"Time was I sat upon a lofty stool,At lofty desk, and with a clerkly penBegan each morning at the stroke of tenTo write in Bell and Co.'s commercial school,In Warnford Court, a shady nook and cool,The favourite retreat of merchant men;Yet would my quill turn vagrant even then,And take stray dips in the Castalian pool.Now double entry—now a flowery trope—Mingling poetic honey with trade wax:Blogg, Brothers—Milton—Grote and Prescott—Pope—Bristles and Hogg—Glyn, Mills, and Halifax—Rogers and Towgood—Hemp—the Bard of Hope—Barilla—Byron—Tallow—Burns, and Flax."
"Time was I sat upon a lofty stool,At lofty desk, and with a clerkly penBegan each morning at the stroke of tenTo write in Bell and Co.'s commercial school,In Warnford Court, a shady nook and cool,The favourite retreat of merchant men;Yet would my quill turn vagrant even then,And take stray dips in the Castalian pool.Now double entry—now a flowery trope—Mingling poetic honey with trade wax:Blogg, Brothers—Milton—Grote and Prescott—Pope—Bristles and Hogg—Glyn, Mills, and Halifax—Rogers and Towgood—Hemp—the Bard of Hope—Barilla—Byron—Tallow—Burns, and Flax."
In 1824, Hood, after having contributed to some periodicals at Dundee in 1821, obtained the situation of sub-editor of theLondon Magazine. "My vanity," says he, "did not rashly plunge me into authorship, but no sooner was there alegitimate opening than I jumped at it,à laGrimaldi, head foremost, and was speedily behind the scenes."
Mr. Hood's first work was anonymous—hisOdes and Addresses to Great People—a little, thin, mean-looking foolscap sub-octavo of poems with nothing but wit and humour (could it want more?) to recommend it. Coleridge was delighted with the work, and taxed Charles Lamb by letter with the authorship.
His next work wasA Plea for the Midsummer Fairies, a serious poem of infinite beauty, full of fine passages and of promise; it obtained praise from the critics, but little favour from the public; and Hood's experience of the unpleasant truth that
"Those who live to please must please to live,"
induced him to have recourse again to his lively vein. He published a second and third series ofWhims and Oddities, and in 1829 commenced theComic Annual, and it was continued nine years. It proved very profitable; it was a small, widely-printed volume, with rough woodcuts drawn by Hood, who had been some time on probation with Sands and Le Keux, the engravers. Several thousand copies were sold annually, as the publishers' ledgers show. Then came out the comic poem ofThe Epping Hunt, which, Hood tells us, "was penned by an underling at the Wells, a person more accustomed to riding than writing," as shown in this epistle:—"Sir,—Abouut the Hunt. In anser to your Innqueries, their as been a great falling off latterally, so much so this year that there was nobody allmost. We did a mear nothing provisionally, hardly a Bottle extra, which is as proof in Pint. In short our Hunt may be sad to be in the last Stag of a Decline. Bartholomew Rutt." Next appearedThe Dream of Eugene Aram, with this note: "The late Admiral Burney went to school at an establishment where the unhappy Eugene Aram was usher subsequent to his crime. The Admiral stated that Aram was generallyliked by the boys; and that he used to discourse to them aboutmurderin somewhat of the spirit which is attributed to him in this poem." The poem is exquisitely written throughout, and is sometimes little less than sublime.
In the spring of 1831, Hood became the occupier of Lake House, near Wanstead; and while residing here, he wrote his novel ofTylney Hall, in which the characters are exuberant with wit and humour, but the plot is defective. Hood next publishedHood's Own; or, Laughter from Year to Year, a volume of comic lucubrations, reprinted, "with an infusion of New Blood for General Circulation." He next went to the Continent for the benefit of his health. When in Belgium, he published hisUp the Rhine, constructed on the groundwork ofHumphrey Clinker. The work consists of a series of imaginary letters from a hypochondriacal old bachelor, his widowed sister, his nephew, and a servant-maid, who form the imaginary travelling party. Each individual writes to a friend in England, and describes the scenes, manners, and circumstances, in a manner suitable to the assumed character. The nephew's remarks seem to embody the opinions and observations of Hood himself. The book is illustrated with whimsical cuts in Hood's rough but effective style, and abounds in good sense as well as humour. Here is a specimen:—
"An English lady resident at Coblentz, one day wishing to order of her German servant (who did not understand English) a boiled fowl for dinner, Grettel was summoned, and that experiment began. It was one of the lady's fancies, that the less her words resembled her native tongue, the more they must be like German. So her first attempt was to tell the maid that she wanted a cheeking, or keeking. The maid opened her eyes and mouth, and shook her head. 'It's to cook,' said the mistress, 'to cook, to put in an iron thing, in a pit—pat—pot.' 'Ish understand risht,' said the maid, in her Coblentz patois. 'It's a thing to eat,' said her mistress, for dinner—for deener—with sauce, soace—sowose.'No answer. 'What on earth am I to do?' exclaimed the lady, in despair, but still made another attempt. 'It's a little creature—a bird—a bard—a beard—a hen—a hone—a fowl—a fool; it's all covered with feathers—fathers—feeders!' 'Ha, ha,' cried the delighted German, at last getting hold of a catchword, 'Ja, ja! fedders—ja woh!' and away went Grettel, and in half-an-hour returned triumphantly, with a bundle of stationers' quills."
Hood afterwards became editor of theNew Monthly Magazine, from which he retired in 1843. In the course of this year, public feeling had been much excited by cases of distress and destitution, which came before the London police-magistrates, arising from the excessively low rate of wages paid by dealers in ready-made linen to their workwomen. Taking advantage of a market overstocked with labourers, these tradesmen got their work done for a rate of payment so small that fourteen or fifteen hours' labour were frequently required in order to obtain sixpence! Hood's sympathy was excited, and "The Song of the Shirt" was the result—"a burst of poetry and indignant passion by which he produced tears almost as irrepressibly as in other cases he produced laughter." "The Song of the Shirt" was sent to a comic periodical, but was refused insertion; it has, however, been sung through the whole length and breadth of the three kingdoms.
Our author's last periodical wasHood's Magazine, which he continued to supply with the best of its contributions till within a month before his death. It contained a novel, which was interrupted by his last illness and death; the last chapters were, in fact, written by him when he was propped up by pillows in bed. He had the consolation, a short time before his death, of having a Government pension of 100l.a-year, which was offered him by Sir Robert Peel, in the following noble and touching letter, Sir Robert knowing of his illness, but not of his imminent danger—"I am more than repaid," writes Peel, "by the personal satisfactionwhich I have had in doing that for which you return me warm and characteristic acknowledgments. You perhaps think that you are known to one with such multifarious occupations as myself merely by general reputation as an author; but I assure you that there can be little which you have written and acknowledged which I have not read, and that there are few who can appreciate and admire more than myself the good sense and good feeling which have taught you to infuse so much fun and merriment into writings correcting folly and exposing absurdities, and yet never trespassing beyond those limits within which wit and facetiousness are not very often confined. You may write on with the consciousness of independence as free and unfettered as if no communication had ever passed between us. I am not conferring a private obligation upon you, but am fulfilling the intentions of the Legislature, which has placed at the disposal of the Crown a certain sum (miserable, indeed, in amount) to be applied to the recognition of public claims on the bounty of the Crown. If you will review the names of those whose claims have been admitted on account of their literary or scientific eminence, you will find an ample confirmation of the truth of my statement. One return, indeed, I shall ask you—that you will give me the opportunity of making your personal acquaintance."
To this statement in theCornhill Magazineare appended the following reflections:—"O sad, marvellous picture of courage, of honesty, of patient endurance, of duty struggling against pain! How noble Peel's figure is standing by that sick-bed, how generous his words, how dignified and sincere his compassion! And the poor dying man, with a heart full of natural gratitude towards his noble benefactor, must turn to him and say—'If it be well to be remembered by a Minister, it is better still not to be forgotten by him in a 'hurly Burleigh!' Can you laugh? Is not the joke horribly pathetic from the poor dying lips? As dying Robin Hood must fire a last shot with his bow—as onereads of Catholics on their death-bed putting on a Capuchin dress to go out of the world—here is poor Hood at his last hour putting on his ghastly motley, and uttering one joke more. He dies, however, in dearest love and peace with his children, wife, friends: to the former especially his whole life had been devoted, and every day showed his fidelity, simplicity, and affection. In going through the record of his most pure, modest, honourable life, and living along with him, you come to trust him thoroughly, and feel that here is a most loyal, affectionate, and upright soul, with whom you have been brought into communion. Can we say as much of all lives of all men of letters? Here is one at least without guile, without pretension, without scheming, of pure life, to his family and little modest circle of friends tenderly devoted."
After a lethargy, which continued four days, Hood died May 3rd, 1845. He was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, where a poetical monument has been erected to his memory. He left a son, who inherits much of his father's genius.
"Hood," says one of his biographers, "was undoubtedly a man of genius. His mind was stored with a vast collection of materials drawn from a great variety of sources, but especially his own observations; and he possessed the power of working up those materials into combinations of wit and humour and pathos of the most original and varied kinds. He has wit of the highest quality, as original and as abundant as Butler's or Cowley's, drawn from as extensive an observation of nature and life, if not from so wide a reach of learning, and combined with a richness of humour of which Butler had little and Cowley none. His humour is frequently as extravagantly broad as that of Rabelais, but he has sometimes the delicate touches of that of Addison. As a punster he stands alone. His puns do not consist merely of double meanings of words—a low kind of punning, of which minds of a low order are capable, and with which his imitators have deluged English comedy and comicliterature—but of double meanings of words combined with double meanings of sense in such a manner as to produce the most extraordinary effects of surprise and admiration. His power of exciting laughter is wonderful, his drollery indescribable, inimitable. His pathetic power is not equal to his comic, but it is very great. The moral tendency of Hood's works is excellent. In the indulgence of his spirit of fun, he is anything but strait-laced as regards the introduction of images and phrases which a fastidious person might call vulgar or coarse; but an indecent description or even allusion will not easily be found. He is liberal-minded, a warm eulogist as well as a glowing depicter of the good feelings of our nature and the generous actions which those feelings prompt, and he is an unsparing satirist of vice, pretension, and cant in all their forms.
"Hood, in his person, was thin, pale, and delicate; in his temper he was kind and cheerful; he seems to have imbibed the social and benevolent feeling of his friend Lamb, and he was no less than Lamb a favourite among his friends. His long-continued sufferings only stimulated him to amuse himself and others by the exercise of his extraordinary imagination; and when at last he could no longer bear up under his bodily pains, his complaint was simple, but it indicated a terrible degree of suffering—'I cannot die, I cannot die.'"
An industrious student, a deep thinker, an acute reasoner, a learned mind, a correct and at times elegant writer—these are titles of honour which the mere out-side-world, travelling in its flying railway-carriage, will gladly award to the late Archbishop of Dublin (Dr. Whately). Not so familiar are certain minor and more curious gifts, which he kept by him for his own and his friends' entertainment, which broke out at times on more public occasions. He delighted in the oddities of thought, in queer quaintdistinctions; and if an object had by any possibility some strange distorted side or corner, or even point, which was undermost, he would gladly stoop down his mind to get that precise view of it, nay, would draw it in that odd light for the amusement of the company.
Thus he struck Guizot, who described him as "startling and ingenious, strangely absent, familiar, confused, eccentric, amiable, and engaging, no matter what unpoliteness he might commit, or what propriety he might forget." In short, a mind with a little of the Sydney Smith's leaven, whose brilliancy lay in precisely these odd analogies. It was his recreation to take up some intellectual hobby, and make a toy of it. Just as, years ago, he was said to have taken up that strange instrument the boomerang, and was to be seen on the sands casting it from him, and watching it return. It was said, too, that at the dull intervals of a visitation, when ecclesiastical business languished, he would cut out little miniature boomerangs of card, and amuse himself by illustrating the principle of the larger toy by shooting them from his finger.
The even, and sometimes drowsy, current of Dublin society was almost always enlivened by some little witty boomerang of his, fluttering from mouth to mouth, and from club to club. The Archbishop's last was eagerly looked for. Some were indifferent, some were trifling; but it was conceded that all had an odd extravagance, which marked them as original, quaint, queer. In this respect he was the Sydney Smith of the Irish capital, with this difference—that Sydney Smith's king announced that he would never make the lively Canon of St. Paul's a Bishop.
Homœopathy was a medical paradox, and was therefore welcome. Yet in this he travelled out of the realms of mere fanciful speculation, and clung to it with a stern and consistent earnestness faithfully adhered to through his last illness. Mesmerism, too, he delighted to play with. He had, in fact,innumerabledadas, as the French call them, or hobby-horses, upon which he was continually astride.
This led him into a pleasant affection of being able to discoursede omnibus rebus, &c., and the more recondite or less known the subject, the more eager was he to speak. It has been supposed that the figure of the "Dean," in Mr. Lever's pleasant novel ofRoland Cashel, was sketched from him. Indeed, there can be no question but that it is an unacknowledged portrait.
"What is the difference," he asked of a young clergyman he was examining, "between a form and a ceremony? The meaning seems nearly the same; yet there is a very nice distinction." Various answers were given. "Well," he said, "it lies in this: you sit upon a form, but you stand upon ceremony."
"Morrow's Library" is the Mudie of Dublin; and the Rev. Mr. Day, a popular preacher. "How inconsistent," said the archbishop, "is the piety of certain ladies here. They goto Day for a sermon, andto Morrowfor a novel!"
At a dinner-party he called out suddenly to the host, "Mr. ——!" There was silence. "Mr. ——, what is the proper female companion of this John Dory?" After the usual number of guesses an answer came, "Anne Chovy." [This has been attributed to Quin, the actor and epicure.]
Another Riddle.—"The laziest letter in the alphabet? ThelettherG!" (lethargy).
The Wicklow Line.—The most unmusical in the world—having a Dun-Drum, Still-Organ, and a Bray for stations.
Doctor Gregg.—The new bishop and he at dinner. Archbishop: "Come, though youareJohn Cork, you musn't stop the bottle here." The answer was not inapt: "I see your lordship is determined to draw me out."
On Dr. K——x's promotion to the bishopric of Down, an appointment in some quarters unpopular: "The Irishgovernment will not be able to stand many more such Knocks Down as this!"
The merits of the same bishop being canvassed before him, and it being mentioned that he had compiled a most useful Ecclesiastical Directory, with the Values of Livings, &c., "If that be so," said the archbishop, "I hope the next time the claims of our friend Thom will not be overlooked." (Thom, the author of the well knownAlmanack.)
A clergyman, who had to preach before him, begged to be let off, saying, "I hope your grace will excuse my preaching next Sunday." "Certainly," said the other indulgently. Sunday came, and the archbishop said to him, "Well! Mr. ——, what became of you! we expected you to preach to-day." "Oh, your grace said you would excuse my preaching to-day." "Exactly; but I did not say I would excuse youfrompreaching."
At a lord lieutenant's banquet a grace was given of unusual length. "My lord," said the archbishop, "did you ever hear the story of Lord Mulgrave's chaplain?" "No," said the lord lieutenant. "A young chaplain had preached a sermon of great length. 'Sir,' said Lord Mulgrave, bowing to him, 'there were some things in your sermon of to-day I never heard before.' 'Oh, my lord,' said the flattered chaplain, 'it is a common text, and I could not have hoped to have said anything new on the subject.' 'I heard the clock strike twice,' said Lord Mulgrave."
At some religious ceremony at which he was to officiate in the country, a young curate who attended him grew very nervous as to their being late. "My good young friend," said the archbishop, "I can only say to you what the criminal going to be hanged said to those around, who were hurrying him, 'Let us take our time, they can't begin without us.'"—(Yorick Junior.—Notes and Queries. Third Series.)
The following charade, said to be one of the last by Dr. Whatley, has puzzled many wise heads:—
"Man cannot live without myfirst,By day and night it's used;Mysecondis by all accursed,By day and night abused.Mywholeis never seen by day,And never used by night;Is dear to friends when far away,But hated when in sight."
"Man cannot live without myfirst,By day and night it's used;Mysecondis by all accursed,By day and night abused.Mywholeis never seen by day,And never used by night;Is dear to friends when far away,But hated when in sight."
A Correspondent ofNotes and Queriessuggests the following solution:—
"Ignis, or fire, all men will ownEssential to the life of man;Fatuus, a fool, has been, 'tis known,Cursed and abused since time began.SomeIgnis Fatuus, Will-o'-wisp.Not seen by day, nor used by night,Men love, and for their phantom list,When 'tis unseen, but hate its sight."
"Ignis, or fire, all men will ownEssential to the life of man;Fatuus, a fool, has been, 'tis known,Cursed and abused since time began.SomeIgnis Fatuus, Will-o'-wisp.Not seen by day, nor used by night,Men love, and for their phantom list,When 'tis unseen, but hate its sight."
"Great wits are sure to madness near allied,And their partitions do their bounds divide."—Dryden.
This bold assertion has long since been pronounced incorrect. Nevertheless, the barrier between genius and madness has not been traced. Eccentricity is often mistaken for craziness; and the entire subject is beset with nice points and shades of controversy. In 1860 appeared Octave Delepierre'sHistoire Littéraire des Fous, upon the soundness of which critics are divided in opinion. The following sketch of its contents, however, shows the work to be full of interest.
A history of literary madmen is yet to be written—whether it be a history of authors who have gone mad, or of persons who, being mad, have turned authors. It issingular to notice what relief madmen find in literary composition; so much so, that it has been employed as a method of cure in more than one of our lunatic asylums. At the Crichton Royal Institution, Dumfriesshire, a little journal, entitled theNew Moon, was published every month, the contents being contributed, set up, and printed by the inmates in their lucid moments. Occasionally there was a little incoherence—a little roughness; but, as a whole, theNew Moonwould bear comparison with many other amateur periodicals. Here are two stanzas written by a man tortured by long sleeplessness, whom private misfortunes had driven mad:—
"Go! sleep, my heart, in peace,Bid fear and sorrow cease:He who of worlds takes care,One heart in mind doth bear."Go! sleep, my heart, in peace,If death should thee release,And this night hence thee take,Thou yonder wilt awake."
"Go! sleep, my heart, in peace,Bid fear and sorrow cease:He who of worlds takes care,One heart in mind doth bear.
"Go! sleep, my heart, in peace,If death should thee release,And this night hence thee take,Thou yonder wilt awake."
Theology has sent more people mad than any other pursuit—a truth of which M. Delepierre'sHistoire Littéraire des Fousfurnishes some interesting illustrations.
The writer has, however, occasionally mistaken eccentricity for craziness. Simon Stylites on his pillar and St. Anthony in his cave were crazed; but we do not think that Baxter'sHooks and Eyes for Believers' Breechesis an indication of insanity any more than such works asLa Seringue Spirituelle pour les Ames constipées en Dévotion, orLa Tabatière Spirituelle pour faire éternuer les Ames dévotes. Very probably, if we could refer to these works, we should find that the title had little or nothing in common with the contents, but as a mere trick to catch purchasers. Few people would charge Latimer with being mad because he preached a "Sermon on a Pack of Cards." Nor do we think any conclusion can be drawn unfavourable to theJesuit missionary Paoletti from the mere fact of his writing a treatise to prove that the American aborigines were eternally damned without hope of redemption, because they were the offspring of the Devil and one of Noah's daughters. His mind had not lost its balance to such a degree as that of old Portel, who persuaded himself that the soul of John the Baptist had passed into his body; or of Miranda, a living man, who fancies himself the forty-ninth incarnation of Adam through Romulus and Mohamed; while Queen Victoria is the seventieth embodiment of the soul of Eve, by way of Miriam and the Virgin Mary! Geoffrey Vallée was another monomaniac of this class, who began by having a shirt for every day in the year, which he used to send into Flanders to be washed at a certain spring, and ended by being burnt at the stake as an atheist for a silly book he wrote. Our own John Mason, who proclaimed Christ's coming, and declared Water Stratford, near Buckingham, to be the seat of his throne, has had many imitators at home and abroad.
Endeavours to interpret prophecy and explain the Apocalypse have turned many a brain, even in our own days. One Francis Potter wrote a book with the following title:—"An Interpretation of the number 666, wherein it is shown that this number is an exquisite and perfect character, truly, exactly, and essentially describing that state of government to which all other notes of Antichrist do agree." A Frenchman, Soubira, ran mad on the same subject about the same period. In 1828 he published a pamphlet with this meagre title—"666." Here is a sample:—
Joseph O'Donnelly fancied he had discovered the primitivelanguage, and printed some specimens of it at Brussels in 1854.
The literary madman is often harmless enough, and his condition being not rarely the result of an overtasked brain, in his lucid moments he is his former self. If in his mad moments Lee called upon Jupiter to rise and snuff the moon; it was in his calmer hours that he replied to the sneers of a silly poet—"It is very difficult to write like a madman, but very easy to write like a fool." Christopher Smart was another poetical lunatic, whose best pieces were composed while he was under restraint. These are not, however, very remarkable, their chief merit consisting in their history. Like the Koran, they were committed to writing under circumstances of great difficulty; the whitened walls of his cell were his paper, and his pen the end of a piece of wood burnt in the fire. Thomas Lloyd belonged to this class, but few of his fragments have been preserved. Milman, of Pennsylvania, lost his bride by lightning on their wedding-day: his reason never recovered the shock.
Luke Clennel, the engraver, forgot his art during his long state of unreason, but would compose very passable verses; while John Clare, whose poetry brought him into note, and led to his ruin, scarcely wrote at all during his mad moods. Thomas Bishop took to the drama, and hisKoranzzo's Feast, or the Unfair Marriage, a tragedy founded on facts 2,366 years ago, is a serious performance, amply illustrated. Among the characters are four queens, three savages, and five ghosts, not including the ghost of a clock, intended as part of the stage furniture. The most singular of this class of one-sided writers is M. G. Desjardins, who, we believe, is still alive. It is impossible to imagine a head more completely turned than his.
Another writer of this eccentric class is Paulin Gagne, author ofL'Unitéide, ou la Femme-Messie, a poem in twelve cantos. The thirty-eighth act of the eighth canto passes ina potato-field, and the scene is opened byPataticulturein a speech of this fashion:—
"Peuples et Rois, je suis la Pataticulture,Fille de la nature et du siècle en friture;J'ai toujours adoré ce fruit délicieuxQue, dit-on, pour extra, mangeaient jadis les Dieux."
"Peuples et Rois, je suis la Pataticulture,Fille de la nature et du siècle en friture;J'ai toujours adoré ce fruit délicieuxQue, dit-on, pour extra, mangeaient jadis les Dieux."
He winds up by declaring that
"Dans la pomme de terre est le salut de tous."
In the following act,Carroticultureis introduced with a new version of the Marseillaise:—
"Allons, enfans de la Cacrotte."
Science and Philosophy have had their victims; and those, though we must except Newton, so long reckoned among those whose brain had given way under intense thought, we must include Kant, his disciple Wirgman, and others of less note. William Martin, whose two brothers made themselves famous in very different lines—one by setting fire to York Minster, the other by his paintings—was as mad as could be desired, both in science and poetry. Here is a sample combined:—
"The creation of the world,Likewise Adam and Eve, we know,Made by the Great God, fromWhom all blessings flow."
"The creation of the world,Likewise Adam and Eve, we know,Made by the Great God, fromWhom all blessings flow."
The famous Walking Stewart went crazy on "the polarization of moral truth." At the dinner-table he spoilt the digestion of his guests by turning the conversation to his one beloved subject, and he was as fatal as the Ancient Mariner to any man who might chance to address him a civil word in public places or conveyances.
A deplorable instance of this class is afforded by Wirgman, the Kantesian, just named, who, after making a fortune as a goldsmith and silversmith, in St. James's Street, Westminster, squandered it all asa regeneratingphilosopher. He printed several works, and had paper made specially for one, the same sheet being of several different colours; and as he changed the work many times while it was printing, the expense was enormous: one book of four hundred pages cost 2,276l.He published a grammar of the five senses, which was a sort of system of metaphysics for the use of children; and he maintained that when it was universally adopted in schools, peace and harmony would be restored to the earth, and virtue would everywhere replace crime. He complained much that people would not listen to him, and that although he had devoted nearly half a century, he had asked in vain to be appointed Professor in some University or College—so little does the world appreciate those who labour unto death in its service. Nevertheless, exclaimed Wirgman, after another useless application, "while life remains, I will not cease to communicate this blessing to the rising world."
The celebrated French physician, Pinel, relates the case of a watchmaker who was infatuated with the chimera of Perpetual Motion, and to effect this discovery, he set to work with indefatigable ardour. From unremitting attention to the object of his enthusiasm, coinciding with the influence of revolutionary disturbances, his imagination was greatly heated, his sleep was interrupted, and at length a complete derangement took place. His case was marked by a most whimsical illusion of the imagination: he fancied that he had lost his head upon the scaffold; that it had been thrown promiscuously among the heads of many other victims; that the judges having repented of their cruel sentence, had ordered their heads to be restored to their respective owners, and placed upon their respective shoulders; but that, in consequence of an unhappy mistake, the gentleman who had the management of that business, hadplaced upon his shoulders the head of one of his unhappy companions. The idea of this whimsical change of his head occupied his thoughts night and day, which determined his friends to send him to an asylum. Nothing could exceed the extravagance of his heated brain: he sung, he cried, or danced incessantly; and as there appeared no propensity to commit acts of violence or disturbance, he was allowed to go about the hospital without control, in order to expend, by evaporation, the effervescence of his spirits. "Look at these teeth!" he cried; "mine were exceedingly handsome; these are rotten and decayed. My mouth was sound and healthy; this is foul and diseased. What difference between this hair and that of my own head!"
The idea of perpetual motion frequently recurred to him in the midst of his wanderings; and he chalked on all the doors or windows as he passed the various designs by which his wondrous piece of mechanism was to be constructed. The method best calculated to cure so whimsical an illusion appeared to be that of encouraging his prosecution of it to satiety. His friends were accordingly requested to send him his tools, with materials to work upon, and other requisites, such as plates of copper and steel, and watch-wheels. His zeal was now redoubled; his whole attention was rivetted upon his favourite pursuit: he forgot his meals, and after about a month's labour our artist began to think he had followed a false route. He broke into a thousand fragments the piece of machinery which he had fabricated with so much toil, and thought, and labour; he then entered upon a new plan, and laboured for another fortnight. The various parts being completed, he brought them together; he fancied that he saw a perfect harmony amongst them. The whole was now finally adjusted—his anxiety was indescribable—motion succeeded; it continued for some time, and he supposed it capable of continuing for ever. He was elevated to the highest pitch of ecstasy and triumph, and ran like lightning into the interior of the hospital, crying out, likeanother Archimedes, "At length I have solved this famous problem, which has puzzled so many men celebrated for their wisdom and talents!" Grievous to add, he was checked in the midst of his triumph. The wheels stopped! theperpetual motionceased! His intoxication of joy was succeeded by disappointment and confusion; though to avoid a humiliating and mortifying confession, he declared that he could easily remove the impediment: but, tired of such experimental employment, he determined for the future to devote his attention solely to his business.
There still remained another imaginary impression to be counteracted—that of the exchange of his head, which unceasingly occurred to him. A keen and unanswerable stroke of pleasantry seemed best adapted to correct this fantastic whim. Another convalescent, of a gay and facetious turn, instructed beforehand, adroitly turned the conversation to the subject of the famous miracle of St. Denis, in which it will be recollected that the holy man, after decapitation, walked away with his head under his arm, which he kissed and condoled with for its misfortune. Our mechanician strongly maintained the possibility of the fact, and sought to confirm it by an appeal to his own case. The other set up a laugh, and replied with a tone of the keenest ridicule, "Madman as thou art, how could St. Denis kiss his own head? Was it with his heels?" This equally unexpected and unanswerable retort forcibly struck the maniac. He retired confused amidst the laughter which was provoked at his expense, and never afterwards mentioned theexchange of his head.
The Duchess of Newcastle. From the portrait prefixed to her poems.
The Duchess of Newcastle. From the portrait prefixed to her poems.
"Her beauty's found beyond the skillOf the best paynter to embrace."
More than two centuries ago, when Clerkenwell was a sort of court-quarter of the town, its most distinguished residents were William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, and his wife, Margaret Lucas, both of whom are remembered bytheir literary eccentricities. The Duke, who was a devoted royalist, after his defeat at Marston Moor, retired with his wife to the Continent; and with many privations, owing to pecuniary embarrassments, suffered an exile of eighteen years, chiefly in Antwerp, in a house which belonged to the widow of Rubens. Such was their extremity that they were both forced at one time to pawn their clothes to purchase a dinner. The Duke beguiled his time by writing an eccentric book on horsemanship. During his absence Cromwell's parliament levied upon his estate nearly three-quarters of a million of money. Upon the Restoration, he returned to England, and was created Duke of Newcastle; he then retired to his mansion in Clerkenwell; he died there in 1676, aged eighty-four.
The duchess was a pedantic and voluminous writer, her collected works filling ten printed folios, for she wrote prose and verse in all their varieties. "The whole story," writes Pepys, "of this lady is a romance and all she does is romantic. April 26th, 1667.—Met my Lady Newcastle, with her coach and footman all in velvet, herself, whom I never saw before, as I have heard her often described, for all the town talk is now-a-days of her extravagances, with her velvet cap, her hair about her ears, many black patches because of pimples about her mouth, naked-necked without anything about it, and a blackjust-au-corps. May 1st 1667.—She was in a black coach, adorned with silver instead of gold, and snow-white curtains, and everything black and white. Stayed at home reading the ridiculous history of my Lord Newcastle, wrote by his wife, which shows her to be a mad, conceited, ridiculous woman, and he an asse to suffer her to write what she writes to him and of him." On the 10th of April, 1667, Charles and his Queen came to Clerkenwell, on a visit to the duchess. On the 18th John Evelyn went to make court to the noble pair, who received him with great kindness. Another time he dined at Newcastle House, and was privileged to sit discoursing with her grace in her bedchamberafter dinner. She thus describes to a friend her literary employments:—"You will find my works like infinite nature, that hath neither beginning nor end, and as confused as the chaos, wherein is neither method nor order, but all mixed together, without separation, like light and darkness." "But what gives one," says Walpole, "the best idea of her passion for scribbling, was her seldom revising the copies of her works, lest it should disturb her following conceptions. Her servant John was ordered to lie on a truckle-bed in a closet within her grace's bedchamber; and whenever, at any time, she gave the summons, by calling out 'John,' I conceive poor John was to get up, and commit to writing the offspring of his mistress' thoughts. Her grace's folios were usually enriched with gold, and had her coat-of-arms upon them. Hence, Pope, in theDunciad, Book I:—
"Stamp'd with arms, Newcastle shines complete."
In herPoems and Fancies, 1653, the copy now in the British Museum, on the margin of one page is the following note in the Duchess' own handwriting:—"Reader, let me intreat you to consider only the fancyes in this my book of poems, and not the language of the numbers, nor rimes, nor fals printing, for if you doe, you will be my condeming judg, which will grive me much." Of this book she says:—
"When I did write this book I took great paines,For I did walk, and thinke, and break my braines;My thoughts run out of breath, then down would lye,And panting with short wind like those that dye;When time had given ease, and lent them strength,Then up would get and run another length;Sometimes I kept my thought with strict dyet,And made them fast with ease, rest, and quiet,That they might run with swifter speed,And by this course new fancies they could breed;But I doe feare they are no so good to please,But now they're out my braine is more at ease."
"When I did write this book I took great paines,For I did walk, and thinke, and break my braines;My thoughts run out of breath, then down would lye,And panting with short wind like those that dye;When time had given ease, and lent them strength,Then up would get and run another length;Sometimes I kept my thought with strict dyet,And made them fast with ease, rest, and quiet,That they might run with swifter speed,And by this course new fancies they could breed;But I doe feare they are no so good to please,But now they're out my braine is more at ease."
At page 228 occurs this strange fancy:—
"Life scums the cream of beauty with Time's spoon,And draws the claret wine of blushes soon."
"Life scums the cream of beauty with Time's spoon,And draws the claret wine of blushes soon."
Again, she tells us that—
"The brain is like an oven, hot and dry,Which bakes all sorts of fancies, low and high;The thoughts are wood, which motion sets on fire;The tongue a peele, which draws forth the desire;But thinking much, the brain too hot will grow,And burns it up; if cold, the thoughts are dough."
"The brain is like an oven, hot and dry,Which bakes all sorts of fancies, low and high;The thoughts are wood, which motion sets on fire;The tongue a peele, which draws forth the desire;But thinking much, the brain too hot will grow,And burns it up; if cold, the thoughts are dough."
To a volume of the Duchess' plays is prefixed a portrait of her Grace, and this couplet under it:—
"Her beauty's found beyond the skillOf the best paynter to embrace."
"Her beauty's found beyond the skillOf the best paynter to embrace."
There is a story current that the Duke being once, when in a peevish humour, complimented by a friend on the great wisdom of his wife, made answer, "Sir, a very wise woman is a very foolish thing."
Another eccentric inhabitant of Newcastle House was Elizabeth, Duchess of Albemarle, and afterwards of Montague. She was married in 1669 to Christopher Monck, second Duke of Albemarle, then a youth of sixteen, whom her inordinate pride drove to the bottle and other dissipation. After his death, in 1688, at Jamaica, the Duchess, whose vast estate so inflated her vanity as to produce mental aberration, resolved never again to give her hand to any but a sovereign prince. She had many suitors; but true to her resolution, she rejected them all, until Ralph Montague, third Lord and first Duke of that name, achieved the conquest by courting her asEmperor of China: and the anecdote has been dramatized by Colley Cibber, in his comedy ofThe Double Gallant, or Sick Lady's Cure. Lord Montague married the lady as "Emperor," but afterwards played the truant, and kept her in such strict confinement that her relations compelled him to produce her in open court, to prove that she was alive. Richard Lord Ross, one of herrejected suitors, addressed to Lord Montague these lines on his match:—
"Insulting rival, never boastThy conquest lately won:No wonder that her heart was lost,—Her senses first were gone."From one that's under Bedlam's lawsWhat glory can be had?For love of thee was not the cause:It proves that she was mad."
"Insulting rival, never boastThy conquest lately won:No wonder that her heart was lost,—Her senses first were gone.
"From one that's under Bedlam's lawsWhat glory can be had?For love of thee was not the cause:It proves that she was mad."
The Duchess survived her second husband nearly thirty years, and at last "died of mere old age," at Newcastle House, August 28th, 1738, aged ninety-six years. Until her decease, she is said to have been constantly served on the knee as a sovereign; besides keeping her word, that she would not stoop to marry anyone but the Emperor of China.
In a clever paper in theSaturday Review(Oct. 7th, 1865), we find these amusing anecdotical instances of the sources meansmovere jocum:—
"A sustained, deliberate pride would have rather prevented than encouraged that fit of laughter which has preserved to posterity the name of a certain Marquis of Blandford. He, being noted for laughing upon small provocation, was once convulsed for half-an-hour together on seeing somebody fillip a crumb into a blind fiddler's face, the fits returning whenever the "ludicrous idea" recurred to him. An habitual sense of superiority would have prevented this sudden glory at sight of a beggar's helplessness under insult.
"There are personalities which lie so hid under a disguise that they are not readily known for such. The humorist and the cynic have each a knack of investing with human weaknesses things, animate and inanimate, in whichplainer minds can see no analogy to human nature. We have known a man of quaint fancies laugh till the tears ran down at seeing a rat peep out of a hole. He caught a touch of humanity in the brute's perplexed air; he guessed at something behind the scenes impervious to our grosser vision. A bird, frumpish and disquieted on a rainy day, suggests to such a man some social image of discontent that makes capital fun for him. He can improve these lower creatures into caricatures of his friends, or of mankind at large. Mr. Formby owned himself unable to help "laughing out loud" in the presence of Egyptian antiquities, with the Memnon at their head; he laughed at an ancient civilization, at the men of the past personified by their works. Saturnine tempers can only laugh at imminent danger or positive calamity; mortal terror is the most ludicrous of all ideas to them. Mr. Trollope represents Lord de Courcy, who had not laughed for many a day, exploding at the notion of his neighbour earl having been all but tossed by a bull: and the joke would have been better still if the bull had had his will. This tendency is frequently to be seen with a defective sympathy, and we believe the things that make men laugh are an excellent clue at once to intellect and temper. Many a man does not betray the tiger that lurks within him till he laughs. There are times when the body craves for laughter as it does for food. This is the laughter which, on some occasion or other, has betrayed us all into a scandalous, unseasonable, remorseful gaiety. After long abstinence from cheerful thought, there are few occasions so sad and solemn as to render this inopportune revolt impossible, unless where grief absorbs the whole soul, and lowers the system to a uniformity of sadness. In fact, as no solemnity can be safe from incongruities, such occasions are not seldom the especial scene of these exposures—of explosions of a wild, perverse hilarity taking the culprit at unawares; and this even while he is aghast at his flagrant insensibility to the demand of the hour.
"This is the laughter often ascribed to Satanic influence. The nerves cannot forego the wonted stimulus, and are malignantly on the watch, as it were, to betray the higher faculties into this unseemly indulgence. Thus John and Charles Wesley, in the early days of their public career, set forth one particular day to sing hymns together in the fields; but, on uplifting the first stave, one of them was suddenly struck with a sense of something ludicrous in their errand, the other caught the infection, and both fell into convulsions of laughter, renewed on every attempt to carry out their first design, till they were fain to give up and own themselves for that time conquered by the Devil. There is a story of Dr. Johnson much to the same purpose. Naturally melancholy, he was yet a great laugher, and thus was an especial victim to the possession we speak of, for no one laughs in depression who has not learnt to laugh in mirth. He was dining with his friend Chambers in the Temple, and at first betrayed so much physical suffering and mental dejection that his companion could not help boring him with remedies. By degrees he rallied, and with the rally came the need of a general reaction. At this point Chambers happened to say that a common friend had been with him that morning making his will. Johnson—or rather his nervous system—seized upon this as the required subject. He raised a ludicrous picture of the "testator" going about boasting of the fact of his will-making to anybody that would listen, down to the innkeeper on the road. Roaring with laughter, he trusted that Chambers had had the conscience not to describe the testator as of sound mind, hoped there was a legacy to himself, and concluded with saying that he would have the will set to verse and a ballad made out of it. Mr. Chambers, not at all relishing this pleasantry, got rid of his guest as soon as he could. But not so did Johnson get rid of his merriment; he rolled in convulsions till he got out of Temple Gate, and then, supporting himself against a post, sent forth peals so loud as, in the silence of the night, to beheard from Temple Bar to Fleet Ditch. We hear of stomach coughs; this was a stomach, or ganglionic, laugh.
"The mistimed laughter of children has often some such source as this, though the sprite that possesses them has rarely the gnomelike essence. A healthy boy, after a certain length of constraint, is sometimes as little responsible for his laughter as the hypochondriac. Mrs. Beecher Stowe, in describing, and even defending, a Puritanical strictness of Sabbath observance, recalls the long family expositions and sermons which alternated in her youth with prolix Meeting services, at all of which the younger members of the household were required to assist in profound stillness of attention. On one of these occasions, on a hot summer afternoon, a heedless grasshopper of enormous dimensions leapt on the sleeve of one of the boys. The tempting diversion was not to be resisted; he slyly secured the animal, and imprisoned a hind leg between his firmly compressed lips. One by one, the youthful congregation became alive to the awkward contortions and futile struggles of the long-legged captive; they knew that to laugh was to be flogged, but after so many sermons the need was imperative, and they laughed, and were flogged accordingly. Different from all these types is the grand frank laugh that finds its place in history and biography, and belongs to master minds. Political and party feeling may raise, in stirring times, any amount of animosity, even in good-natured men; but once bring about a laugh between them, and an answering chord is struck, a tie is established not easily broken. Something of the old rancour is gone for ever. There is a story of Canning and Brougham, after hating and spiting one another through a session, finding themselves suddenly face to face in some remote district in Cumberland, with only a turn-pike gate between them. The situation roused their magnanimity; simultaneously they broke into laughter, and passed each on his separate way, better friends from that time forth.
"No honest laugher knows anything about his ownlaugh, which is fortunate, as it is apt to be the most grotesque part of a man, especially if he is anything of an original. Character, humour, oddity, all expatiate in it, and the features and voice have to accommodate themselves to the occasion as they can. There is Prince Hal's laugh, "till his face is like a wet cloak ill laid up;" there is the laugh we see in Dutch pictures, where every wrinkle of the old face seems to be in motion; there is the convulsive laugh, in which arms and legs join; there is the whinny, the ventral laugh, Dr. Johnson's laugh like a rhinoceros, Dominie Sampson's laugh lapsing without any immediate stage into dead gravity, and the ideal social laugh—the delighted and delighting chuckle which ushers in a joke, and the cordial triumphant laugh which sounds its praises. We say nothing of all the laughs—and how many there are!—which have no mirth in them; nor of the "ha ha!" of melodrama, and the ringing laugh of the novel, as being each unfamiliar to our waking ears. Whatever the laugh, if it be genuine and comes from decent people, it is as attractive as the Piper of Hamelin. It is impossible not to want to know what a hearty laugh is about. Some of the sparkle of life is near, and we long to share it. The gift of laughter is one of the compensating powers of the world. A nation that laughs is so far prosperous. It may not have material wealth, but it has the poetry of prosperity. When Lady Duff Gordon laments that she never hears a hearty laugh in Egypt, and when Mr. Palgrave, on the contrary, makes the Arabs proper a laughing people, we place Arabia, for this reason, higher among the countries than its old neighbour. And it is the same with homes. Wherever there is pleasant laughter, there inestimable memories are being stored up, and such free play given to nerve and brain, that whatever thought and power the family circle is capable of will have a fair chance of due expansion."
ATBusby's Folly, a bowling-green and house of public entertainment, upon the site of the Belvidere Tavern, Pentonville, there met on the 2nd of May, 1644, a fraternity of Odd Fellows, members of the Society of Bull Feathers Hall, who claimed, among other things, the toll of all the gravel carried up Highgate Hill. A rare tract, entitled,Bull Feather Hall, or the Antiquity of Horns amply shown, 1664, relates the manner of going from Busby's Folly to Highgate:—"On Monday, being the 2nd of May, some part of the fraternity met at Busby's Folly, in Islington, where, after they had set all things in order, they thus marched out,ordine quisque suo:—First, a set of trumpets, then the controller, or captain of the pioneers, with thirty or forty following him with pickaxes and spades to level the hill, and baskets withal to carry gravel. After them another set of trumpeters, and also four that did wind the horn; after them, the standard,aliasan exceeding large pair of horns fixed on a pole, which three men carried, with pennants on each tip, the Master of the Ceremonies attending it, with other officers. Men followed the flag, with the arms of the society, with horned beasts drawn thereon, and this motto:—