Chapter 9

ECCENTRIC PERSONS, WHY APPARENTLY MORE COMMON IN ENGLAND THAN IN OTHER COUNTRIES. HARRY BINGLEY.

Blest are thoseWhose blood and judgement are so well commingled,That they are not a pipe for Fortune's fingerTo sound what stop she please.HAMLET.

There is a reason why eccentricity of character seems to be much more frequent in England than in other countries.—

Here some reflective reader, methinks, interrupts me with—“seems, good Author?”

“Aye, and it is!”

Have patience good reader, and hear me to the end! There is a reason why it seems so; and the reason is, because all such eccentricities are recorded here in newspapers and magazines, so that none of them are lost; anti the most remarkable are brought forward from time to time, in popular compilations. A collection of what is called Eccentric Biography is to form a portion of Mr. Murray's Family Library.

But eccentric characters probably are more frequent among us than among most other nations; and for this there are two causes. The first is to be found in that spirit of independence upon which the English pride themselves, and which produces a sort of Drawcansir-like bravery in men who are eccentrically inclined. It becomes a perverse sort of pleasure in them to act preposterously, for the sake of showing that they have a right to do as they please, and the courage to exercise that right, let the rest of the world think what it will of their conduct.

The other reason is that mad-houses very insufficiently supply the place of convents, and very ill also. It might almost be questioned whether convents do not well nigh make amends to humanity for their manifold mischiefs and abominations, by the relief which they afford as asylums for insanity, in so many of its forms and gradations. They afford a cure also in many of its stages, and precisely upon the same principle on which the treatment in mad-houses is founded: but oh! how differently is that principle applied! That passive obedience to anothers will which in the one case is exacted by authority acting through fear, and oftentimes enforced by no scrupulous or tender means, is in the other required as a religious duty—an act of virtue,— a voluntary and accepted sacrifice,—a good work which will be carried to the patient's account in the world to come. They who enter a convent are to have no will of their own there; they renounce it solemnly upon their admission; and when this abnegation is sincerely made, the chief mental cause of insanity is removed. For assuredly in most cases madness is more frequently a disease of the will than of the intellect. When Diabolus appeared before the town of Mansoul, and made his oration to the citizens at Ear-Gate, Lord Will-be-will was one of the first that was for consenting to his words, and letting him into the town.

We have no such asylums in which madness and fatuity receive every possible alleviation, while they are at the same time subjected to the continual restraint which their condition requires. They are wanted also for repentant sinners, who when they are awakened to a sense of their folly and their guilt, and their danger, would fain find a place of religious retirement, wherein they might pass the remainder of their days in preparing for death. Lord Goring, the most profligate man of his age, who by his profligacy, as much as by his frequent misconduct, rendered irreparable injury to the cause which he intended to serve, retired to Spain after the ruin of that cause, and there ended his days as a Dominican Friar. If there be any record of him in the Chronicles of the Order, the account ought to be curious at least, if not edifying. But it is rather (for his own sake) to be hoped than supposed that he did not hate and despise the follies and the frauds of the fraternity into which he had entered more heartily than the pomps and vanities of the world which he had left.

On the other hand wherever convents are among the institutions of the land, not to speak of those poor creatures who are thrust into them against their will, or with only a mockery of freedom in the choice,— it must often happen that persons enter them in some fit of disappointment, or resentment, or grief, and find themselves when the first bitterness of passion is past, imprisoned for life by their own rash but irremediable act and deed. The woman, who when untoward circumstances have prevented her from marrying the man she loves, marries one for whom she has no affection, is more likely (poor as her chance is) to find contentment and perhaps happiness, than if for the same cause she had thrown herself into a nunnery. Yet this latter is the course to which if she were a Roman Catholic, her thoughts would perhaps preferably at first have turned, and to which they would probably be directed by her confessor.

Men who are weary of the ways of the world, or disgusted with them, have more licence, as well as more resources than women. If they do not enter upon some dangerous path of duty, or commence wanderers, they may chuse for themselves an eccentric path, in which if their habits are not such as expose them to insult, or if their means are sufficient to secure them against it, they are not likely to be molested,—provided they have no relations whose interest it may be to apply for a statute of lunacy against them.

A gentleman of this description, well known in London towards the close of George the Second's reign by the name of Harry Bingley, came in the days of Dr. Dove to reside upon his estate in the parish of Bolton upon Derne, near Doncaster. He had figured as an orator and politician in coffee houses at the west end of the town, and enjoyed the sort of notoriety which it was then his ambition to obtain; but discovering with the Preacher that this was vanity and vexation of spirit, when it was either too late for him to enter upon domestic life, or his habits had unfitted him for it, he retired to his estate which with the house upon it he had let to a farmer; in that house he occupied two rooms, and there indulged his humour as he had done in London, though it had now taken a very different direction.

“Cousin-german to Idleness,” says Burton, is “nimia solitudo, too much solitariness. Divers are cast upon this rock for want of means; or out of a strong apprehension of some infirmity, disgrace, or through bashfulness, rudeness, simplicity, they cannot apply themselves to others company.Nullum solum infelici gratius solitudine, ubi nullus sit qui miseriam exprobret.This enforced solitariness takes place and produceth his effect soonest in such as have spent their time, jovially peradventure, in all honest recreations, in good company, in some great family, or populous city; and are upon a sudden confined to a desert country cottage far off, restrained of their liberty and barred from their ordinary associates. Solitariness is very irksome to such, most tedious, and a sudden cause of great inconvenience.”

The change in Bingley's life was as great and sudden as that which the Anatomist of Melancholy has here described; but it led to no bodily disease nor to any tangible malady. His property was worth about fourteen hundred a year. He kept no servant, and no company; and he lived upon water-gruel and celery, except at harvest time, when he regaled himself with sparrow pies, made of the young birds just fledged, for which he paid the poor inhabitants who caught them two pence a head. Probably he supposed that it was rendering the neighbourhood a service thus to rid it of what he considered both a nuisance and a delicacy. This was his only luxury; and his only business was to collect about a dozen boys and girls on Sundays, and hear them say their Catechism, and read a chapter in the New Testament, for which they received remuneration in the intelligible form of two pence each, but at the feasts and statutes, “most sweet guerdon, better than remuneration,” in the shape of sixpence. He stood godfather for several poor people's children, they were baptized by his surname; when they were of proper age he used to put them out as apprentices, and in his will he left each of them an hundred guineas to be paid when they reached the age of twenty-five if they were married, but not till they married; and if they reached the age of fifty without marrying, the legacy was then forfeited. There were two children for whom he stood godfather, but whose parents did not chuse that they should be named after him; he never took any notice of these children, nor did he bequeath them any thing; but to one of the others he left the greater part of his property.

This man used every week day to lock himself in the church and pace the aisles for two hours, from ten till twelve o'clock. An author who in his own peculiar and admirable way, is one of the most affecting writers of any age or country, has described with characteristic feeling the different effects produced upon certain minds by entering an empty or a crowded church. “In the latter,” he says, “it is chance but some present human frailty,—an act of inattention on the part of some of the auditory,—or a trait of affectation, or worse vain-glory on that of the preacher,—puts us by our best thoughts, disharmonizing the place and the occasion. But wouldst thou know the beauty of holiness?—go alone on some week day, borrowing the keys of good master Sexton; traverse the cool aisles of some country church; think of the piety that has kneeled there,—-the congregations old and young that have found consolation there,—the meek pastor,—the docile parishioners,—with no disturbing emotions, no cross conflicting comparisons, drink in the tranquillity of the place, till thou thyself become as fixed and motionless as the marble effigies that kneel and weep around thee!”1

1The Last Essays of Elia.

Harry Bingley died in lodgings at Rotherham, whither he had removed when he felt himself ill, that he might save expence by being nearer a physician. According to his own directions his body was brought back from thence to the village, and interred in the churchyard; and he strictly enjoined that no breast-plate, handles or any ornaments whatever should be affixed to his coffin, nor any gravestone placed to mark the spot where his remains were deposited.

Would or would not this godfather-general have been happier in a convent or a hermitage, than he was in thus following his own humour? It was Dr. Dove's opinion that upon the whole he would; not that a conventual, and still less an eremital way of life would have been more rational, but because there would have been a worthier motive for chusing it; and if not a more reasonable hope, at least a firmer persuasion that it was the sure way to salvation.

That Harry Bingley's mind had taken a religious turn, appeared by his chusing the church for his daily place of promenade. Meditation must have been as much his object as exercise, and of a kind which the place invited. It appeared also by the sort of Sunday-schooling which he gave the children, long before Sunday Schools,—whether for good or evil,—were instituted, or as the phrase is, invented by Robert Raikes of eccentric memory. (Patrons and Patronesses of Sunday Schools, be not offended if a doubt concerning their utility be here implied! The Doctor entertained such a doubt; and the why and the wherefore shall in due time be fairly stated.) But Bingley certainly came under the description of a humourist, rather than of a devotee or religious enthusiast; in fact he bore that character. And the Doctor's knowledge of human nature led him to conclude that solitary humourists are far from being happy. You see them, as you see the blind, at their happiest times, when they have something to divert their thoughts. But in the humourist's course of life, there is a sort of defiance of the world and the world's law; indeed any man who departs widely from its usages, avows this; and it is, as it ought to be, an uneasy and uncomfortable feeling, wherever it is not sustained by a high state of excitement; and that state, if it be lasting, becomes madness. Such persons when left to themselves and to their own reflections, as they necessarily are for the greater part of their time, must often stand not only self-arraigned for folly, but self-condemned for it.

A MUSICAL RECLUSE AND HIS SISTER.

Some proverb maker, I forget who, says, “God hath given to some men wisdom and understanding, and to others the art of playing on the fiddle.”

Professor PARK'SDogmas of the Constitution.

The Doctor always spoke of Bingley as a melancholy example of strength of character misapplied. But he used to say that strength of character was far from implying strength of mind; and that strength of mind itself was no more a proof of sanity of mind, than strength of body was of bodily health. Both may coexist with mortal maladies, and both when existing in any remarkable degree may oftentimes be the cause of them.

Alas for man!Exuberant health diseases him, frail worm!And the slight bias of untoward chanceMakes his best virtues from the even line,With fatal declination, swerve aside.1

1RODERICK.

There was another person within his circuit who had taken umbrage at the world, and withdrawn from it to enjoy, or rather solace himself according to his own humour in retirement; not in solitude, for he had a sister, who with true sisterly affection accommodated herself to his inclinations, and partook of his taste. This gentleman, whose name was Jonathan Staniforth, had taken out a patent for a ploughing machine, and had been deprived, unjustly as he deemed, of the profits which he had expected from it, by a lawsuit. Upon this real disappointment, aggravated by the sense, whether well or ill founded of injustice, he retired to his mansion in the village of Firbeck, about ten miles south of Doncaster, and there discarding all thoughts of mechanics, which had been his favourite pursuit, he devoted himself to the practice of music;—devoted is not too strong an expression. He had passed the middle of his life before the Doctor knew him; and it was not till some twenty years later that Miller became acquainted with him.

“I was introduced,” says the Organist, “into a room where was sitting a thin old Gentleman, upwards of seventy years of age, playing on the violin. He had a long time lived sequestered from the world, and dedicated not less than eight hours a day to the practice of music. His shrunk shanks were twisted in a peculiar form, by the constant posture in which he sate; and so indifferent was he about the goodness of his instrument, that to my astonishment, he always played on a common Dutch fiddle, the original price of which could not be more than half a guinea; the strings were bad, and the whole instrument dirty and covered with resin. With this humble companion, he used to work hard every morning on the old solos of Vivaldi, Tessarini, Corelli, and other ancient composers. The evening was reserved for mere amusement, in accompanying an ancient sister, who sung most of the favourite songs from Handel's old Italian Operas, which he composed soon after his arrival in England. These Operas she had heard on their first representation in London; consequently her performance was to me an uncommon treat. I had an opportunity of comparing the different manner of singing in the beginning of the century, to that which I had been accustomed to hear. And indeed the style was so different, that musically considered, it might truly be called a different language. None of the present embellishments or graces in music were used,—noappoggiatura,—no unadorned sustaining, or swelling long notes; they were warbled by a continual tremulous accent from beginning to end; and when she arrived at the period of an air, the brother's violin became mute, and she, raising her eyes to the top of the room, and stretching out her throat, executed her extempore cadence in a succession of notes perfectly original, and concluded with a long shake something like the bleating of a lamb.”

Miller's feelings during this visit were so wholly professional, that in describing this brother and sister forty years afterwards, he appears not to have been sensible in how affecting a situation they were placed. Crabbe would have treated these characters finely had they fallen in his way. And so Chancey Hare Townsend could treat them, who has imitated Crabbe with such singular skill, and who has moreover music in his soul and could give the picture the soft touches which it requires.

I must not omit to say that Mr. Staniforth and his sister were benevolent, hospitable, sensible, worthy persons. Thinkest thou, reader, that they gave no proof of good sense in thus passing their lives? Look round the circle of thine acquaintance, and ask thyself how many of those whose time is at their own disposal, dispose of it more wisely,—that is to say more beneficially to others, or more satisfactorily to themselves? The sister fulfilled her proper duties in her proper place, and the brother in contributing to her comfort performed his; to each other they were as their circumstances required them to be, all in all; they were kind to their poor neighbours, and they were perfectly inoffensive toward the rest of the world.—They who are wise unto salvation, know feelingly when they have done best, that their best works are worth nothing; but they who are conscious that they have lived inoffensively may have in that consciousness, a reasonable ground of comfort.

The Apostle enjoins us to “eschew evil and do good.” To do good is not in every one's power; and many who think they are doing it, may be grievously deceived for lack of judgement, and be doing evil the while instead, with the best intentions, but with sad consequences to others, and eventual sorrow for themselves. But it is in every one's power to eschew evil, so far as never to do wilful harm; and if we were all careful never unnecessarily to distress or disquiet those who are committed to our charge, or who must be affected by our conduct,— if we made it a point of conscience never to disturb the peace, or diminish the happiness of others,—the mass of moral evil by which we are surrounded would speedily be diminished, and with it no inconsiderable portion of those physical ones would be removed, which are the natural consequence and righteous punishment of our misdeeds.

SHEWING THAT ANY HONEST OCCUPATION IS BETTER THAN NONE, BUT THAT OCCUPATIONS WHICH ARE DEEMED HONOURABLE ARE NOT ALWAYS HONEST.

J'ai peine à concevoir pourquoi le plûpart des hommes ont une si forte envie d'être heureux, et une si grande incapacité pour le devenir.

VOYAGES DEMILORDCETON.

“Happy,” said Dr. Dove, “is the man, who having his whole time thrown upon his hands makes no worse use of it than to practise eight hours a day upon a bad fiddle.” It was a sure evidence, he insisted, that Mr. Staniforth's frame of mind was harmonious; the mental organ was in perfect repair, though the strings of the material instrument jarred; and he enjoyed the scientific delight which Handel's composition gave him abstractedly, in its purity and essence.

“There can now,” says an American preacher,1“be no doubt of this truth because there have been so many proofs of it; that the man who retires completely from business, who is resolved to do nothing but enjoy himself, never attains the end at which he aims. If it is not mixed with other ingredients, no cup is so insipid, and at the same time so unhealthful, as the cup of pleasure. When the whole enjoyment of the day is to eat and drink and sleep, and talk and visit, life becomes a burden too heavy to be supported by a feeble old man, and he soon sinks into the arms of spleen, or falls into the jaws of death.”

1FREEMAN'SEighteen Sermons.

Alas! it is neither so easy a thing, nor so agreeable a one as men commonly expect, to dispose of leisure, when they retire from the business of the world. Their old occupations cling to them, even when they hope that they have emancipated themselves.

Go to any sea-port town and you will see that the Sea-Captain who has retired upon his well-earned savings, sets up a weathercock in full view from his windows, and watches the variations of the wind as duly as when he was at sea, though no longer with the same anxiety.

Every one knows the story of the Tallow Chandler who having amassed a fortune, disposed of his business, and taken a house in the country, not far from London, that he might enjoy himself, after a few months trial of a holiday life requested permission of his successor to come into town, and assist him on melting days. I have heard of one who kept a retail spirit-shop, and having in like manner retired from trade, used to employ himself by having one puncheon filled with water, and measuring it off by pints into another. I have heard also of a butcher in a small country town, who some little time after he had left off business, informed his old customers that he meant to kill a lamb once a week, just for his amusement.

There is no way of life to which the generality of men cannot conform themselves; and it seems as if the more repugnance they may at first have had to overcome, the better at last they like the occupation. They grow insensible to the loudest and most discordant sounds, or remain only so far sensible of them, that the cessation will awaken them from sleep. The most offensive smells become pleasurable to them in time, even those which are produced by the most offensive substances. The temperature of a glass-house is not only tolerable but agreeable to those who have their fiery occupation there. Wisely and mercifully was this power of adaptation implanted in us for our good; but in our imperfect and diseased society it is grievously perverted. We make the greater part of the evil circumstances in which we are placed; and then we fit ourselves for those circumstances by a process of systematic degradation, the effect of which most people see in the classes below them, though they may not be conscious that it is operating in a different manner but with equal force upon themselves.

For there is but too much cause to conclude that our moral sense is more easily blunted than our physical sensations. Roman Ladies delighted in seeing the gladiators bleed and die in the public theatre. Spanish Ladies at this day clap their hands in exultation at spectacles which make English Soldiers sicken and turn away. The most upright Lawyer acquires a sort of Swiss conscience for professional use; he is soon taught that considerations of right and wrong have nothing to do with his brief, and that his business is to do the best he can for his client however bad the case. If this went no farther than to save a criminal from punishment, it might be defensible on the ground of humanity, and of charitable hope. But to plead with the whole force of an artful mind in furtherance of a vexatious and malicious suit,—and to resist a rightful claim with all the devices of legal subtlety, and all the technicalities of legal craft,—I know not how he who considers this to be his duty toward his client can reconcile it with his duty toward his neighbour; or how he thinks it will appear in the account he must one day render to the Lord for the talents which have been committed to his charge.

There are persons indeed who have so far outgrown their catechism as to believe that their only duty is to themselves; and who in the march of intellect have arrived at the convenient conclusion that there is no account to be rendered after death. But they would resent any imputation upon their honour or their courage as an offence not to be forgiven; and it is difficult therefore to understand how even such persons can undertake to plead the cause of a scoundrel in cases of seduction,—how they can think that the acceptance of a dirty fee is to justify them for cross-examining an injured and unhappy woman with the cruel wantonness of unmanly insult, bruising the broken reed, and treating her as if she were as totally devoid of shame, as they themselves of decency and of humanity. That men should act thus and be perfectly unconscious the while that they are acting a cowardly and rascally part,—and that society should not punish them for it by looking upon them as men who have lost their caste, would be surprizing if we did not too plainly see to what a degree the moral sense, not only of individuals but of a whole community, may be corrupted.

Physiologists have observed that men and dogs are the only creatures whose nature can accommodate itself to every climate, from the burning sands of the desart to the shores and islands of the frozen ocean. And it is not in their physical nature alone that this power of accommodation is found. Dogs who beyond all reasonable question have a sense of duty and fidelity and affection toward their human associates,—a sense altogether distinct from fear and selfishness,—who will rush upon any danger at their master's bidding, and die broken-hearted beside his body, or upon his grave,—dogs, I say, who have this capacity of virtue, have nevertheless been trained to act with robbers against the traveller, and to hunt down human beings and devour them. But depravity sinks deeper than this in man; for the dog when thus deteriorated acts against no law natural or revealed, no moral sense; he has no power of comparing good and evil, and chusing between them, but may be trained to either, and in either is performing his intelligible duty of obedience.

TRANSITION IN OUR NARRATIVE PREPARATORY TO A CHANGE IN THE DOCTOR'S LIFE. A SAD STORY SUPPRESSED. THE AUTHOR PROTESTS AGAINST PLAYING WITH THE FEELINGS OF HIS READERS. ALL ARE NOT MERRY THAT SEEM MIRTHFUL. THE SCAFFOLD A STAGE. DON RODRIGO CALDERON. THISTLEWOOD. THE WORLD A MASQUERADE, BUT THE DOCTOR ALWAYS IN HIS OWN CHARACTER.

This breaks no rule of order.If order were infringed then should I fleeFrom my chief purpose, and my mark should miss.Order is Nature's beauty, and the wayTo Order is by rules that Art hath found.GWILLIM.

The question “Who was the Doctor?” has now methinks been answered, though not fully, yet sufficiently for the present stage of our memorials, while he is still a bachelor, a single man, an imperfect individual, half only of the whole being which by the laws of nature, and of Christian polity it was designed that man should become.

The next question therefore that presents itself for consideration relates to that other, and as he sometimes called it better half, which upon the union of the two moieties made him a whole man.—Who was Mrs. Dove?

The reader has been informed how my friend in his early manhood when about-to-be-a-Doctor, fell in love. Upon that part of his history I have related all that he communicated, which was all that could by me be known, and probably all there was to know. From that time he never fell in love again; nor did he ever run into it; but as was formerly intimated, he once caught the affection. The history of this attachment I heard from others; he had suffered too deeply ever to speak of it himself; and having maturely considered the matter I have determined not to relate the circumstances. Suffice it to say that he might at the same time have caught from the same person an insidious and mortal disease, if his constitution had been as susceptible of the one contagion, as his heart was of the other. The tale is too painful to be told. There are authors enough in the world who delight in drawing tears; there will always be young readers enough who are not unwilling to shed them; and perhaps it may be wholesome for the young and happy upon whose tears there is no other call.

Not that the author is to be admired, or even excused, who draws too largely upon our lacrymal glands. The pathetic is a string which may be touched by an unskilful hand, and which has often been played upon by an unfeeling one.

For my own part, I wish neither to make my readers laugh or weep. It is enough for me, if I may sometimes bring a gleam of sunshine upon thy brow, Pensoso; and a watery one over thy sight, Buonallegro; a smile upon Penserosa's lips, a dimple in Amanda's cheek, and some quiet tears, Sophronia, into those mild eyes, which have shed so many scalding ones! When my subject leads me to distressful scenes, it will as Southey says, not be

—my purpose e'er to entertainThe heart with useless grief; but, as I may,Blend in my calm and meditative strainConsolatory thoughts, the balm for real pain.1

1Tale of PARAGUAY.

The maxim that an author who desires to make us weep must be affected himself by what he writes, is too trite to be repeated in its original language. Both authors and actors however can produce this effect without eliciting a spark of feeling from their own hearts; and what perhaps may be deemed more remarkable, they can with the same success excite merriment in others, without partaking of it in the slightest degree themselves. No man ever made his contemporaries laugh more heartily than Scarron, whose bodily sufferings were such that he wished for himself

à toute heureOu la mort, ou santé meilleure:

And who describes himself in his epistle to Sarazin, as

Un PauvretTres-maigret;Au col tors,Dont le corpsTout tortu,Tout bossu,Suranné,De'charné,Est reduitJour et nuit,A souffrirSans guerirDes tourmensVehemens.

It may be said perhaps that Scarron's disposition was eminently cheerful, and that by indulging in buffoonery he produced in himself a pleasurable excitement not unlike that which others seek from strong liquors, or from opium; and therefore that his example tends to invalidate the assertion in support of which it was adduced. This is a plausible objection; and I am far from undervaluing the philosophy of Pantagruelism, and from denying that its effects may, and are likely to be as salutary, as any that were ever produced by the proud doctrines of the Porch. But I question Scarron's right to the appellation of a Pantagruelist; his humour had neither the heighth nor the depth of that philosophy.

There is a well-known anecdote of a physician, who being called in to an unknown patient, found him suffering under the deepest depression of mind, without any discoverable disease, or other assignable cause. The physician advised him to seek for cheerful objects, and recommended him especially to go to the theatre and see a famous actor then in the meridian of his powers, whose comic talents were unrivalled. Alas! the comedian who kept crowded theatres in a roar was this poor hypochondriac himself!

The state of mind in which such men play their part, whether as authors or actors, was confessed in a letter written from Yarmouth Gaol to the Doctor's friend Miller, by a then well-known performer in this line, George Alexander Stevens. He wrote to describe his distress in prison, and to request that Miller would endeavour to make a small collection for him, some night at a concert; and he told his sad tale sportively. But breaking off that strain he said; “You may think I can have no sense, that while I am thus wretched I should offer at ridicule! But, Sir, people constituted like me, with a disproportionate levity of spirits, are always most merry when they are most miserable; and quicken like the eyes of the consumptive, which are always brightest the nearer a patient approaches to dissolution.”

It is one thing to jest, it is another to be mirthful. Sir Thomas More jested as he ascended the scaffold. In cases of violent death, and especially upon an unjust sentence, this is not surprizing; because the sufferer has not been weakened by a wasting malady, and is in a state of high mental excitement and exertion. But even when dissolution comes in the course of nature, there are instances of men who have died with a jest upon their lips. Garci Sanchez de Badajoz when he was at the point of death desired that he might be dressed in the habit of St. Francis; this was accordingly done, and over the Franciscan frock they put on his habit of Santiago, for he was a knight of that order. It was a point of devotion with him to wear the one dress, a point of honour to wear the other; but looking at himself in this double attire, he said to those who surrounded his death-bed, “The Lord will say to me presently, my friend Garci Sanchez, you come very well wrapt up! (muy arropado) and I shall reply, Lord, it is no wonder, for it was winter when I set off.”

The author who relates this anecdote, remarks thato morrer com graça he muyto bom, e com graças he muyto māo: the observation is good but untranslateable, because it plays upon the word which means grace as well as wit. The anecdote itself is an example of the ruling humour “strong in death;” perhaps also of that pride or vanity, call it which we will, which so often, when mind and body have not yielded to natural decay, or been broken down by suffering, clings to the last in those whom it has strongly possessed. Don Rodrigo Calderon whose fall and exemplary contrition served as a favourite topic for the poets of his day, wore a Franciscan habit at his execution, as an outward and visible sign of penitence and humiliation; as he ascended the scaffold, he lifted the skirts of the habit with such an air that his attendant confessor thought it necessary to reprove him for such an instance of ill-timed regard to his appearance. Don Rodrigo excused himself by saying that he had all his life carried himself gracefully!

The author by whom this is related calls it an instance of illustrious hypocrisy. In my judgement the Father Confessor who gave occasion for it deserves a censure far more than the penitent sufferer. The movement beyond all doubt was purely habitual, as much so as the act of lifting his feet to ascend the steps of the scaffold; but the undeserved reproof made him feel how curiously whatever he did was remarked; and that consciousness reminded him that he had a part to support, when his whole thoughts would otherwise have been far differently directed.

A personage in one of Webster's Plays says,

I knew a man that was to lose his headFeed with an excellent good appetiteTo strengthen his heart, scarce half an hour before,And if he did, it only was to speak.

Probably the dramatist alluded to some well known fact which was at that time of recent occurrence. When the desperate and atrocious traitor Thistlewood was on the scaffold, his demeanour was that of a man who was resolved boldly to meet the fate he had deserved; in the few words which were exchanged between him and his fellow criminals he observed, that the grand question whether or not the soul was immortal would soon be solved for them. No expression of hope escaped him, no breathing of repentance; no spark of grace appeared. Yet (it is a fact, which whether it be more consolatory or awful, ought to be known,) on the night after the sentence, and preceding his execution, while he supposed that the person who was appointed to watch him in his cell, was asleep, this miserable man was seen by that person repeatedly to rise upon his knees, and heard repeatedly calling upon Christ his Saviour, to have mercy upon him, and to forgive him his sins!

All men and women are verily, as Shakespear has said of them, merely players,—when we see them upon the stage of the world; that is when they are seen any where except in the freedom and undressed intimacy of private life. There is a wide difference indeed in the performers, as there is at a masquerade between those who assume a character, and those who wear dominos; some play off the agreeable, or the disagreeable for the sake of attracting notice; others retire as it were into themselves; but you can judge as little of the one as of the other. It is even possible to be acquainted with a man long and familiarly, and as we may suppose intimately, and yet not to know him thoroughly or well. There may be parts of his character with which we have never come in contact,—recesses which have never been opened to us,—springs upon which we have never touched. Many there are who can keep their vices secret; would that all bad men had sense and shame enough to do so, or were compelled to it by the fear of public opinion! Shame of a very different nature,—a moral shamefacedness,— which if not itself an instinctive virtue, is near akin to one, makes those who are endowed with the best and highest feelings, conceal them from all common eyes; and for our performance of religious duties,—our manifestations of piety,—we have been warned that what of this kind is done to be seen of men, will not be rewarded openly before men and angels at the last.

If I knew my venerable friend better than I ever knew any other man, it was because he was in many respects unlike other men, and in few points more unlike them than in this, that he always appeared what he was,—neither better nor worse. With a discursive intellect and a fantastic imagination, he retained his simplicity of heart. He had kept that heart unspotted from the world; his father's blessing was upon him, and he prized it beyond all that the world could have bestowed. Crowe says of us,

Our better mindIs as a Sunday's garment, then put onWhen we have nought to do; but at our workWe wear a worse for thrift!

It was not so with him: his better mind was not as a garment to be put on and off at pleasure; it was like its plumage to a bird, its beauty and its fragrance to a flower, except that it was not liable to be ruffled, nor to fade, nor to exhale and pass away. His mind was like a peacock always in full attire; it was only at times indeed, (to pursue the similitude,) that he expanded and displayed it; but its richness and variety never could be concealed from those who had eyes to see them.

—His sweetest mind'Twixt mildness tempered and low courtesy,Could leave as soon to be, as not be kind.Churlish despite ne'er looked from his calm eye,Much less commanded in his gentle heart;To baser men fair looks he would impart;Nor could he cloak ill thoughts in complimental art.2

What he was in boyhood has been seen, and something also of his manlier years; but as yet little of the ripe fruits of his intellectual autumn have been set before the readers. No such banquet was promised them as that with which they are to be regaled. “The booksellers,” says Somner the antiquary, in an unpublished letter to Dugdale, “affect a great deal of title as advantageous for the sale; but judicious men dislike it, as savouring of too much ostentation, and suspecting the wine is not good where so much bush is hung out.” Somebody, I forget who, wrote a book upon the titles of books, regarding the title as a most important part of the composition. The bookseller's fashion of which Somner speaks has long been obsolete; mine is a brief title promising little, but intending much. It specifies only the Doctor; but his gravities and his levities, his opinions of men and things, his speculations moral and political, physical and spiritual, his philosophy and his religion, each blending with each, and all with all, these are comprised in the &c. of my title page,—these and his Pantagruelism to boot. When I meditate upon these I may exclaim with the poet:—

Mnemosyne hath kiss'd the kingly Jove,And entertained a feast within my brain.3

These I shall produce for the entertainment of the idle reader, and for the recreation of the busy one; for the amusement of the young, and the contentment of the old; for the pleasure of the wise, and the approbation of the good; and these when produced will be the monument of Daniel Dove. Of such a man it may indeed be said that he

Is his own marble; and his merit canCut him to any figure, and expressMore art than Death's Cathedral palaces,Where royal ashes keep their court!4

Some of my contemporaries may remember a story once current at Cambridge, of a luckless undergraduate, who being examined for his degree, and failing in every subject upon which he was tried, complained that he had not been questioned upon the things which he knew. Upon which the examining master, moved less to compassion by the impenetrable dulness of the man than to anger by his unreasonable complaint, tore off about an inch of paper, and pushing it towards him, desired him to write upon that all he knew!

2PHINEASFLETCHER, 186.

3ROBERTGREEN.

4MIDDLETON.

And yet bulky books are composed, or compiled by men who know as little as this poor empty individual. Tracts and treatises and tomes, may be, and are written by persons, to whom the smallest square sheet of delicate note paper, rose-coloured, or green, or blue, with its embossed border, manufactured expressly for ladies' fingers and crow quills, would afford ample room, and verge enough, for expounding the sum total of their knowledge upon the subject whereon they undertake to enlighten the public.

Were it possible for me to pour out all that I have taken in from him, of whose accumulated stores I, alas! am now the sole living depository, I know not to what extent the precious reminiscences might run.

Back to Index Next