge in the
world to which we had not yet attained.”

SALE OF MAGAZINES.

Sir John Hawkins, in his “Memoirs of Johnson,”
ascribes the decline of literature to the ascendancy of
frivolous Magazines, between the years 1740 and 1760.
He says that they render smatterers conceited, and
confer the superficial glitter of knowledge instead of
its substance.

Sir Richard Phillips, upwards of forty years a publisher,
gives the following evidence as to the sale of
the Magazines in his time:—

“For my own part, I know that in 1790, and for
many years previously, there were sold of the trifle
called the Town and Country Magazine, full 15,000
copies per month; and, of another, the Ladies’ Magazine,
from 16,000 to 22,000. Such circumstances
were, therefore, calculated to draw forth the observations73
of Hawkins. The Gentleman’s Magazine, in its
days of popular extracts, never rose above 10,000;
after it became more decidedly antiquarian, it fell in
sale, and continued for many years at 3000.

“The veriest trifles, and only such, move the mass
of minds which compose the public. The sale of the
Town and Country Magazine was created by a fictitious
article, called Bon-Ton, in which were given the
pretended amours of two personages, imagined to be
real, with two sham portraits. The idea was conceived,
and, for above twenty years, was executed by
Count Carraccioli; but, on his death, about 1792, the
article lost its spirit, and within seven years the magazine
was discontinued. The Ladies’ Magazine was,
in like manner, sustained by love-tales and its low
price of sixpence, which, till after 1790, was the general
price of magazines.”

Things have now taken a turn unlooked for in those
days. The price of most magazines, it is true, is still
more than sixpence—usually a shilling, and at that
price the Cornhill in some months reached an impression
of 120,000; but the circulation of Good
Words, at sixpence, has touched 180,000, and continues,
we believe, to be over 100,000.

MRS. SOUTHEY.

And who was Mrs. Southey?—who but she who was
so long known, and so great a favourite, as Caroline
Bowles; transformed by the gallantry of the laureate,
and the grace of the parson, into her matrimonial74
appellation. Southey, so long ago as the 21st of February,
1829, prefaced his most amatory poem of All for Love,
with a tender address, that is now, perhaps, worth reprinting:—

The laureate had his wish; for in duty, he was bound
to say, that worthier strains than his bore inscribed
the name of Caroline connected with his own—and,
moreover, she was something more than a dear friend
and sister poetess.

“The laureate,” observes a writer in Fraser’s Magazine,
“is a fortunate man; his queen supplies him
with butts (alluding to the laureateship), and his lady
with Bowls: then may his cup of good fortune be
overflowing.”

DEVOTION TO SCIENCE.

M. Agassiz, the celebrated palæontologist, is known
to have relinquished pursuits from which he might
have been in the receipt of a considerable income, and75
all for the sake of science. Dr. Buckland knew him,
when engaged in this arduous career, with the revenue
of only 100l.: and of this he paid fifty pounds to
artists for drawings, thirty pounds for books, and
lived himself on the remaining twenty pounds a year!
Thus did he raise himself to an elevated European
rank; and, in his abode, au troisième, was the companion
and friend of princes, ambassadors, and men of the
highest rank and talent of every country.

DISADVANTAGEOUS CORRECTION.

Lord North had little reason to congratulate himself
when he ventured on an interruption with Burke. In
a debate on some economical question, Burke was
guilty of a false quantity—”Magnum vectĭgal est parsimonia.”
“Vectīgal,” said the minister, in an audible
under-tone. “I thank the noble lord for his correction,”
resumed the orator, “since it gives me the
opportunity of repeating the inestimable adage—”Magnum
vectīgal est parsimonia.” (Parsimony is a
great revenue.)

PATRONAGE OF LITERATURE.

When Victor Hugo was an aspirant for the honours
of the French Academy, and called on M. Royer
Collard to ask his vote, the sturdy veteran professed
entire ignorance of his name. “I am the author of
Notre Dame de Paris, Les Derniers Jours d’un Condamné,
Bug-Jargal, Marian Delorme, &c.” “I never
heard of any of them,” said Collard. “Will you do76
me the honour of accepting a copy of my works?”
said Victor Hugo. “I never read new books,” was
the cutting reply.

DR. JOHNSON’S WIGS.

Dr. Johnson’s wigs were in general very shabby,
and their fore-parts were burned away by the near
approach of the candle, which his short-sightedness
rendered necessary in reading. At Streatham, Mr.
Thrale’s butler always had a wig ready; and as Johnson
passed from the drawing-room, when dinner was
announced, the servant would remove the ordinary
wig, and replace it with the newer one; and this ludicrous
ceremony was performed every day.—Croker.

SHERIDAN’S “PIZARRO.”

Mr. Pitt was accustomed to relate very pleasantly
an amusing anecdote of a total breach of memory in
some Mrs. Lloyd, a lady, or nominal housekeeper, of
Kensington Palace. “Being in company,” he said,
“with Mr. Sheridan, without recollecting him, while
Pizarro was the topic of discussion, she said to him,
‘And so this fine Pizarro is printed?’ ‘Yes, so I
hear,’ said Sherry. ‘And did you ever in your life
read such stuff?’ cried she. ‘Why I believe it’s bad
enough,’ quoth Sherry; ‘but at least, madam, you must
allow it’s very loyal.’ ‘Ah!’ cried she, shaking her
head—’loyal? you don’t know its author as well as
I do.'”77

DR. JOHNSON IN LONDON.

The following were Dr. Johnson’s several places of
residence in and near London:—

REGALITY OF GENIUS.

Gibbon, when speaking of his own genealogy, refers
to the fact of Fielding being of the same family as the
Earl of Denbigh, who, in common with the Imperial
family of Austria, is descended from the celebrated
Rodolph, of Hapsburgh. “While the one branch,” he
says, “have contented themselves with being sheriffs
of Leicestershire, and justices of the peace, the others
have been emperors of Germany and kings of Spain;
but the magnificent romance of Tom Jones will be
read with pleasure, when the palace of the Escurial is
in ruins, and the Imperial Eagle of Austria is rolling
in the dust.”78

FIELDING’S “TOM JONES.”

Fielding having finished the manuscript of Tom
Jones, and being at the time hard pressed for money
took it to a second-rate publisher, with the view of selling
it for what it would fetch at the moment. He left it
with the trader, and called upon him next day for his
decision. The bookseller hesitated, and requested
another day for consideration; and at parting, Fielding
offered him the MS. for 25l.

On his way home, Fielding met Thomson, the poet,
whom he told of the negotiation for the sale of the
MS.; when Thomson, knowing the high merit of the
work, conjured him to be off the bargain, and offered
to find a better purchaser.

Next morning, Fielding hastened to his appointment,
with as much apprehension lest the bookseller should
stick to his bargain as he had felt the day before lest
he should altogether decline it. To the author’s great
joy, the ignorant trafficker in literature declined, and
returned the MS. to Fielding. He next set off, with
a light heart, to his friend Thomson; and the novelist
and the poet then went to Andrew Millar, the great
publisher of the day. Millar, as was his practice with
works of light reading, handed the MS. to his wife,
who, having read it, advised him by no means to let it
slip through his fingers.

Millar now invited the two friends to meet him at a
coffee-house in the Strand, where, after dinner, the
bookseller, with great caution, offered Fielding 200l.
for the MS. The novelist was amazed at the largeness79
of the offer. “Then, my good sir,” said Fielding,
recovering himself from his unexpected stroke of good
fortune, “give me your hand—the book is yours. And,
waiter,” continued he, “bring a couple of bottles of
your best port.”

Before Millar died, he had cleared eighteen thousand
pounds by Tom Jones, out of which he generously
made Fielding various presents, to the amount of
2000l.; and he closed his life by bequeathing a handsome
legacy to each of Fielding’s sons.

VOLTAIRE AND FERNEY.

The showman’s work is very profitable at the country-house
of Voltaire, at Ferney, near Geneva. A Genevese,
an excellent calculator, as are all his countrymen,
many years ago valued as follows the yearly profit
derived by the above functionary from his situation:—

CLEAN HANDS.

Lord Brougham, during his indefatigable canvass of
Yorkshire, in the course of which he often addressed
ten or a dozen meetings in a day, thought fit to80
harangue the electors of Leeds immediately on his
arrival, after travelling all night, and without waiting
to perform his customary ablutions. “These hands
are clean!” cried he, at the conclusion of a diatribe
against corruption; but they happened to be very dirty,
and this practical contradiction raised a hearty laugh.

MODERATE FLATTERY.

Jasper Mayne says of Master Cartwright, the author
of tolerable comedies and poems, printed in 1651:—

EVERY-DAY LIFE OF JAMES SMITH.

“One of the Authors of the Rejected Addresses” thus
writes to a friend:³—

“Let me enlighten you as to the general disposal of
my time. I breakfast at nine, with a mind undisturbed
by matters of business; I then write to you, or
to some editor, and then read till three o’clock. I then
walk to the Union Club, read the journals, hear Lord
John Russell deified or diablerized, (that word is not
a bad coinage,) do the same with Sir Robert Peel or
the Duke of Wellington; and then join a knot of conversationists
by the fire till six o’clock, consisting of
lawyers, merchants, members of Parliament, and
gentlemen at large. We then and there discuss the
three per cent. consols, (some of us preferring Dutch81
two-and-a-half per cent.), and speculate upon the probable
rise, shape, and cost of the New Exchange. If
Lady Harrington happen to drive past our window
in her landau, we compare her equipage to the Algerine
Ambassador’s; and when politics happen to be discussed,
rally Whigs, Radicals, and Conservatives alternately,
but never seriously,—such subjects having a
tendency to create acrimony. At six, the room begins
to be deserted; wherefore I adjourn to the dining-room,
and gravely looking over the bill of fare, exclaim
to the waiter, ‘Haunch of mutton and apple tart.’
These viands despatched, with the accompanying
liquids and water, I mount upward to the library,
take a book and my seat in the arm-chair, and read
till nine. Then call for a cup of coffee and a biscuit,
resuming my book till eleven; afterwards return home
to bed. If I have any book here which particularly
excites my attention, I place my lamp on a table by
my bed-side, and read in bed until twelve. No danger
of ignition, my lamp being quite safe, and my curtains
moreen. Thus ‘ends this strange eventful history,'” &c.

FRENCH-ENGLISH JEU-DE-MOT.

The celebrated Mrs. Thicknesse undertook to construct
a letter, every word of which should be French,
yet no Frenchman should be able to read it; while
an illiterate Englishman or Englishwoman should decipher
it with ease. Here is the specimen of the lady’s
ingenuity:—

“Pre, dire sistre, comme and se us, and pass the de82
here if yeux canne, and chat tu my dame, and dine
here; and yeux mai go to the faire if yeux plaise;
yeux mai have fiche, muttin, porc, buter, foule, hair,
fruit, pigeon, olives, sallette, forure diner, and excellent
te, cafe, port vin, an liqueurs; and tell ure bette
and poll to comme; and Ile go tu the faire and visite
the Baron. But if yeux dont comme tu us, Ile go to
ure house and se oncle, and se houe he does; for mi
dame se he bean ill; but deux comme; mi dire yeux
canne ly here yeux nos; if yeux love musique, yeux
mai have the harp, lutte, or viol heere. Adieu, mi
dire sistre.”

RELICS OF IZAAK WALTON.

Flatman’s beautiful lines to Walton, (says Mr. Jesse)
commencing—

have always struck us as conveying a true picture of
Walton’s character, and of the estimation in which he
was held after the appearance of his “Angler.”

The last male descendant of our “honest father,”
the Rev. Dr. Herbert Hawes, died in 1839. He very
liberally bequeathed the beautiful painting of Walton,
by Houseman, to the National Gallery; and it is a
curious fact, as showing the estimation in which anything
connected with Walton is held in the present
day, that the lord of the manor in which Dr. Hawes
resided, laid claim to this portrait as a heriot, though83
not successfully. Dr. Hawes also bequeathed the
greater portion of his library to the Dean and Chapter
of Salisbury; and his executor and friend presented
the celebrated prayer-book, which was Walton’s, to
Mr. Pickering, the publisher. The watch which
belonged to Walton’s connexion, the excellent Bishop
Ken, has been presented to his amiable biographer,
the Rev. W. Lisle Bowles.

Walton died at the house of his son-in-law, Dr.
Hawkins, at Winchester. He was buried in Winchester
Cathedral, in the south aisle, called Prior Silkstead’s
Chapel. A large black marble slab is placed
over his remains; and, to use the poetical language of
Mr. Bowles, “the morning sunshine falls directly on
it, reminding the contemplative man of the mornings
when he was, for so many years, up and abroad with
his angle, on the banks of the neighbouring stream.”

PRAISE OF ALE.

Dr. Still, though Bishop of Bath and Wells, seems
not to have been over fond of water; for thus he
sings:—

 84

DANGEROUS FOOLS.

Sydney Smith writes:—If men are to be fools, it
were better that they were fools in little matters than
in great; dulness, turned up with temerity, is a livery
all the worse for the facings; and the most tremendous
of all things is a magnanimous dunce.

BULWER’S POMPEIAN DRAWING-ROOM.

In 1841, the author of Pelham lived in Charles-street,
Berkeley-square, in a small house, which he fitted up
after his own taste; and an odd melée of the classic and
the baronial certain of the rooms presented. One of
the drawing-rooms, we remember, was in the Elizabethan
style, with an imitative oak ceiling, bristled
with pendents; and this room opened into another
apartment, a facsimile of a chamber which Bulwer
had visited at Pompeii, with vases, candelabra, and
other furniture to correspond.

James Smith has left a few notes of his visit here:
“Our host,” he says, “lighted a perfumed pastile,
modelled from Vesuvius. As soon as the cone of the
mountain began to blaze, I found myself an inhabitant
of the devoted city; and, as Pliny the elder, thus addressed
Bulwer, my supposed nephew:—’Our fate
is accomplished, nephew! Hand me yonder volume!
I shall die as a student in my vocation. Do thou
hasten to take refuge on board the fleet at Misenum.
Yonder cloud of hot ashes chides thy longer
delay. Feel no alarm for me; I shall live in85
story. The author of Pelham will rescue my name
from oblivion.’ Pliny the younger made me a low
bow, &c.” We strongly suspect James of quizzing
“our host.” He noted, by the way, in the chamber
were the busts of Hebe, Laura, Petrarch, Dante, and
other worthies; Laura like our Queen.

STERNE’S SERMONS.

Sterne’s sermons are, in general, very short, which
circumstance gave rise to the following joke at Bull’s
Library, at Bath:—A footman had been sent by his
lady to purchase one of Smallridge’s sermons, when,
by mistake, he asked for a small religious sermon. The
bookseller being puzzled how to reply to his request,
a gentleman present suggested, “Give him one of
Sterne’s.”

It has been observed, that if Sterne had never written
one line more than his picture of the mournful
cottage, towards the conclusion of his fifth sermon,
we might cheerfully indulge the devout hope that the
recording angel, whom he once invoked, will have
blotted out many of his imperfections.

“TOM HILL.”

A few days before the close of 1840, London lost
one of its choicest spirits, and humanity one of her
kindest-hearted sons, in the death of Thomas Hill, Esq.—”Tom
Hill,” as he was called by all who loved and86
knew him. His life exemplified one venerable proverb,
and disproved another; he was born in May,
1760, and was, consequently, in his 81st year, and
“as old as the hills;” having led a long life and a
merry one. He was originally a drysalter; but about
the year 1810, having sustained a severe loss by a
speculation in indigo, he retired upon the remains of
his property to chambers in the Adelphi, where he
died; his physician remarking to him, “I can do no
more for you—I have done all I can. I cannot cure
age.”

Hill, when in business at the unlettered Queenhithe,
found leisure to accumulate a fine collection of
books, chiefly old poetry, which afterwards, when misfortune
overtook him, was valued at 6000l. Hill was
likewise a Mæcenas: he patronized two friendless poets,
Bloomfield and Kirke White. The Farmer’s Boy of
the former was read and admired by him in manuscript,
and was recommended to a publisher. Hill also
established The Monthly Mirror, to which Kirke
White was a contributor. Hill was the Hull of Hook’s
Gilbert Gurney. He happened to know everything
that was going on in all circles; and was at all
“private views” of exhibitions. So especially was he
favoured, that a wag recorded, when asked whether
he had seen the new comet, he replied—”Pooh! pooh!
I was present at the private view.”

Hill left behind him an assemblage of literary
rarities, which it occupied a clear week to sell by
auction. Among them was Garrick’s cup, formed
from the mulberry tree planted by Shakespeare in his87
garden at New Place, Stratford-upon-Avon; this produced
forty guineas. A small vase and pedestal,
carved from the same mulberry-tree, and presented to
Garrick, was sold with a coloured drawing of it, for
ten guineas. And a block of wood, cut from the
celebrated willow planted by Pope, at his villa at
Twickenham, brought one guinea.

TYCHO BRAHE’S NOSE.

Sir David Brewster relates that in the year 1566,
an accident occurred to Tycho Brahe, at Wittenberg,
which had nearly deprived him of his life. On the
10th of December, Tycho had a quarrel with a noble
countryman, Manderupius Rasbergius, and they parted
ill friends. On the 27th of the same month, they met
again; and having renewed their quarrel, they agreed
to settle their differences by the sword. They accordingly
met at seven o’clock in the evening of the
29th, and fought in total darkness. In this blind
combat, Manderupius cut off the whole of the front of
Tycho’s nose, and it was fortunate for astronomy that
his more valuable organs were defended by so faithful
an outpost. The quarrel, which is said to have
originated in a difference of opinion respecting their
mathematical attainments, terminated here; and Tycho
repaired his loss by cementing upon his face a nose of
gold and silver, which is said to have formed a good
imitation of the original. Thus, Tycho was, indeed,
a “Martyr of Science.”88

FOOTE’S WOODEN LEG.

George Colman, the younger, notes:—”There is no
Shakspeare or Roscius upon record who, like Foote,
supported a theatre for a series of years by his own
acting, in his own writings; and for ten years of the
time, upon a wooden leg! This prop to his person I
once saw standing by his bedside, ready dressed in a
handsome silk stocking, with a polished shoe and gold
buckle, awaiting the owner’s getting up: it had a
kind of tragic, comical appearance, and I leave to inveterate
wags the ingenuity of punning upon a Foote
in bed, and a leg out of it. The proxy for a limb
thus decorated, though ludicrous, is too strong a reminder
of amputation to be very laughable. His undressed
supporter was the common wooden stick,
which was not a little injurious to a well-kept pleasure-ground.
I remember following him after a shower of
rain, upon a nicely rolled terrace, in which he stumped
a deep round hole at every other step he took, till it
appeared as if the gardener had been there with his
dibble, preparing, against all horticultural practice, to
plant a long row of cabbages in a gravel walk.”

RIVAL REMEMBRANCE.

WHO WROTE “JUNIUS’S LETTERS”?

This question has not yet been satisfactorily answered.
In 1812, Dr. Mason Good, in an essay he wrote on the
question, passed in review all the persons who had
then been suspected of writing these celebrated letters.
They are, Charles Lloyd and John Roberts, originally
treasury clerks; Samuel Dyer, a learned man, and a
friend of Burke and Johnson; William Gerard Hamilton,
familiarly known as “Single-speech Hamilton;”
Mr. Burke; Dr. Butler, late Bishop of Hereford; the
Rev. Philip Rosenhagen; Major-General Lee, who
went over to the Americans, and took an active part
in their contest with the mother-country; John
Wilkes; Hugh Macaulay Boyd; John Dunning,
Lord Ashburton; Henry Flood; and Lord George
Sackville.

Since this date, in 1813, John Roche published an
Inquiry, in which he persuaded himself that Burke
was the author. In the same year there appeared
three other publications on Junius: these were, the
Attempt of the Rev. J. B. Blakeway, to trace them to
John Horne Tooke; next were the “Facts” of Thomas
Girdlestone, M.D., to prove that General Lee was the
author; and, thirdly, a work put forth by Mrs. Olivia
Wilmot Serres, in the following confident terms:—”Life
of the Author of Junius’s Letters,—the Rev. J.
Wilmot, D.D., Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford;”
and, like most bold attempts, this work attracted some
notice and discussion.

In 1815, the Letters were attributed to Richard90
Glover, the poet of Leonidas; and this improbable idea
was followed by another, assigning the authorship of
the Letters to the Duke of Portland, in 1816. In the
same year appeared “Arguments and Facts,” to show
that John Louis de Lolme, author of the famous Essay
on the Constitution of England, was the writer of these
anonymous epistles. In 1816, too, appeared Mr. John
Taylor’s “Junius Identified,” advocating the claims of
Sir Philip Francis so successfully that the question
was generally considered to be settled. Mr. Taylor’s
opinion was supported by Edward Dubois, Esq., formerly
the confidential friend and private secretary of
Sir Philip, who, in common with Lady Francis, constantly
entertained the conviction that his deceased
patron was identical with Junius.

In 1817, George Chalmers, F.S.A., advocated the
pretensions of Hugh Macaulay Boyd to the authorship
of Junius. In 1825, Mr. George Coventry maintained
with great ability that Lord George Sackville was
Junius; and two writers in America adopted this theory.

Thus was the whole question re-opened; and, in
1828, Mr. E. H. Barker, of Thetford, refuted the
claims of Lord George Sackville and Sir Philip
Francis, and advocated those of Charles Lloyd, private
secretary to the Hon. George Grenville.⁴

In 1841, Mr. N. W. Simons, of the British Museum,
refuted the supposition that Sir Philip Francis was91
directly or indirectly concerned in the writing; and,
in the same year, appeared M. Jaques’s review of the
controversy, in which he arrived at the conclusion that
Lord George Sackville composed the Letters, and that
Sir Philip Francis was his amanuensis, thus combining
the theory of Mr. Taylor with that of Mr. Coventry.

The question was reviewed and revived in a volume
published by Mr. Britton, F.S.A., in June 1848, entitled
“The Authorship of the Letters of Junius Elucidated;”
in which is advocated with great care the opinion that
the Letters were, to a certain extent, the joint productions
of Lieut.-Colonel Isaac Barré, M.P., Lord Shelburne,
(afterwards Marquess of Lansdowne,) and
Dunning, Lord Ashburton. Of these three persons the
late Sir Francis Baring commissioned Sir Joshua
Reynolds, in 1784-5, to paint portraits in one picture,
which is regarded as evidence of joint authorship.

Only a week before his death, 1804, the Marquess of
Lansdowne was personally appealed to on the subject
of Junius, by Sir Richard Phillips. In conversation,
the Marquess said, “No, no, I am not equal to Junius;
I could not be the author; but the grounds of secrecy
are now so far removed by death (Dunning and Barré
were at that time dead), and change of circumstances,
that it is unnecessary the author of Junius should much
longer be unknown. The world is curious about him, and
I could make a very interesting publication on the subject.
I knew Junius, and I know all about the writing
and production of these Letters.” The Marquess
added, “If I live over the summer, which, however, I
don’t expect, I promise you a very interesting pamphlet92
about Junius. I will put my name to it; I will
set the question at rest for ever.” The death of the
Marquess, however, occurred in a week. In a letter to
the Monthly Magazine, July 1813, the son of the Marquess
of Lansdowne says:—”It is not impossible my
father may have been acquainted with the fact; but
perhaps he was under some obligation to secrecy, as he
never made any communication to me on the subject.”

Lord Mahon (now Earl Stanhope) at length and
with minuteness enters, in his History, into a vindication
of the claims of Sir Philip Francis, grounding
his partisanship on the close similarity of handwriting
established by careful comparison of facsimiles; the
likeness of the style of Sir Philip’s speeches in Parliament
to that of Junius—biting, pithy, full of antithesis
and invective; the tenderness and bitterness displayed
by Junius towards persons to whom Sir Philip stood
well or ill affected; the correspondence of the dates
of the letters with those of certain movements of Sir
Philip; and the evidence of Junius‘ close acquaintance
with the War Office, where Sir Philip held a
post. It seems generally agreed that the weight of
proof is on the side of Sir Philip Francis; but there
will always be found adherents of other names—as
O’Connell, in the following passage, of Burke:—

“It is my decided opinion,” said O’Connell, “that Edmund
Burke was the author of the ‘Letters of Junius.’ There are
many considerations which compel me to form that opinion.
Burke was the only man who made that figure in the world which
the author of ‘Junius’ must have made, if engaged in public
life; and the entire of ‘Junius’s Letters’ evinces that close acquaintance
with the springs of political machinery which no93
man could possess unless actively engaged in politics. Again,
Burke was fond of chemical similes; now chemical similes are
frequent in Junius. Again; Burke was an Irishman; now
Junius, speaking of the Government of Ireland, twice calls it
‘the Castle,’ a familiar phrase amongst Irish politicians, but one
which an Englishman, in those days, would never have used.
Again; Burke had this peculiarity in writing, that he often wrote
many words without taking the pen from the paper. The very
same peculiarity existed in the manuscripts of Junius, although
they were written in a feigned hand. Again; it may be said that
the style is not Burke’s. In reply, I would say that Burke was
master of many styles. His work on natural society, in imitation
of Lord Bolingbroke, is as different in point of style from his work
on the French Revolution, as both are from the ‘Letters of Junius.’
Again; Junius speaks of the King’s insanity as a divine visitation;
Burke said the very same thing in the House of Commons.
Again; had any one of the other men to whom the ‘Letters’
are, with any show of probability, ascribed, been really the author,
such author would have had no reason for disowning the book, or
remaining incognito. Any one of them but Burke would have
claimed the authorship and fame—and proud fame. But Burke
had a very cogent reason for remaining incognito. In claiming
Junius he would have claimed his own condemnation and dishonour,
for Burke died a pensioner. Burke was, moreover, the
only pensioner who had the commanding talent displayed in the
writings of Junius. Now, when I lay all these considerations
together, and especially when I reflect that a cogent reason exists
for Burke’s silence as to his own authorship, I confess I think
I have got a presumptive proof of the very strongest nature,
that Burke was the writer.”⁵

LITERARY COFFEE-HOUSES IN THE LAST
CENTURY.

Three of the most celebrated resorts of the literati of
the last century were Will’s Coffee-house, No. 23,
on the north side of Great Russell-street, Covent94
Garden, at the end of Bow-street. This was the favourite
resort of Dryden, who had here his own chair, in
winter by the fireside, in summer in the balcony: the
company met in the first floor, and there smoked; and
the young beaux and wits were sometimes honoured
with a pinch out of Dryden’s snuff-box. Will’s was
the resort of men of genius till 1710: it was subsequently
occupied by a perfumer.

Tom’s, No. 17, Great Russell-street, had nearly 700
subscribers, at a guinea a-head, from 1764 to 1768, and
had its card, conversation, and coffee-rooms, where
assembled Dr. Johnson, Carrick, Murphy, Goldsmith,
Sir Joshua Reynolds, Foote, and other men of talent:
the tables and books of the club were not many years
since preserved in the house, the first floor of which
was then occupied by Mr. Webster, the medallist.

Button’s, “over against” Tom’s, was the receiving-house
for contributions to The Guardian, in a lion-head
box, the aperture for which remains in the wall
to mark the place. Button had been servant to Lady
Warwick, whom Addison married; and the house
was frequented by Pope, Steele, Swift, Arbuthnot,
and Addison. The lion’s head for a letter-box, “the
best head in England,” was set up in imitation of the
celebrated lion at Venice: it was removed from Button’s
to the Shakspeare’s Head, under the arcade in
Covent Garden; and in 1751, was placed in the Bedford,
next door. This lion’s head is now treasured as
a relic by the Bedford family.95

LORD BYRON AND “MY GRANDMOTHER’S REVIEW.”

At the close of the first canto of Don Juan, its noble
author, by way of propitiating the reader for the
morality of his poem, says:—

Now, “the British” was a certain staid and grave
high-church review, the editor of which received the
poet’s imputation of bribery as a serious accusation;
and, accordingly, in his next number after the publication
of Don Juan, there appeared a postscript, in
which the receipt of any bribe was stoutly denied, and
the idea of such connivance altogether repudiated; the
editor adding that he should continue to exercise his
own judgment as to the merits of Lord Byron, as he
had hitherto done in every instance! However, the96
affair was too ludicrous to be at once altogether
dropped; and, so long as the prudish publication was
in existence, it enjoyed the sobriquet of “My Grandmother’s
Review.”

By the way, there is another hoax connected with
this poem. One day an old gentleman gravely inquired
of a printseller for a portrait of “Admiral
Noah”—to illustrate Don Juan!

WALPOLE’S WAY TO WIN THEM.

Sir Robert Walpole, in one of his letters, thus
describes the relations of a skilful Minister with an
accommodating Parliament—the description, it may
be said, having, by lapse of time, acquired the merit
of general inapplicability to the present state of
things:—”My dear friend, there is scarcely a member
whose purse I do not know to a sixpence, and whose
very soul almost I could not purchase at the offer.
The reason former Ministers have been deceived in
this matter is evident—they never considered the
temper of the people they had to deal with. I have
known a minister so weak as to offer an avaricious old
rascal a star and garter, and attempt to bribe a young
rogue, who set no value upon money, with a lucrative
employment. I pursue methods as opposite as
the poles, and therefore my administration has been
attended with a different effect.” “Patriots,” elsewhere
says Walpole, “spring up like mushrooms. I
could raise fifty of them within four-and-twenty hours.
I have raised many of them in one night. It is but97
refusing to gratify an unreasonable or insolent demand,
and up starts a patriot.”

DR. JOHNSON’S CRITICISMS.

Johnson decided literary questions like a lawyer, not
like a legislator. He never examined foundations
where a point was already ruled. His whole code of
criticism rested on pure assumption, for which he sometimes
gave a precedent or authority, but rarely troubled
himself to give a reason drawn from the nature of
things. He judged of all works of the imagination by
the standard established among his own contemporaries.
Though he allowed Homer to have been a
greater man than Virgil, he seems to have thought the
Æneid to have been a greater poem than the Iliad.
Indeed, he well might have thought so; for he preferred
Pope’s Iliad to Homer’s. He pronounced that
after Hoole’s translation of Tasso, Fairfax’s would
hardly be reprinted. He could see no merit in our
fine old English ballads, and always spoke with the
most provoking contempt of Dr. Percy’s fondness for
them.

Of all the great original works which appeared
during his time, Richardson’s novels alone excited his
admiration. He could see little or no merit in Tom
Jones, in Gulliver’s Travels, or in Tristram Shandy.
To Thomson’s Castle of Indolence he vouchsafed only
a line of cold commendation—of commendation much
colder than what he has bestowed on The Creation of98
that portentous bore, Sir Richard Blackmore. Gray
was, in his dialect, a barren rascal. Churchill was a
blockhead. The contempt which he felt for Macpherson
was, indeed, just; but it was, we suspect, just
by chance. He criticized Pope’s epitaphs excellently.
But his observations on Shakspeare’s plays, and Milton’s
poems, seem to us as wretched as if they had been
written by Rymer himself, whom we take to have
been the worst critic that ever lived.

GIBBON’S HOUSE, AT LAUSANNE

The house of Gibbon, in which he completed his
“Decline and Fall,” is in the lower part of the town
of Lausanne, behind the church of St. Francis, and on
the right of the road leading down to Ouchy. Both
the house and the garden have been much changed.
The wall of the Hotel Gibbon occupies the site of his
summer-house, and the berceau walk has been destroyed
to make room for the garden of the hotel;
but the terrace looking over the lake, and a few
acacias, remain.

Gibbon’s record of the completion of his great labour
is very impressive. “It was on the day, or rather the
night, of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of
eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last line of the last
page, in a summer-house in my garden. After laying
down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or
covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect
of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The air99
was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of
the moon was reflected from the waves, and all nature
was silent.”

At a little inn at Morges, about two miles distant
from Lausanne, Lord Byron wrote the Prisoner of
Chillon, in the short space of two days, during which
he was detained here by bad weather, June 1816:
“thus adding one more deathless association to the
already immortalized localities of the Lake.”

ORIGIN OF “BOZ.” (DICKENS.)

A fellow passenger with Mr. Dickens in the
Britannia steam-ship, across the Atlantic, inquired of
the author the origin of his signature, “Boz.” Mr.
Dickens replied that he had a little brother who resembled
so much the Moses in the Vicar of Wakefield,
that he used to call him Moses also; but a younger
girl, who could not then articulate plainly, was in the
habit of calling him Bozie or Boz. This simple circumstance
made him assume that name in the first
article he risked to the public, and therefore he continued
the name, as the first effort was approved of.

BOSWELL’S “LIFE OF JOHNSON.”

Sir John Malcolm once asked Warren Hastings,
who was a contemporary and companion of Dr. Johnson
and Boswell, what was his real estimation of
Boswell’s Life of Johnson? “Sir,” replied Hastings,100
“it is the dirtiest book in my library;” then proceeding,
he added: “I knew Boswell intimately; and
I well remember, when his book first made its appearance,
Boswell was so full of it, that he could
neither think nor talk of anything else; so much so,
that meeting Lord Thurlow hurrying through Parliament-street
to get to the House of Lords, where an
important debate was expected, for which he was
already too late, Boswell had the temerity to stop and
accost him with “Have you read my book?” “Yes,”
replied Lord Thurlow, with one of his strongest
curses, “every word of it; I could not help it.”

PATRONAGE OF AUTHORS.

In the reigns of William III., of Anne, and of George
I., even such men as Congreve and Addison could
scarcely have been able to live like gentlemen by the
mere sale of their writings. But the deficiency of the
natural demand for literature was, at the close of the
seventeenth, and at the beginning of the eighteenth
century, more than made up by the artificial encouragement—by
a vast system of bounties and premiums.
There was, perhaps, never a time at which the rewards
of literary merit were so splendid—at which men who
could write well found such easy admittance into the
most distinguished society, and to the highest honours
of the state. The chiefs of both the great parties into
which the kingdom was divided, patronized literature
with emulous munificence.

Congreve, when he had scarcely attained his101
majority, was rewarded for his first comedy with places
which made him independent for life. Rowe was not
only poet laureate, but land-surveyor of the Customs
in the port of London, clerk of the council to the
Prince of Wales, and secretary of the Presentations to
the Lord Chancellor. Hughes was secretary to the
Commissioners of the Peace. Ambrose Phillips was
judge of the Prerogative Court in Ireland. Locke was
Commissioner of Appeals and of the Board of Trade.
Newton was Master of the Mint. Stepney and Prior
were employed in embassies of high dignity and importance.
Gay, who commenced life as apprentice to
a silk-mercer, became a secretary of Legation at
five-and-twenty. It was to a poem on the death of
Charles II., and to “the City and Country Mouse,”
that Montague owed his introduction into public life,
his earldom, his garter, and his auditorship of the
Exchequer. Swift, but for the unconquerable prejudice
of the queen, would have been a bishop. Oxford,
with his white staff in his hand, passed through
the crowd of his suitors to welcome Parnell, when
that ingenious writer deserted the Whigs. Steele was
a Commissioner of Stamps, and a member of Parliament.
Arthur Mainwaring was a Commissioner of
the Customs, and Auditor of the Imprest. Tickell
was secretary to the Lords Justices of Ireland. Addison
was Secretary of State.

But soon after the succession of the throne of Hanover,
a change took place. The supreme power passed
to a man who cared little for poetry or eloquence.
Walpole paid little attention to books, and felt little102
respect for authors. One of the coarse jokes of his
friend, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, was far more
pleasing to him than Thomson’s Seasons or Richardson’s
Pamela.

LEARNING FRENCH.

When Brummell was obliged by want of money, and
debt, and all that, to retire to France, he knew no
French; and having obtained a grammar for the purpose
of study, his friend Scrope Davies was asked what progress
Brummell had made in French. He responded,
that Brummell had been stopped, like Buonaparte in
Russia, by the Elements.

“I have put this pun into Beppo, (says Lord Byron),
which is a fair exchange and no robbery, for Scrope
made his fortune at several dinners, (as he owned himself,)
by repeating occasionally, as his own, some of
the buffooneries with which I had encountered him in
the morning.”

JOHNSON’S CLUB-ROOM.

In a paper in the Edinburgh Review, we find this
cabinet picture:—The club-room is before us, and the
table, on which stands the omelet for Nugent, and the
lemons for Johnson. There are assembled those heads
which live for ever on the canvas of Reynolds. There
are the spectacles of Burke, and the tall thin form of
Langton; the courtly sneer of Beauclerc, and the
beaming smile of Garrick; Gibbon tapping his snuff-box,103
and Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In
the foreground is that strange figure which is as
familiar to us as the figures of those among whom we
have been brought up—the gigantic body, the huge
massy face, seamed with the scars of disease; the brown
coat, the black worsted stockings, the grey wig, with
the scorched foretop; the dirty hands, the nails bitten
and pared to the quick. We see the eyes and nose
moving with convulsive twitches; we see the heavy
form rolling; we hear it puffing; and then comes the
“Why, sir!” and the “What then, sir?” and the
“No, sir!” and the “You don’t see your way through
the question, sir!”

DR. CHALMERS’S INDUSTRY.

In October, 1841, Dr. Chalmers commenced two
series of biblical compositions, which he continued
with unbroken regularity till the day of his decease,
May 31, 1847. Go where he might, however he might
be engaged, each week-day had its few verses read,
thought over, written upon—forming what he denominated
“Horæ Biblicæ Quotidianæ:” each Sabbath-day
had its two chapters, one in the Old and the other
in the New Testament, with the two trains of meditative
devotion recorded to which the reading of them
respectively gave birth—forming what he denominated
“Horæ Biblicæ Sabbaticæ.” When absent from home,
or when the manuscript books in which they were
ordinarily inserted were not beside him, he wrote in
short-hand, carefully entering what was thus written104
in the larger volumes afterwards. Not a trace of haste
nor of the extreme pressure from without, to which
he was so often subjected, is exhibited in the handwriting
of these volumes. There are but few words
omitted—scarcely any erased. This singular correctness
was a general characteristic of his compositions.
His lectures on the Epistle to the Romans were
written currente calamo, in Glasgow, during the most
hurried and overburthened period of his life. And
when, many years afterwards, they were given out to
be copied for the press, scarcely a blot, or an erasure,
or a correction, was to be found in them, and they were
printed off exactly as they had originally been written.

In preparing the “Horæ Biblicæ Quotidianæ,”
Chalmers had by his side, for use and reference, the
“Concordance,” the “Pictorial Bible,” “Poole’s Synopsis,”
“Henry’s Commentary,” and “Robinson’s Researches
in Palestine.” These constituted what he called
his “Biblical Library.” “There,” said he to a friend,
pointing, as he spoke, to the above-named volumes, as
they lay together on his library-table, with a volume of
the “Quotidianæ,” in which he had just been writing,
lying open beside them,—”There are the books I use—all
that is Biblical is there. I have to do with nothing
besides in my Biblical study.” To the consultation of
these few volumes he throughout restricted himself.

The whole of the MSS. were purchased, after
Dr. Chalmers’s death, for a large sum of money, by
Mr. Thomas Constable, of Edinburgh, her Majesty’s
printer; and were in due time given to, and most
favourably received by, the public.105

LATEST OF DR. JOHNSON’S CONTEMPORARIES.⁶

In the autumn of 1831, died the Rev. Dr. Shaw, at
Chesley, Somersetshire, at the age of eighty-three: he
is said to have been the last surviving friend of Dr.
Johnson.

On the 16th of January, in the above year, died
Mr. Richard Clark, chamberlain of the City of London,
in the ninety-second year of his age. At the age of
fifteen, he was introduced by Sir John Hawkins to
Johnson, whose friendship he enjoyed to the last year
of the Doctor’s life. He attended Johnson’s evening
parties at the Mitre Tavern, in Fleet-street;⁷ where,
among other literary characters he met Dr. Percy, Dr.
Goldsmith, and Dr. Hawksworth. A substantial supper
was served at eight o’clock; the party seldom
separated till a late hour; and Mr. Clark recollected
that early one morning he, with another of the party,
accompanied the Doctor to his house, where Mrs.
Williams, then blind, made tea for them. When Mr.
Clark was sheriff, he took Johnson to a “Judges’
Dinner,” at the Old Bailey; the judges being Blackstone
and Eyre. Mr. Clark often visited the Doctor,
and met him at dinner-parties; and the last time he
enjoyed his company was at the Essex Head Club,
of which, by the Doctor’s invitation, Clark became a
member.106

A SNAIL DINNER.

The chemical philosophers, Dr. Black and Dr. Hutton,
were particular friends, though there was something
extremely opposite in their external appearance and
manner. Dr. Black spoke with the English pronunciation,
and with punctilious accuracy of expression,
both in point of matter and manner. The geologist,
Dr. Hutton, was the very reverse of this: his conversation
was conducted in broad phrases, expressed with
a broad Scotch accent, which often heightened the
humour of what he said.

It chanced that the two Doctors had held some
discourse together upon the folly of abstaining from
feeding on the testaceous creatures of the land, while
those of the sea were considered as delicacies. Wherefore
not eat snails? they are known to be nutritious
and wholesome, and even sanative in some cases. The
epicures of old praised them among the richest delicacies,
and the Italians still esteem them. In short,
it was determined that a gastronomic experiment
should be made at the expense of the snails. The snails
were procured, dieted for a time, and then stewed for
the benefit of the two philosophers, who had either
invited no guests to their banquet, or found none who
relished in prospect the pièce de resistance. A huge
dish of snails was placed before them: still, philosophers
are but men, after all; and the stomachs of
both doctors began to revolt against the experiment.
Nevertheless, if they looked with disgust on the snails,
they retained their awe for each other, so that each,107
conceiving the symptoms of internal revolt peculiar to
himself, began, with infinite exertion, to swallow, in
very small quantities, the mess which he internally
loathed.

Dr. Black, at length, showed the white feather, but
in a very delicate manner, as if to sound the opinion of
his messmate. “Doctor,” he said, in his precise and quiet
manner—”Doctor—do you not think that they taste
a little—a very little, green?” “D——d green! d——d
green! indeed—tak’ them awa’,—tak’ them awa’!”
vociferated Dr. Hutton, starting up from table, and
giving full vent to his feelings of abhorrence. So ended
all hopes of introducing snails into the modern cuisine;
and thus philosophy can no more cure a nausea than
honour can set a broken limb.—Sir Walter Scott.

CURRAN’S IMAGINATION.

“Curran!” (says Lord Byron) “Curran’s the man
who struck me most. Such imagination!—there never
was anything like it that I ever heard of. His published
life—his published speeches, give you no idea of the
man—none at all. He was a machine of imagination,
as some one said that Prior was an epigrammatic machine.”
Upon another occasion, Byron said, “the
riches of Curran’s Irish imagination were exhaustless.
I have heard that man speak more poetry than I have
ever seen written—though I saw him seldom, and but
occasionally. I saw him presented to Madame de
Stael, at Mackintosh’s—it was the grand confluence
between the Rhone and the Saone; they were both so108
d——d ugly, that I could not help wondering how
the best intellects of France and Ireland could have
taken up respectively such residences.”

COWLEY AT CHERTSEY.

The poet Cowley died at the Porch House, Chertsey,
on the 21st of July, 1667. There is a curious letter
preserved of his condition when he removed here from
Barn Elms. It is addressed to Dr. Sprat, dated
Chertsey, 21 May, 1665, and is as follows:—

“The first night that I came hither I caught so great a cold,
with a defluxion of rheum, as made me keep my chamber ten
days. And, too, after had such a bruise on my ribs with a fall,
that I am yet unable to move or turn myself in bed. This is
my personal fortune here to begin with. And besides, I can get
no money from my tenants, and have my meadows eaten up
every night by cattle put in by my neighbours. What this
signifies, or may come to in time, God knows! if it be ominous,
it can end in nothing but hanging.”——”I do hope to recover
my hurt so farre within five or six days (though it be uncertain
yet whether I shall ever recover it) as to walk about again.
And then, methinks, you and I and the Dean might be very
merry upon St. Ann’s Hill. You might very conveniently come
hither by way of Hampton Town, lying there one night. I
write this in pain, and can say no more.—Verbum sapienti.”

It is stated, by Sprat, that the last illness of Cowley
was owing to his having taken cold through staying
too long among his labourers in the meadows; but, in
Spence’s Anecdotes we are informed, (on the authority
of Pope,) that “his death was occasioned by a mere
accident whilst his great friend, Dean Sprat, was with
him on a visit at Chertsey. They had been together
to see a neighbour of Cowley’s, who, (according to the109
fashion of those times,) made them too welcome. They
did not set out for their walk home till it was too late;
and had drank so deep that they lay out in the fields
all night. This gave Cowley the fever that carried
him off. The parish still talk of the drunken Dean.”

A PRETTY COMPLIMENT.

Although Dr. Johnson had (or professed to have) a
profound and unjustified contempt for actors, he succeeded
in comporting himself towards Mrs. Siddons
with great politeness; and once, when she called to see
him at Bolt Court, and his servant Frank could not
immediately furnish her with a chair, the doctor
said, “You see, madam, that wherever you go there
are no seats to be got.”

THOMAS DAY, AND HIS MODEL WIFE.

Day, the author of Sandford and Merton, was an
eccentric but amiable man; he retired into the country
“to exclude himself,” as he said, “from the vanity,
vice, and deceptive character of man,” but he appears to
have been strangely jilted by women. When about the
age of twenty-one, and after his suit had been rejected by
a young lady to whom he had paid his addresses, Mr.
Day formed the singular project of educating a wife
for himself. This was based upon the notion of Rousseau,
that “all the genuine worth of the human species
is perverted by society; and that children should be
educated apart from the world, in order that their110
minds should be kept untainted with, and ignorant of,
its vices, prejudices, and artificial manners.”

Day set about his project by selecting two girls from
an establishment at Shrewsbury, connected with the
Foundling Hospital; previously to which he entered
into a written engagement, guaranteed by a friend,
Mr. Bicknell, that within twelve months he would
resign one of them to a respectable mistress, as an
apprentice, with a fee of one hundred pounds; and, on
her marriage, or commencing business for herself, he
would give her the additional sum of four hundred
pounds; and he further engaged that he would act
honourably to the one he should retain, in order to
marry her at a proper age; or, if he should change
his mind, he would allow her a competent support
until she married, and then give her five hundred
pounds as a dowry.

The objects of Day’s speculation were both twelve
years of age. One of them, whom he called Lucretia,
had a fair complexion, with light hair and eyes; the
other was a brunette, with chesnut tresses, who was
styled Sabrina. He took these girls to France without
any English servants, in order that they should
not obtain any knowledge but what he should impart.
As might have been anticipated, they caused him
abundance of inconvenience and vexation, increased,
in no small degree, by their becoming infected with the
small-pox; from this, however, they recovered without
any injury to their features. The scheme ended
in the utter disappointment of the projector. Lucretia,
whom he first dismissed, was apprenticed to a111
milliner; and she afterwards became the wife of a
linendraper in London. Sabrina, after Day had relinquished
his attempts to make her such a model of
perfection as he required, and which included indomitable
courage, as well as the difficult art of retaining
secrets, was placed at a boarding-school at Sutton
Coldfield, in Warwickshire, where she was much
esteemed; and, strange to say, was at length married
to Mr. Bicknell.

After Day had renounced this scheme as impracticable,
he became suitor to two sisters in succession;
yet, in both instances, he was refused. At length, he
was married at Bath, to a lady who made “a large
fortune the means of exercising the most extensive
generosity.”

WASHINGTON IRVING AND WILKIE, IN THE ALHAMBRA.

Geoffrey Crayon(Irving), and Wilkie, the painter,
were fellow-travellers on the Continent, about the
year 1827. In their rambles about some of the old
cities of Spain, they were more than once struck with
scenes and incidents which reminded them of passages
in the Arabian Nights. The painter urged Mr. Irving
to write something that should illustrate those peculiarities,
“something in the ‘Haroun-al-Raschid
style,'” which should have a deal of that Arabian spice
which pervades everything in Spain. The author set
to work, con amore, and produced two goodly volumes
of Arabesque sketches and tales, founded on popular112
traditions. His study was the Alhambra, and the
governor of the palace gave Irving and Wilkie permission
to occupy his vacant apartments there.
Wilkie was soon called away by the duties of his
station; but Washington Irving remained for several
months, spell-bound in the old enchanted pile. “How
many legends,” saith he, “and traditions, true and
fabulous—how many songs and romances, Spanish and
Arabian, of love, and war, and chivalry, are associated
with this romantic pile.”

BOLINGBROKE AT BATTERSEA.

When the late Sir Richard Phillips took his “Morning’s
Walk from London to Kew,” in 1816, he found
that a portion of the family mansion in which Lord
Bolingbroke was born had been converted into a mill
and distillery, though a small oak parlour had been
carefully preserved. In this room, Pope is said to
have written his Essay on Man; and, in Bolingbroke’s
time, the mansion was the resort, the hope, and the
seat of enjoyment, of Swift, Arbuthnot, Thomson,
Mallet, and all the contemporary genius of England.
The oak room was always called “Pope’s Parlour,”
it being, in all probability, the apartment generally
occupied by that great poet, in his visits to his friend
Bolingbroke.

On inquiring for an ancient inhabitant of Battersea,
Sir Richard Phillips was introduced to a Mrs. Gilliard,
a pleasant and intelligent woman, who told him she
well remembered Lord Bolingbroke; that he used to113
ride out every day in his chariot, and had a black
patch on his cheek, with a large wart over his eyebrows.
She was then but a girl, but she was taught
to look upon him with veneration as a great man. As,
however, he spent little in the place, and gave little
away, he was not much regarded by the people of
Battersea. Sir Richard mentioned to her the names
of several of Bolingbroke’s contemporaries; but she
recollected none except that of Mallet, who, she said,
she had often seen walking about in the village, while
he was visiting at Bolingbroke House.

RELICS OF MILTON.

Milton was born at the Spread Eagle,⁸ Bread-street,
Cheapside, December 9, 1608; and was buried, November,
1674, in St. Giles’s Church, Cripplegate,
without even a stone, in the first instance, to mark his
resting-place; but, in 1793, a bust and tablet were
set up to his memory by public subscription.

Milton, before he resided in Jewin-gardens, Aldersgate,
is believed to have removed to, and “kept
school” in a large house on the west side of Aldersgate-street,
wherein met the City of London Literary
and Scientific Institution, previously to the rebuilding
of their premises in 1839.

Milton’s London residences have all, with one exception,
disappeared, and cannot be recognised; this
is in Petty France, at Westminster, where the poet
lived from 1651 to 1659. The lower part of the114
house is a chandler’s-shop; the parlour, up stairs,
looks into St. James’s-park. Here part of Paradise
Lost was written. The house belonged to Jeremy
Bentham, who caused to be placed on its front a tablet,
inscribed, “Sacred to Milton, Prince of Poets.”

In the same glass-case with Shakspeare’s autograph,
in the British Museum, is a printed copy of
the Elegies on Mr. Edward King, the subject of Lycidas,
with some corrections of the text in Milton’s
handwriting. Framed and glazed, in the library of
Mr. Rogers, the poet, hangs the written agreement
between Milton and his publisher, Simmons, for the
copyright of his Paradise Lost.—Note-book of 1848.

WRITING UP THE “TIMES” NEWSPAPER.

Dr. Dibdin, in his Reminiscences, relates:—”Sir
John Stoddart married the sister of Lord Moncrieff,
by whom he has a goodly race of representatives; but,
before his marriage, he was the man who wrote up the
Times newspaper to its admitted pitch of distinction
and superiority over every other contemporary journal.
Mark, gentle reader, I speak of the Times newspaper
during the eventful and appalling crisis of Bonaparte’s
invasion of Spain and destruction of Moscow. My
friend fought with his pen as Wellington fought with
his sword: but nothing like a tithe of the remuneration
which was justly meted out to the hero of Waterloo
befel the editor of the Times. Of course, I speak of
remuneration in degree, and not in kind. The peace
followed. Public curiosity lulled, and all great and115
stirring events having subsided, it was thought that a
writer of less commanding talent, (certainly not the
present Editor,) and therefore procurable at a less premium,
would answer the current purposes of the day;
and the retirement of Dr. Stoddart, (for he was at this
time a civilian, and particularly noticed and patronised
by Lord Stowell,) from the old Times, and his
establishment of the New Times newspaper, followed
in consequence. But the latter, from various causes,
had only a short-lived existence. Sir John Stoddart
had been his Majesty’s advocate, or Attorney-General,
at Malta, before he retired thither a second time,
to assume the office of Judge.”

RELICS OF THE BOAR’S HEAD TAVERN, EASTCHEAP.

The portal of the Boar’s Head was originally decorated
with carved oak figures of Falstaff and Prince
Henry; and in 1834, the former figure was in the
possession of a brazier, of Great Eastcheap, whose
ancestors had lived in the shop he then occupied since
the great fire. The last grand Shakspearean dinner-party
took place at the Boar’s Head about 1784. A
boar’s head, with silver tusks, which had been suspended
in some room in the house, perhaps the Half
Moon or Pomegranate, (see Henry IV., Act. ii.,
scene 3,) at the great fire, fell down with the ruins
of the houses, little injured, and was conveyed to
Whitechapel Mount, where it was identified and
recovered about thirty years ago.116

ORIGIN OF “THE EDINBURGH REVIEW.”

The Edinburgh Review was first published in 1802.
The plan was suggested by Sydney Smith, at a meeting
of literati, in the fourth or fifth flat or story, in Buccleugh-place,
Edinburgh, then the elevated lodging
of Jeffrey. The motto humorously proposed for the
new review by its projector was, “Tenui musam meditamur
avena,”—i.e., “We cultivate literature upon
a little oatmeal;” but this being too nearly the truth
to be publicly acknowledged, the more grave dictum
of “Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur” was
adopted from Publius Syrus, of whom, Sydney Smith
affirms, “None of us, I am sure, ever read a single
line!” Lord Byron, in his fifth edition of English
Bards and Scotch Reviewers, refers to the reviewers
as an “oat-fed phalanx.”

CLEVER STATESMEN.

However great talents may command the admiration
of the world, they do not generally best fit a man for
the discharge of social duties. Swift remarks that
“Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management
of public business, because they are apt to
go out of the common road by the quickness of their
imagination. This I once said to my Lord Bolingbroke,
and desired he would observe, that the clerk in
his office used a sort of ivory knife, with a blunt edge,
to divide a sheet of paper, which never failed to cut it117
even, only by requiring a steady hand; whereas, if he
should make one of a sharp penknife, the sharpness
would make it go often out of the crease, and disfigure
the paper.”

THE FIRST MAGAZINE.

The Gentleman’s Magazine unaccountably passes for
the earliest periodical of that description; while, in
fact, it was preceded nearly forty years by the Gentleman’s
Journal of Motteux, a work much more closely
resembling our modern magazines, and from which
Sylvanus Urban borrowed part of his title, and part
of his motto; while on the first page of the first
number of the Gentleman’s Magazine itself, it is stated
to contain “more than any book of the kind and
price.”

MRS. TRIMMER.

This ingenious woman was the daughter of Joshua
and Sarah Kirby, and was born at Ipswich, January
6, 1741. Kirby taught George the Third, when
Prince of Wales, perspective and architecture. He was
also President of the Society of Artists of Great Britain,
out of which grew the Royal Academy. It was
the last desire of Gainsborough to be buried beside his
old friend Kirby, and their tombs adjoin each other in
the churchyard at Kew.

Mrs. Trimmer, when a girl, was constantly reading
Milton’s Paradise Lost; and this circumstance so
pleased Dr. Johnson, that he invited her to see him,118
and presented her with a copy of his Rambler. She
also repeatedly met Sir Joshua Reynolds, Dr. Gregory,
Sharp, Hogarth, and Gainsborough, with all of whom
her father was on terms of intimacy. Mrs. Trimmer
advocated religious education against the latitudinarian
views of Joseph Lancaster. It was at her persuasion
that Dr. Bell entered the field, and paved the way for
the establishment of the National Society. Mrs.
Trimmer died, in her seventieth year, in 1810. She
was seated at her table reading a letter, when her
head sunk upon her bosom, and she “fell asleep;” and
so gentle was the wafting, that she seemed for some
time in a refreshing slumber, which her family were
unwilling to interrupt.

BOSWELL’S BEAR-LEADING.

It was on a visit to the parliament house that Mr.
Henry Erskine, (brother of Lord Buchan and Lord
Erskine,) after being presented to Dr. Johnson by
Mr. Boswell, and having made his bow, slipped a
shilling into Boswell’s hand, whispering that it was
for the sight of his bear.—Sir Walter Scott.

LORD ELIBANK AND DR. JOHNSON

Lord Elibank made a happy retort on Dr. Johnson’s
definition of oats, as the food of horses in England,
and men in Scotland. “Yes,” said he, “and where
else will you see such horses, and such men?”—Sir
Walter Scott.119

RELICS OF DR. JOHNSON AT LICHFIELD.

The house in which Dr. Johnson was born, at Lichfield—where
his father, it is well known, kept a small
bookseller’s shop, and where he was partly educated—stood
on the west side of the market-place. In the
centre of the market-place is a colossal statue of Johnson,
seated upon a square pedestal: it is by Lucas,
and was executed at the expense of the Rev. Chancellor
Law, in 1838. By the side of a footpath leading from
Dam-street to Stow, formerly stood a large willow,
said to have been planted by Johnson. It was blown
down, in 1829; but one of its shoots was preserved
and planted upon the same spot: it was in the
year 1848 a large tree, known in the town as “Johnson’s
Willow.”

Mr. Lomax, who for many years kept a bookseller’s
shop—”The Johnson’s Head,” in Bird-street,
Lichfield, possessed several articles that formerly
belonged to Johnson, which have been handed down
by a clear and indisputable ownership. Amongst
them is his own Book of Common Prayer, in which
are written, in pencil, the four Latin lines printed in
Strahan’s edition of the Doctor’s Prayers. There are,
also, a sacrament-book, with Johnson’s wife’s name
in it, in his own handwriting; an autograph letter
of the Doctor’s to Miss Porter; two tea-spoons, an
ivory tablet, and a breakfast table; a Visscher’s Atlas,
paged by the Doctor, and a manuscript index; Davies’s
Life of Garrick, presented to Johnson by the publisher;
a walking cane; and a Dictionary of Heathen120
Mythology, with the Doctor’s MS. corrections. His
wife’s wedding-ring, afterwards made into a mourning-ring;
and a massive chair, in which he customarily
sat, were also in Mr Lomax’s possession.

Among the few persons living in the year 1848 who
ever saw Dr. Johnson, was Mr. Dyott, of Lichfield:
this was seventy-four years before, or in 1774, when the
Doctor and Boswell, on their tour into Wales, stopped
at Ashbourne, and there visited Mr. Dyott’s father,
who was then residing at Ashbourne Hall.⁹

COLERIDGE A SOLDIER.

After Coleridge left Cambridge, he came to London,
where soon feeling himself forlorn and destitute, he
enlisted as a soldier in the 15th Elliot’s Light Dragoons.
“On his arrival at the quarters of the regiment,” says
his friend and biographer, Mr. Gilman, “the general
of the district inspected the recruits, and looking hard
at Coleridge, with a military air, inquired ‘What’s
your name, sir?’ ‘Comberbach!’ (the name he had
assumed.) ‘What do you come here for, sir?’ as if
doubting whether he had any business there. ‘Sir,’
said Coleridge, ‘for what most other persons come—to
be made a soldier.’ ‘Do you think,’ said the
general, ‘you can run a Frenchman through the
body?’ ‘I do not know,’ replied Coleridge, ‘as I
never tried; but I’ll let a Frenchman run me through121
the body before I’ll run away.’ ‘That will do,’ said
the general, and Coleridge was turned in the ranks.”

The poet made a poor dragoon, and never advanced
beyond the awkward squad. He wrote letters, however,
for all his comrades, and they attended to his
horse and accoutrements. After four months service,
(December 1793 to April 1794), the history and circumstances
of Coleridge became known. He had
written under his saddle, on the stable wall, a Latin
sentence (Eheu! quam infortunii miserrimum est
fuisse felicem!) which led to an inquiry on the part of
the captain of his troop, who had more regard for
the classics than Ensign Northerton, in Tom Jones.
Coleridge was, accordingly, discharged, and restored to
his family and friends.

COBBETT’S BOYHOOD.

Perhaps, in Cobbett’s voluminous writings, there is
nothing so complete as the following picture of his
boyish scenes and recollections: it has been well compared
to the most simple and touching passages in
Richardson’s Pamela:—

Cobbett was, for a short time, a labourer in the
kitchen grounds of the Royal Gardens at Kew. King123
George the Third often visited the gardens to inquire
after the fruits and esculents; and one day, he saw
here Cobbett, then a lad, who with a few halfpence in
his pocket, and Swift’s Tale of a Tub in his hand, had
been so captivated by the wonders of the royal gardens,
that he applied there for employment. The king, on
perceiving the clownish boy, with his stockings tied
about his legs by scarlet garters, inquired about him,
and specially desired that he might be continued in
his service.

COLERIDGE AN UNITARIAN PREACHER.

During his residence at Nether Stoney, Coleridge
officiated as Unitarian preacher at Taunton, and afterwards
at Shrewsbury. Mr. Hazlitt has described his
walking ten miles on a winter day to hear Coleridge
preach. “When I got there,” he says, “the organ
was playing the 100th psalm, and, when it was done,
Mr. Coleridge rose and gave out his text:—’He
departed again into a mountain himself alone.’ As
he gave out his text, his voice rose like a stream of
rich distilled perfume; when he came to the two
last words, which he pronounced loud, deep, and
distinct, it seemed to me, who was then young,
as if the sounds had echoed from the bottom of
the human heart, and as if that prayer might have
floated in solemn silence through the universe. The
idea of St. John came into my mind, of one crying
in the wilderness, who had his loins girt about,
and whose food was locusts and wild honey. The
preacher then launched into his subject, like an eagle124
dallying with the wind. The sermon was upon peace
and war—upon Church and State; not their alliance,
but their separation; on the spirit of the world and
the spirit of Christianity; not as the same, but as
opposed to one another. He talked of those who had
inscribed the cross of Christ on banners dripping with
human gore! He made a poetical and pastoral excursion;
and, to show the fatal effects of war, drew a
striking contrast between the simple shepherd-boy
driving his team a-field, or sitting under the hawthorn,
piping to his flock, as though he should never be old,
and the same poor country-lad crimped, kidnapped,
brought into town, made drunk at an alehouse, turned
into a wretched drummer-boy, with his hair sticking
on end with powder and pomatum, a long cue at his
back, and tricked out in the finery of the profession
of blood.

and, for myself, I could not have been more delighted
if I had heard the music of the spheres.”

FONTENELLE’S INSENSIBILITY.

Fontenelle, who lived till within one month of a
century, was very rarely known to laugh or cry, and
even boasted of his insensibility. One day, a certain bon-vivant
Abbé came unexpectedly to dine with him. The
Abbé was fond of asparagus dressed with butter; Fontenelle,
also, had a great gout for the vegetable, but
preferred it dressed with oil. Fontenelle said, that,
for such a friend, there was no sacrifice he would not125
make; and that he should have half the dish of
asparagus which he had ordered for himself, and that
half, moreover, should be dressed with butter. While
they were conversing together, the poor Abbé fell
down in a fit of apoplexy; upon which Fontenelle
instantly scampered down stairs, and eagerly bawled
out to his cook, “The whole with oil! the whole with
oil, as at first!”

PAINS AND TOILS OF AUTHORSHIP.

The craft of authorship is by no means so easy of
practice as is generally imagined by the thousands who
aspire to its practice. Almost all our works, whether
of knowledge or of fancy, have been the product of
much intellectual exertion and study; or, as it is better
expressed by the poet—

Pope published nothing until it had been a year or two
before him, and even then his printer’s proofs were
very full of alterations; and, on one occasion, Dodsley,
his publisher, thought it better to have the whole
recomposed than make the necessary corrections.
Goldsmith considered four lines a day good work,
and was seven years in beating out the pure gold of
the Deserted Village. Hume wrote his History of
England on a sofa, but he went quietly on correcting
every edition till his death. Robertson used to
write out his sentences on small slips of paper; and,
after rounding them and polishing them to his
satisfaction, he entered them in a book, which, in its126
turn, underwent considerable revision. Burke had all
his principal works printed two or three times at a
private press before submitting them to his publisher.
Akenside and Gray were indefatigable correctors,
labouring every line; and so was our prolix and more
imaginative poet, Thomson. On comparing the first
and latest editions of the Seasons, there will be found
scarcely a page which does not bear evidence of his
taste and industry. Johnson thinks the poems lost
much of their raciness under this severe regimen, but
they were much improved in fancy and delicacy; the
episode of Musidora, “the solemnly ridiculous bathing
scene,” as Campbell terms it, was almost entirely rewritten.
Johnson and Gibbon were the least laborious
in arranging their copy for the press. Gibbon sent
the first and only MS. of his stupendous work (the
Decline and Fall) to his printer; and Johnson’s high-sounding
sentences were written almost without an
effort. Both, however, lived and moved, as it were,
in the world of letters, thinking or caring of little
else—one in the heart of busy London, which he
dearly loved, and the other in his silent retreat at
Lausanne. Dryden wrote hurriedly, to provide for
the day; but his Absalom and Achitophel, and the beautiful
imagery of the Hind and Panther, must have been
fostered with parental care. St. Pierre copied his
Paul and Virginia nine times, that he might render it
the more perfect. Rousseau was a very coxcomb in
these matters: the amatory epistles, in his new Heloise,
he wrote on fine gilt-edged card-paper, and having
folded, addressed, and sealed them, he opened and read127
them in the solitary woods of Clairens, with the
mingled enthusiasm of an author and lover. Sheridan
watched long and anxiously for bright thoughts, as
the MS. of his School for Scandal, in its various
stages, proves. Burns composed in the open air, the
sunnier the better; but he laboured hard, and with
almost unerring taste and judgment, in correcting.¹⁰

Lord Byron was a rapid composer, but made abundant
use of the pruning-knife. On returning one of
his proof sheets from Italy, he expressed himself undecided
about a single word, for which he wished to
substitute another, and requested Mr. Murray to refer
it to Mr. Gifford, then editor of the Quarterly Review.
Sir Walter Scott evinced his love of literary labour
by undertaking the revision of the whole of the
Waverley Novels—a goodly freightage of some fifty
or sixty volumes. The works of Wordsworth, Southey,
Coleridge, and Moore, and the occasional variations
in their different editions, mark their love of the128
touching. Southey was, indeed, unwearied after his
kind—a true author of the old school. The bright
thoughts of Campbell, which sparkle like polished
lances, were manufactured with almost equal care; he
was the Pope of our contemporary authors.¹¹ Allan
Cunningham corrected but little, yet his imitations of
the elder lyrics are perfect centos of Scottish feeling
and poesy. The loving, laborious lingering of Tennyson
over his poems, and the frequent alterations—not
in every case improvements—that appear in successive
editions of his works, are familiar to all his
admirers.

JOE MILLER AT COURT.

Joe Miller, (Mottley,) was such a favourite at court,
that Caroline, queen of George II., commanded a play
to be performed for his benefit; the queen disposed
of a great many tickets at one of her drawing-rooms,
and most of them were paid for in gold.129

COLLINS’ INSANITY.

Much has been said of the state of insanity to which
the author of the Ode to the Passions was ultimately
reduced; or rather, as Dr. Johnson happily describes
it, “a depression of mind which enchains the faculties
without destroying them, and leaves reason the knowledge
of right, without the power of pursuing it.”
What Johnson has further said on this melancholy
subject, shows perhaps more nature and feeling than
anything he ever wrote; and yet it is remarkable
that among the causes to which the poet’s malady
was ascribed, he never hints at the most exciting
of the whole. He tells us how Collins “loved fairies,
genii, giants, and monsters;” how he “delighted to
roam through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze
on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by
the waterfalls of Elysian gardens.” But never does
he seem to have imagined how natural it was for a
mind of such a temperament to give an Eve to the
Paradise of his Creation. Johnson, in truth, though,
as he tells us, he gained the confidence of Collins, was
not just the man into whose ear a lover would choose
to pour his secrets. The fact was, Collins was greatly
attached to a young lady who did not return his
passion; and there seems to be little doubt, that to
the consequent disappointment, preying on his mind,
was due much of that abandonment of soul which
marked the close of his career. The object of his
passion was born the day before him; and to this
circumstance, in one of his brighter moments, he130
made a most happy allusion. A friend remarking to
the luckless lover, that his was a hard case, Collins
replied, “It is so, indeed; for I came into the world a
day after the fair.”

MOORE’S EPIGRAM ON ABBOTT.

Mr. Speaker Abbott having spoken in slighting terms
of some of Moore’s poems, the poet wrote, in return,
the following biting epigram:

NEGROES AT HOME.

When Lord Byron was in Parliament, a petition setting
forth, and calling for redress for, the wretched
state of the Irish peasantry, was one evening presented
to the House of Lords, and very coldly received.
“Ah!” said Lord Byron, “what a misfortune
it was for the Irish that they were not born black!
they would then have had plenty of friends in both
Houses”—referring to the great interest at the time
being taken by some philanthropic members in the
condition and future of the negroes in our West
Indian colonies.

A STRING OF JERROLD’S JOKES.

At a club of which Jerrold was a member, a fierce
Jacobite, and a friend, as fierce, of the Orange cause,
were arguing noisily, and disturbing less excitable131
conversationalists. At length the Jacobite, a brawny
Scot, brought his fist down heavily upon the table,
and roared at his adversary, “I tell you what it is,
sir, I spit upon your King William!” The friend of
the Prince of Orange rose, and roared back to the
Jacobite, “And I, sir, spit upon your James the
Second!” Jerrold, who had been listening to the
uproar in silence, hereupon rang the bell, and shouted
“Waiter, spittoons for two!”

At an evening party, Jerrold was looking at the
dancers, when, seeing a very tall gentleman waltzing
with a remarkably short lady, he said to a friend at
hand, “Humph! there’s the mile dancing with the
milestone!”

An old lady was in the habit of talking to Jerrold
in a gloomy, depressing manner, presenting to him
only the sad side of life. “Hang it,” said Jerrold, one
day, after a long and sombre interview, “she would
not allow that there was a bright side to the moon.”

Jerrold said to an ardent young gentleman, who
burned with desire to see himself in print: “Be advised
by me, young man: don’t take down the shutters
before there is something in the windows.”

While Jerrold was discussing one day, with Mr.
Selby, the vexed question of adapting dramatic pieces
from the French, that gentleman insisted upon claiming
some of his characters as strictly original creations.
“Do you remember my Baroness in Ask No Questions?”
said Mr. Selby. “Yes, indeed; I don’t think I
ever saw a piece of yours without being struck by your
barrenness,” was the retort.—Mark Lemon’s Jest-book.132

CONCEITED ALARMS OF DENNIS.

John Dennis, the dramatist, had a most extravagant
and enthusiastic opinion of his tragedy of Liberty
Asserted. He imagined that there were in it some
strokes on the French nation so severe, that they
would never be forgiven; and that, in consequence,
Louis XIV. would never make peace with England
unless the author was given up as a sacrifice to the
national resentment. Accordingly, when the congress
for the negotiation of the Peace of Utrecht was
in contemplation, the terrified Dennis waited on the
Duke of Marlborough, who had formerly been his
patron, to entreat the intercession of his Grace with
the plenipotentiaries, that they should not consent
to his surrender to France being made one of the
conditions of the treaty. The Duke gravely told
the dramatist that he was sorry to be unable to
do this service, as he had no influence with the
Ministry of the day; but, he added, that he thought
Dennis’ case not quite desperate, for, said his Grace,
“I have taken no care to get myself excepted in the
articles of peace, and yet I cannot help thinking that
I have done the French almost as much damage as
Mr. Dennis himself.” At another time, when Dennis
was visiting at a gentleman’s house on the Sussex
coast, and was walking on the beach, he saw a vessel,
as he imagined, sailing towards him. The self-important
timidity of Dennis saw in this incident a
reason for the greatest alarm for himself, and distrust
of his friend. Supposing he was betrayed, he made133
the best of his way to London, without even taking
leave of his host, whom he believed to have lent himself
to a plot for delivering him up as a captive to a
French vessel sent on purpose to carry him off.

A COMPOSITION WITH CONSCIENCE.

Lully, the composer, being once thought mortally ill,
his friends called a confessor, who, finding the patient’s
state critical, and his mind very ill at ease,
told him that he could obtain absolution only one way—by
burning all that he had by him of a yet unpublished
opera. The remonstrance of his friends was in
vain; Lully burnt the music, and the confessor departed
well pleased. The composer, however, recovered,
and told one of his visitors, a nobleman
who was his patron, of the sacrifice he had made to
the demands of the confessor. “And so,” cried the
nobleman, “you have burnt your opera, and are really
such a blockhead as to believe in the absurdities of a
monk!” “Stop, my friend, stop,” returned Lully;
“let me whisper in your ear: I knew very well what
I was about—I have another copy.“

SALE, THE TRANSLATOR OF THE KORAN.

The learned Sale, who first gave to the world a
genuine version of the Koran, pursued his studies
through a life of wants. This great Orientalist, when
he quitted his books to go abroad, too often wanted
a change of linen; and he frequently wandered the134
streets, in search of some compassionate friend, who
might supply him with the meal of the day.

THE LATTER DAYS OF LOVELACE.

Sir Richard Lovelace, who in 1649 published the
elegant collection of amorous and other poems entitled
Lucasta, was an amiable and accomplished
gentleman: by the men of his time (the time of the
civil wars) respected for his moral worth and literary
ability; by the fair sex, almost idolized for the elegance
of his person and the sweetness of his manners.
An ardent loyalist, the people of Kent appointed him
to present to the House of Commons their petition
for the restoration of Charles and the settlement of
the government. The petition gave offence, and the
bearer was committed to the Gate House, at Westminster,
where he wrote his graceful little song,
“Loyalty Confined,” opening thus:

But “dinnerless the polished Lovelace died.” He
obtained his liberation, after a few months’ confinement.
By that time, however, he had consumed all
his estates, partly by furnishing the king with men
and money, and partly by giving assistance to men of135
talent of whatever kind, whom he found in difficulties.
Very soon, he became himself involved in the
greatest distress, and fell into a deep melancholy,
which brought on a consumption, and made him as
poor in person as in purse, till he even became the
object of common charity. The man who in his days
of gallantry wore cloth of gold, was now naked, or
only half covered with filthy rags; he who had
thrown splendour on palaces, now shrank into obscure
and dirty alleys; he who had associated with
princes, banqueted on dainties, been the patron of
the indigent, the admiration of the wise and brave,
the darling of the chaste and fair—was now fain to
herd with beggars, gladly to partake of their coarse
offals, and thankfully to receive their twice-given
alms—

Worn out with misery, he at length expired, in 1658,
in a mean and wretched lodging in Gunpowder Alley,
near Shoe Lane, and was buried at the west end of
St. Bride’s church, Fleet Street. Such is the account
of Lovelace’s closing days given by Wood in
his Athenæ, and confirmed by Aubrey in his Lives of
Eminent Men; but a recent editor and biographer (the
son of Hazlitt) pronounces, though he does not prove,
the account much exaggerated.

PAYMENT IN KIND.

The Empress Catherine of Russia having sent, as a136
present to Voltaire, a small ivory box made by her
own hands, the poet induced his niece to instruct
him in the art of knitting stockings; and he had
actually half finished a pair, of white silk, when he
became completely tired. Unfinished as the stockings
were, however, he sent them to her Majesty,
accompanied by a charmingly gallant poetical epistle,
in which he told her that, “As she had presented him
with a piece of man’s workmanship made by a woman,
he had thought it his duty to crave her acceptance,
in return, of a piece of woman’s work from the hands
of a man.”—When Constantia Phillips was in a state
of distress, she took a small shop near Westminster
Hall, and sold books, some of which were of her own
writing. During this time, an apothecary who had
attended her once when she was ill, came to her and
requested payment of his bill. She pleaded her
poverty; but he still continued to press her, and
urged as a reason for his urgency, that he had saved
her life. “You have,” said Constantia, “you have
indeed done so: I acknowledge it; and, in return,
here is my life”—handing him at the same time the
two volumes of her “Memoirs,” and begging that he
would now take her life in discharge of his demand.

CHATTERTON’S PROFIT AND LOSS RECKONING.

Chatterton, the marvellous boy, wrote a political
essay for the North Briton, Wilkes’s journal; but,
though accepted, the essay was not printed, in consequence
of the death of the Lord Mayor, Chatterton’s137
patron. The youthful patriot thus calculated the results
of the suppression of his essay, which had begun
by a splendid flourish about “a spirited people freeing
themselves from insupportable slavery:”

LOCKE’S REBUKE OF THE CARD-PLAYING LORDS.

Locke, the brilliant author of the Essay on the
Human Understanding, was once introduced by Lord
Shaftesbury to the Duke of Buckingham and Lord
Halifax. But the three noblemen, instead of entering
into conversation on literary subjects with the
philosopher, very soon sat down to cards. Locke
looked on for a short time, and then drew out his
pocket-book and began to write in it with much attention.
One of the players, after a time, observed
this, and asked what he was writing. “My Lord,”
answered Locke, “I am endeavouring, as far as possible,
to profit by my present situation; for, having
waited with impatience for the honour of being in
company with the greatest geniuses of the age, I
thought I could do nothing better than to write down
your conversation; and, indeed, I have set down the
substance of what you have said for the last hour or
two.” The three noblemen, fully sensible of the force
of the rebuke, immediately left the cards and entered138
into a conversation more rational and more befitting
their reputation as men of genius.

HAYDN AND THE SHIP CAPTAIN.

When the immortal composer Haydn was on his
visit to England, in 1794, his chamber-door was
opened one morning by the captain of an East Indiaman,
who said, “You are Mr. Haydn?” “Yes.”
“Can you make me a ‘March,’ to enliven my crew?
You shall have thirty guineas; but I must have it
to-day, as to-morrow I sail for Calcutta.” Haydn
agreed, the sailor quitted him, the composer opened
his piano, and in a few minutes the march was
written. He appears, however, to have had a delicacy
rare among the musical birds of passage and of
prey who come to feed on the unwieldy wealth of England.
Conceiving that the receipt of a sum so large
as thirty guineas for a labour so slight, would be a
species of plunder, he came home early in the evening,
and composed other two marches, in order to
allow the liberal sea captain his choice, or make him
take all the three. Early next morning, the purchaser
came back. “Where is my march?” “Here
it is.” “Try it on the piano.” Haydn played it over.
The captain counted down the thirty guineas on the
piano, took up the march, and went down stairs.
Haydn ran after him, calling, “I have made other
two marches, both better; come up and hear them,
and take your choice.” “I am content with the one
I have,” returned the captain, without stopping. “I139
will make you a present of them,” cried the composer.
The captain only ran down the more rapidly, and
left Haydn on the stairs. Haydn, opposing obstinacy
to obstinacy, determined to overcome this odd
self-denial. He went at once to the Exchange,
found out the name of the ship, made his marches
into a roll, and sent them, with a polite note, to the
captain on board. He was surprised at receiving,
not long after, his envelope unopened, from the captain,
who had guessed it to be Haydn’s; and the
composer tore the whole packet into pieces upon the
spot. The narrator of this incident adds the remark,
that “though the anecdote is of no great elevation,
it expresses peculiarity of character; and certainly
neither the composer nor the captain could have
been easily classed among the common or the vulgar
of men.”

HAYDN’S DIPLOMA PIECE AT OXFORD.

During his stay in England, Haydn was honoured by
the diploma of Doctor of Music from the University
of Oxford—a distinction not obtained even by Handel,
and it is said, only conferred on four persons during
the four centuries preceding. It is customary to send
some specimen of composition in return for a degree;
and Haydn, with the facility of perfect skill, sent
back a page of music so curiously contrived, that in
whatever way it was read—from the top to the bottom
or the sides—it exhibited a perfect melody and accompaniment.140

ORIGIN OF THE BEGGAR’S OPERA.

It was Swift that first suggested to Gay the idea of
the Beggar’s Opera, by remarking, what an odd, pretty
sort of a thing a Newgate pastoral might make!
“Gay,” says Pope, “was inclined to try at such a thing
for some time; but afterwards thought it would be
better to write a comedy on the same plan. This was
what gave rise to the Beggar’s Opera. He began
on it; and when he first mentioned it to Swift, the
doctor did not much like the project. As he carried
it on, he showed what he wrote to both of us; and we
now and then gave a correction, or a word or two of
advice, but it was wholly of his own writing. When
it was done, neither of us thought it would succeed.
We showed it to Congreve, who, after reading it over,
said, ‘It would either take greatly, or be damned
confoundedly.’ We were all, at the first sight of it,
in great uncertainty of the event, till we were very
much encouraged by hearing the Duke of Argyle,
who sat in the next box to us, say, ‘It will do—I see
it in the eyes of them.’ This was a good while before
the first act was over, and so gave us ease soon; for
the Duke (besides his own good taste) has as particular
a knack as any one now living, in discovering
the taste of the public. He was quite right in this,
as usual; the good nature of the audience appeared
stronger and stronger every act, and ended in a
clamour of applause.”141

THE TWO SHERIDANS.

Sheridan made his appearance one day in a pair of
new boots; these attracting the notice of some of his
friends: “Now guess,” said he, “how I came by these
boots?” Many probable guesses were then ventured,
but in vain. “No,” said Sheridan, “no, you have
not hit it, nor ever will. I bought them, and paid
for them!” Sheridan was very desirous that his son
Tom should marry a young lady of large fortune, but
knew that Miss Callander had won his son’s heart.
Sheridan, expatiating once on the folly of his son, at
length broke out: “Tom, if you marry Caroline Callander,
I’ll cut you off with a shilling!” Tom, looking
maliciously at his father, said, “Then, sir, you
must borrow it.” In a large party one evening, the
conversation turned upon young men’s allowances at
college. Tom deplored the ill-judging parsimony of
many parents in that respect. “I am sure, Tom,” said
his father, “you have no reason to complain; I always
allowed you £800 a-year.” “Yes, father, I confess
you allowed it; but then—it was never paid!”

KILLING NO MURDER.

In a journey which Mademoiselle Scudéry, the Sappho
of the French, made along with her no less celebrated
brother, a curious incident befell them at an inn at a
great distance from Paris. Their conversation happened
one evening to turn upon a romance which they
were then jointly composing, to the hero of which142
they had given the name of Prince Mazare. “What
shall we do with Prince Mazare?” said Mademoiselle
Scudéry to her brother. “Is it not better that he
should fall by poison, than by the poignard?” “It is
not time yet,” replied the brother, “for that business;
when it is necessary we can despatch him as we please;
but at present we have not quite done with him.”
Two merchants in the next chamber, overhearing this
conversation, concluded that they had formed a conspiracy
for the murder of some prince whose real name
they disguised under that of Mazare. Full of this
important discovery, they imparted their suspicions
to the host and hostess; and it was resolved to inform
the police of what had happened. The police officers,
eager to show their diligence and activity, put the
travellers immediately under arrest, and conducted
them under a strong escort to Paris. It was not without
difficulty and expense that they there procured
their liberation, and leave for the future to hold an
unlimited right and power over all the princes and
personages in the realms of romance.

SENSITIVENESS TO CRITICISM.

Hawkesworth and Stillingfleet died of criticism;
Tasso was driven mad by it; Newton, the calm
Newton, kept hold of life only by the sufferance of a
friend who withheld a criticism on his chronology,
for no other reason than his conviction that if it were
published while he lived, it would put an end to him;
and every one knows the effect on the sensitive nature143
of Keats, of the attacks on his Endymion. Tasso
had a vast and prolific imagination, accompanied with
an excessively hypochondriacal temperament. The
composition of his great epic, the Jerusalem Delivered,
by giving scope to the boldest flights, and calling
into play the energies of his exalted and enthusiastic
genius—whilst with equal ardour it led him to
entertain hopes of immediate and extensive fame—laid
most probably the foundation of his subsequent
derangement. His susceptibility and tenderness of
feeling were great; and, when his sublime work met
with unexpected opposition, and was even treated
with contempt and derision, the fortitude of the poet
was not proof against the keen sense of disappointment.
He twice attempted to please his ignorant
and malignant critics by recomposing his poem; and
during the hurry, the anguish, and the irritation
attending these efforts, the vigour of a great mind
was entirely exhausted, and in two years after the
publication of the Jerusalem, the unhappy author
became an object of pity and terror. Newton, with
all his philosophy, was so sensible to critical remarks,
that Whiston tells us he lost his favour, which he had
enjoyed for twenty years, by contradicting him in his
old age; for “no man was of a more fearful temper.”

BUTLER AND BUCKINGHAM.

Of Butler, the author of Hudibras—which Dr.
Johnson terms “one of those productions of which
a nation may justly boast”—little further is known144
than that his genius was not sufficient to rescue him
from its too frequent attendant, poverty; he lived
in obscurity, and died in want. Wycherley often
represented to the Duke of Buckingham how well
Butler had deserved of the royal family by writing
his inimitable Hudibras, and that it was a disgrace
to the Court that a person of his loyalty and genius
should remain in obscurity and suffer the wants
which he did. The Duke, thus pressed, promised to
recommend Butler to his Majesty; and Wycherley, in
hopes to keep his Grace steady to his word, prevailed
on him to fix a day when he might introduce the
modest and unfortunate poet to his new patron. The
place of meeting fixed upon was the “Roebuck.” Butler
and his friend attended punctually; the Duke joined
them, when, unluckily, the door of the room being
open, his Grace observed one of his acquaintances
pass by with two ladies; on which he immediately
quitted his engagement, and from that time to the
day of his death poor Butler never derived the least
benefit from his promise.

THE MERMAID CLUB.

The celebrated club at the “Mermaid,” as has been
well observed by Gifford, “combined more talent and
genius, perhaps, than ever met together before or
since.” The institution originated with Sir Walter
Raleigh; and here, for many years, Ben Jonson regularly
repaired with Shakspeare, Beaumont, Fletcher,
Selden, Cotton, Carew, Martin, Donne, and many145
others whose names, even at this distant period, call
up a mingled feeling of reverence and respect. Here,
in the full flow and confidence of friendship, the lively
and interesting “wit-combats” took place between
Shakspeare and Jonson; and hither, in probable
allusion to some of them, Beaumont fondly lets his
thoughts wander in his letter to Jonson from the
country:—

For the expression, “wit-combats,” we must refer to
Fuller, who in his “Worthies,” describing the character
of the Bard of Avon, says: “Many were the wit-combats
between Shakspeare and Ben Jonson. I
behold them like a Spanish great galleon, and an
English man-of-war. Master Jonson, like the former,
was built far higher in learning, solid, but slow in his
performances; Shakspeare, like the latter, less in
bulk but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides,
tack about and take advantage of all winds, by the
quickness of his wit and invention.” With what delight
would after generations have hung over any
well-authenticated instances of these “wit-combats!”
But, unfortunately, nothing on which we can depend
has descended to us.146

PORSON’S MEMORY.

Professor Porson, the great Græcist, when a boy
at Eton, displayed the most astonishing powers of
memory. In going up to a lesson one day, he was
accosted by a boy in the same form: “Porson, what
have you got there?” “Horace.” “Let me look at
it.” Porson handed the book to his comrade; who,
pretending to return it, dexterously substituted another
in its place, with which Porson proceeded.
Being called on by the master, he read and construed
the tenth Ode of the first Book very regularly. Observing
that the class laughed, the master said, “Porson,
you seem to me to be reading on one side of the
page, while I am looking at the other; pray whose
edition have you?” Porson hesitated. “Let me
see it,” rejoined the master; who, to his great surprise,
found it to be an English Ovid. Porson was
ordered to go on; which he did, easily, correctly, and
promptly, to the end of the Ode. Much more remarkable
feats of memory than this, however, have
been recorded of Porson’s manhood.

WYCHERLEY’S WOOING.

Wycherley being at Tunbridge for the benefit of his
health, after his return from the Continental trip the
cost of which the king had defrayed, was walking one
day with his friend, Mr. Fairbeard, of Gray’s Inn.
Just as they came up to a bookseller’s shop, the
Countess of Drogheda, a young, rich, noble, and147
lovely widow, came to the bookseller and inquired for
the Plain Dealer—a well-known comedy of Wycherley’s.
“Madam,” said Mr. Fairbeard, “since you are
for the Plain Dealer, there he is for you”—pushing
Wycherley towards her. “Yes,” said Wycherley,
“this lady can bear plain dealing; for she appears to
me to be so accomplished, that what would be compliment
said to others, would be plain dealing spoken
to her.” “No, truly, sir,” said the Countess; “I am
not without my faults, any more than the rest of my
sex; and yet I love plain dealing, and am never more
fond of it than when it tells me of them.” “Then,
Madam,” said Fairbeard, “You and the Plain Dealer
seem designed by Heaven for each other.” In short,
Wycherley walked with the Countess, waited upon
her home, visited her daily while she was at Tunbridge,
and afterwards when she went to London;
where, in a little time, a marriage was concluded between
them. The marriage was not a happy one.

A CAROUSE AT BOILEAU’S.

Boileau, the celebrated French comedian, usually
passed the summer at his villa of Auteuil, which is
pleasantly situated at the entrance of the Bois de
Boulogne. Here he took delight in assembling under
his roof the most eminent geniuses of the age; especially
Chapelle, Racine, Molière, and La Fontaine.
Racine the younger gives the following account of a
droll circumstance that occurred at supper at Auteuil
with these guests. “At this supper,” he says, “at148
which my father was not present, the wise Boileau
was no more master of himself than any of his guests.
After the wine had led them into the gravest strain
of moralising, they agreed that life was but a state
of misery; that the greatest happiness consisted in
having been born, and the next greatest in an early
death; and they one and all formed the heroic resolution
of throwing themselves without loss of time into
the river. It was not far off, and they actually went
thither. Molière, however, remarked that such a
noble action ought not to be buried in the obscurity
of night, but was worthy of being performed in the
face of day. This observation produced a pause; one
looked at the other, and said, ‘He is right.’ ‘Gentlemen,’
said Chapelle, ‘we had better wait till morning
to throw ourselves into the river, and meantime return
and finish our wine;'” but the river was not
revisited.

THOMSON’S INDOLENCE.

The author of the Seasons and the Castle of Indolence,
paid homage in the latter admirable poem to
the master-passion or habit of his own easy nature.
Thomson was so excessively lazy, that he is recorded
to have been seen standing at a peach-tree, with both
his hands in his pockets, eating the fruit as it grew.
At another time, being found in bed at a very late
hour of the day, when he was asked why he did not
get up, his answer was, “Troth, man, I see nae motive
for rising!”149

A LEARNED YOUNG LADY.

Fraulein Dorothea Schlozer, a Hanoverian lady,
was thought worthy of the highest academical honours
of Göttingen University, and, at the jubilee of
1787, she had the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
conferred upon her, when only seventeen years of age.
The daughter of the Professor of Philosophy in that
University, she from her earliest years discovered an
uncommon genius for learning. Before she was three
years of age, she was taught Low German, a language
almost foreign to her own. Before she was six, she
had learned French and German, and then she began
geometry; and after receiving ten lessons, she was
able to answer very difficult questions. The English,
Italian, Swedish, and Dutch languages were next
acquired, with singular rapidity; and before she was
fourteen, she knew Latin and Greek, and had become
a good classical scholar. Besides her knowledge of
languages, she made herself acquainted with almost
every branch of polite literature, as well as many of
the sciences, particularly mathematics. She also attained
great proficiency in mineralogy; and, during
a sojourn of six weeks in the Hartz Forest, she visited
the deepest mines, in the common habit of a labourer,
and examined the whole process of the work. Her
surprising talents becoming the general topic of conversation,
she was proposed, by the great Orientalist
Michaelis, as a proper subject for academical honours.
The Philosophical Faculty, of which the Professor was
Dean, was deemed the fittest; and a day was fixed150
for her examination, in presence of all the Professors.
She was introduced by Michaelis himself, and distinguished,
as a lady, with the highest seat. Several
questions were first proposed to her in mathematics;
all of which she answered to satisfaction. After this,
she gave a free translation of the thirty-seventh Ode
of the first Book of Horace, and explained it. She
was then examined in various branches of art and
science, when she displayed a thorough knowledge
of the subjects. The examination lasted two hours
and a half; and at the end, the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy was unanimously conferred upon her, and
she was crowned with a wreath of laurel by Fraulein
Michaelis, at the request of the Professors.

A HARD HIT AT POPE.

Pope was one evening at Button’s Coffee-house, where
he and a set of literati had got poring over a Latin
manuscript, in which they had found a passage that
none of them could comprehend. A young officer,
who heard their conference, begged that he might be
permitted to look at the passage. “Oh,” said Pope,
sarcastically, “by all means; pray let the young gentleman
look at it.” Upon which the officer took up the
manuscript, and, considering it awhile, said there only
wanted a note of interrogation to make the whole intelligible:
which was really the case. “And pray,
Master,” says Pope with a sneer, “what is a note of
interrogation?”—”A note of interrogation,” replied
the young fellow, with a look of great contempt, “is
a little crooked thing that asks questions.”151

DRYDEN DRUBBED.

“Dryden,” says Leigh Hunt, “is identified with the
neighbourhood of Covent Garden. He presided in the
chair at Russell Street (Will’s Coffee-house); his plays
came out in the theatre at the other end of it; he
lived in Gerrard Street, which is not far off; and, alas
for the anti-climax! he was beaten by hired bravos
in Rose Street, now called Rose Alley. The outrage
perpetrated upon the sacred shoulders of the poet
was the work of Lord Rochester, and originated in
a mistake not creditable to that would-be great man
and dastardly debauchee.” Dryden, it seems, obtained
the reputation of being the author of the Essay on
Satire, in which Lord Rochester was severely dealt
with, and which was, in reality, written by Lord
Mulgrave, afterwards the Duke of Buckinghamshire.
Rochester meditated on the innocent Dryden a base
and cowardly revenge, and thus coolly expressed his
intent in one of his letters: “You write me word that
I am out of favour with a certain poet, whom I have
admired for the disproportion of him and his attributes.
He is a rarity which I cannot but be fond of,
as one would be of a hog that could fiddle, or a singing
owl. If he falls on me at the blunt, which is his
very good weapon in wit, I will forgive him if you
please, and leave the repartee to Black Will with a
cudgel.” “In pursuance of this infamous resolution,”
says Sir Walter Scott, “upon the night of the 18th
December 1679, Dryden was waylaid by hired ruffians,
and severely beaten, as he passed through Rose152
Street, Covent Garden, returning from Will’s Coffee-house
to his own house in Gerrard Street. A reward
of fifty pounds was in vain offered in the London
Gazette and other newspapers, for the discovery of
the perpetrators of this outrage. The town was, however,
at no loss to pitch upon Rochester as the employer
of the bravos; with whom the public suspicion
joined the Duchess of Portsmouth, equally concerned
in the supposed affront thus revenged…. It will
certainly be admitted that a man, surprised in the
dark, and beaten by ruffians, loses no honour by such
a misfortune. But if Dryden had received the same
discipline from Rochester’s own hand, without resenting it,
his drubbing could not have been more frequently
made a matter of reproach to him; a sign, surely, of
the penury of subjects for satire in his life and character,
since an accident, which might have happened
to the greatest hero that ever lived, was resorted to
as an imputation on his character.”

ROGERS AND “JUNIUS.”

Samuel Rogers was requested by Lady Holland to
ask Sir Philip Francis whether he was the author of
Junius’ Letters. The poet, meeting Sir Philip, approached
the ticklish subject thus: “Will you, Sir
Philip—will your kindness excuse my addressing to
you a single question?” “At your peril, Sir!” was
the harsh and curt reply of the knight. The intimidated
bard retreated upon his friends, who eagerly
inquired of him the success of his application. “I153
do not know,” Rogers said, “whether he is Junius;
but, if he be, he is certainly Junius Brutus.”

ALFIERI’S HAIR.

Alfieri, the greatest poet modern Italy produced,
delighted in eccentricities, not always of the most
amiable kind. One evening, at the house of the
Princess Carignan, he was leaning, in one of his silent
moods, against a sideboard decorated with a rich tea
service of china, when, by a sudden movement of his
long loose tresses, he threw down one of the cups.
The lady of the mansion ventured to tell him, that he
had spoiled the set, and had better have broken them
all. The words were no sooner said, than Alfieri,
without reply or change of countenance, swept off the
whole service upon the floor. His hair was fated to
bring another of his eccentricities into play. He
went one night, alone, to the theatre at Turin; and
there, hanging carelessly with his head backwards
over the corner of the box, a lady in the next seat on
the other side of the partition, who had on other occasions
made attempts to attract his attention, broke
out into violent and repeated encomiums on his
auburn locks, which were flowing down close to her
hand. Alfieri, however, spoke not a word, and continued
his position till he left the theatre. Next
morning, the lady received a parcel, the contents of
which she found to be the tresses which she had so
much admired, and which the erratic poet had cut off
close to his head. No billet accompanied the gift;154
but it could not have been more clearly said, “If
you like the hair, here it is; but, for Heaven’s sake,
leave me alone!”

SMOLLETT’S HARD FORTUNES.

Smollett, perhaps one of the most popular authors by
profession that ever wrote, furnishes a sad instance of
the insufficiency of even the greatest literary favour, in
the times in which he wrote, to procure those temporal
comforts on which the happiness of life so much depends.
“Had some of those,” he says, “who were
pleased to call themselves my friends, been at any
pains to deserve the character, and told me ingenuously
what I had to expect in the capacity of an
author, when first I professed myself of that venerable
fraternity, I should in all probability have spared myself
the incredible labour and chagrin I have since
undergone.” “Of praise and censure both,” he writes
at another time, “I am sick indeed, and wish to God
that my circumstances would allow me to consign
my pen to oblivion.” When he had worn himself
down in the service of the public or the booksellers,
there scarce was left of all his slender remunerations,
at the last stage of life, enough to convey him to a
cheap country and a restoring air on the Continent.
Gradually perishing in a foreign land, neglected by the
public that admired him, deriving no resources from
the booksellers who were drawing the large profits
of his works, Smollett threw out his injured feelings
in the character of Bramble, in Humphrey Clinker,155
the warm generosity of his temper, but not his genius,
seeming to fleet away with his breath. And when
he died, and his widow, in a foreign land, was raising
a plain memorial over his ashes, her love and piety
but made the little less; and she perished in unbefriended
solitude. “There are indeed,” says D’Israeli,
“grateful feelings in the public at large for a
favourite author; but the awful testimony of these
feelings, by its gradual process, must appear beyond
the grave! They visit the column consecrated by
his name—and his features are most loved, most venerated,
in the bust!”

JERROLD’S REBUKE TO A RUDE INTRUDER.

Douglas Jerrold and some friends were dining once
at a tavern, and had a private room; but after dinner
the landlord, on the plea that the house was partly
under repair, requested permission that a stranger
might take a chop in the apartment, at a separate
table. The company gave the required permission;
and the stranger, a man of commonplace aspect, was
brought in, ate his chop in silence, and then fell
asleep—snoring so loudly and discordantly that the
conversation could with difficulty be prosecuted.
Some gentleman of the party made a noise; and the
stranger, starting out of his nap, called out to Jerrold,
“I know you, Mr. Jerrold, I know you; but you
shall not make a butt of me!” “Then don’t bring
your hog’s head in here!” was the instant answer of
the wit.156

AN ODD PRESENT TO SHENSTONE.

An Edinburgh acquaintance is related to have sent
to Shenstone, in 1761, as a small stimulus to their
friendship, “a little provision of the best Preston
Pans snuff, both toasted and untoasted, in four bottles;
with one bottle of Highland Snishon, and four bottles
Bonnels. Please to let me know which sort is most
agreeable to you, that I may send you a fresh supply
in good time.”

WALLER, THE COURTIER-POET.

Waller wrote a fine panegyric on Cromwell, when
he assumed the Protectorship. Upon the restoration
of Charles, Waller wrote another in praise of him,
and presented it to the King in person. After his
Majesty had read the poem, he told Waller that he
wrote a better on Cromwell. “Please your Majesty,”
said Waller, like a true courtier, “we poets are always
more happy in fiction than in truth.”

THE END.

FOOTNOTES

1: See the Frontispiece.

2: Southey’s Life of John Bunyan.

3: In his Comic Miscellanies.

4: Supported by the following note, written by Dr. Parr, in his
copy of “The Letters of Junius:”—”The writer of ‘Junius’
was Mr. Lloyd, secretary to George Grenville, and brother to
Philip Lloyd, Dean of Norwich. This will one day or other
be generally acknowledged.—S. P.”

5: Personal Recollections of the late Daniel O’Connell, M.P.
By William J. O’N. Daunt.

6: See, also, an ensuing page, 120.

7: Johnson, by the way, had a strange nervous feeling, which
made him uneasy if he had not touched every post between the
Mitre Tavern and his own lodgings.

8: The house has been destroyed many years.

9: “The Dyotts,” notes Croker, “are a respectable and wealthy
family, still residing near Lichfield. The royalist who shot
Lord Brooke when assaulting St. Chad’s Cathedral, in Lichfield,
on St. Chad’s Day, was a Mr. Dyott.”

10: “I have seen,” says a Correspondent of the Inverness Courier,
“a copy of the second edition of Burns’s ‘Poems,’ with the blanks
filled up, and numerous alterations made in the poet’s handwriting:
one instance, not the most delicate, but perhaps the
most amusing and characteristic will suffice. After describing
the gambols of his ‘Twa Dogs,’ their historian refers to their
sitting down in coarse and rustic terms. This, of course, did
not suit the poet’s Edinburgh patrons, and he altered it to the
following:—

Still this did not please his fancy; he tried again, and hit it
off in the simple, perfect form in which it now stands:—

11: Campbell’s alterations were, generally, decided improvements;
but in one instance he failed lamentably. The noble
peroration of Lochiel is familiar to most readers:—

In the quarto edition of Gertrude of Wyoming, when the poet
collected and reprinted his minor pieces, this lofty sentiment
was thus stultified:—

The original passage, however, was wisely restored in the
subsequent editions.

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