Chapter 7

SOME ALLUSION TO, AND SOME USE OF THE FIGURE OF SPEECH CALLED PARENTHESIS.

J'ecrirai ici mes pensées sans ordre, et non pas peut-étre dans une confusion sans dessein; c'est le veritable ordre, et qui marquera toujours mon objet par le desordre même.

PASCAL.

Gentle reader,—and if gentle, good reader,—and if good, patient reader; for if not gentle, then not good; and if not good, then not gentle; and neither good nor gentle, if not patient;—dear reader, who art happily for thyself all three, it is, I know, not less with thy good will than with my own, that I proceed with this part of my subject.Quelle matiére que je traite avec vous, c'est toujours un plaisir pour moi.1You will say to me “amuse yourself (and me) in your own way; ride your own round-about, so you do but come to the right point at last.”2To that point you are well assured that all my round-abouts tend; and my care must be to eschew the error of that author, engineer, statesman, or adventurer of any kind,

Which of a weak and niggardly projection,Doth like a miser spoil his coat with scantingA little cloth.3

1MADAME DEMAINTENON.

2CUMBERLAND.

3SHAKESPEAR.

Lady Hester Stanhope had an English Physician with her in Syria who, if he be living, can bear testimony that her Ladyship did not commit this fault, when she superintended the cutting out of his scarlet galligaskins. Neither will I commit it.

You indeed, dear reader, would express no displeasure if, instead of proceeding in the straight line of my purpose, I should sometimes find it expedient to retrograde; or, borrowing a word of barbarous Latin coined in the musician's mint,cancrizare, which may be rendered to crab-grade. For as Roger North says, when, at the commencement of his incomparable account of his brother the Lord Keeper's life, he confesses that it would be hard to lead a thread in good order of time through it—“there are many and various incidents to be remembered, which will interfere, and make it necessary to step back sometimes, and then again forwards;—and in this manner I hope to evacuate my mind of every matter and thing I know and can remember materially concerning him. And if some things are set down which many may think too trivial, let it be considered that the smallest incidents are often as useful to be known, though not so diverting, as the greater, and profit must always share with entertainment.”

I am not however side-ling toward my object crab-like; still less am I starting back from it, like a lobster, whose spring upon any alarm is stern-foremost: nor am I going I know not where, like the three Princes Zoile, Bariandel and Lyriamandre, when, having taken leave of Olivier King of England, to go in search of Rosicler, they took ship at Londonsans dessein d'aller plustôt en un lieu qu'en un autre. Nor like the more famous Prince Don Florisel and Don Falanges, when having gone on board a small vessel,y mandada por ellos en lo alto de la mar meter, hazen con los marineros que no hagan otro camino mas de aquel que la nao movido por la fuerza de los ayres, quisiesse hazer, queriendo yr a buscar con la aventura lo que a ella hallar se permitia segun la poca certinidad que para la demanda podian llevar.

I should say falsely were I to say with Petrarch,

Vommene in guiza d'orbo senza luce,Che non sa ove si vada, e pur si parte.

But I may say with the Doctor's name-sake Daniel de Bosola in Webster's tragedy,4“I look no higher than I can reach: they are the gods that must ride on winged horses. A lawyer's mule, of a slow pace, will both suit my disposition and business: for mark me, when a man's mind rides faster than his horse can gallop, they quickly both tire.”—Moreover

———This I holdA secret worth its weight in goldTo those who write as I write now,Not to mind where they go, or how,Thro' ditch, thro' bog, o'er hedge and stile,Make it but worth the reader's while,And keep a passage fair and plainAlways to bring him back again.5

4DUCHESS OFMALFI.

5CHURCHILL.

“You may run from major to minor,” says Mrs. Bray in one of her letters to Dr. Southey, “and through a thousand changes, so long as you fall into the subject at last, and bring back the ear to the right key at the close.”

Where we are at this present reading, the attentive reader cannot but know; and if the careless one has lost himself, it is his fault, not mine. We are in the parenthesis between the Doctor's courtship and his marriage. Life has been called a parenthesis between our birth and death; the history of the human race is but a parenthesis between two cataclasms of the globe which it inhabits; time itself only a parenthesis in eternity. The interval here, as might be expected after so summary a wooing, was not long; no settlements being required, and little preparation. But it is not equally necessary for me to fix the chapter, as it was for them to fix the day.

Montaigne tells us that he liked better to forge his mind than to furnish it. I have a great liking for old Michel, Seigneur de Montaigne, which the well-read reader may have perceived;—who indeed has ever made his acquaintance without liking him? I have moreover some sympathies with him; but upon this point we differ. It is more agreeable to me to furnish than to forge,—intellectually speaking, to lay in than to lay out;—to eat than to digest. There is however (following the last similitude) an intermediate process enjoyed by the flocks and herds, but denied to Aldermen; that process affords so apt a metaphor for an operation of the mind, that the word denoting it has passed into common parlance in its metaphorical acceptation, and its original meaning is not always known to those who use it.

It is a pleasure to see the quiet full contentment which is manifested both in the posture and look of animals when they are chewing the cud. The nearest approach which humanity makes toward a similar state of feeling, seems to be in smoking, when the smoker has any intellectual cud on which to chew. But ruminating is no wholesome habit for man, who, if he be good for any thing, is born as surely to action as to trouble;—it is akin to the habit of indulging in day dreams, which is to be eschewed by every one who tenders his or her own welfare.

There is however a time for every thing. And though neither the Doctor nor Deborah had thought of each other in the relation of husband and wife, before the proposal was made, and the silent assent given, they could not chuse but ruminate upon the future as well as the past, during the parenthesis that ensued. And though both parties deliberately approved of what had been suddenly determined, the parenthesis was an uneasy time for both.

The commentators tell us that readers have found some difficulty in understanding what was Shakespear's meaning when he made Macbeth say

If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere wellIt were done quickly.

Johnson says he never found them agreeing upon it. Most persons however are agreed in thinking, that when anything disagreeable must be done, the sooner it is done the better. Who but a child ever holds a dose of physic in his hand,—rhubarb to wit,—or Epsom salts—delaying as long as possible to take the nauseous draught? Who ever, when he is ready for the plunge, stands lingering upon the side of the river, or the brink of the cold bath?—Who that has entered a shower-bath and closed the door, ever hesitates for a moment to pull the string? It was upon a false notion of humanity that the House of Commons proceeded, when it prolonged the interval between the sentence of a murderer and the execution. The merciful course in all cases would be, that execution should follow upon the sentence with the least possible delay.

“Heaven help the man, says a goodnatured and comely reader who has a ring on the fourth finger of her left hand,—Heaven help the man! Does he compare marriage to hanging, to a dose of physic, and to a plunge over head and ears in cold water?” No madam, not he: he makes no such unseemly comparisons. He only means to say that when any great change is about to take place in our circumstances and way of life,—any thing that is looked on to with anxiety and restlessness, any thing that occasions a yeasty sensation about the pericardium,—every one who is in that state wishes that the stage of fermentation were past,—that the transition were over.

I have said that little preparation was needed for a marriage which gave little employment to the upholsterers, less to the dress-makers, and none to the lawyers. Yet there was something to be done. Some part of the furniture was to be furbished, some to be renewed, and some to be added. The house required papering and painting, and would not be comfortably habitable while the smell of the paint overpowered or mingled with the odour of the shop. Here then was a cause of unavoidable delay; and time which is necessarily employed, may be said to be well employed, though it may not be upon the business which we have most at heart. If there be an impatient reader, that is to say an unreasonable one, who complains that instead of passing rapidly over this interval or parenthesis (as aforesaid), I proceed in such a manner with the relation, that many of my chapters are as parenthetical as the Euterpe of Herodotus, which whole book as the present Bishop Butler used to say, is one long parenthesis, and the longest that ever was written;—if, I say, there be so censorious a reader, I shall neither contradict him, nor defend myself, nor yet plead guilty to the fault of which he accuses me. But I will tell him what passed on a certain occasion, between Doctor, afterwards Archbishop, Sharp, when he was Rector of St. Giles's, and the Lord Chancellor Jefferies.

In the year 1686 Dr. Sharp preached a sermon wherein he drew some conclusions against the Church of Rome, to show the vanity of her pretensions in engrossing the name of Catholic to herself. The sermon was complained of to James II, and the Lord Chancellor Jefferies was directed to send for the preacher, and acquaint him with the King's displeasure. Dr. Sharp accordingly waited upon his Lordship with the notes of his sermon, and read it over to him. “Whether,” says his son, “the Doctor did this for his own justification, and to satisfy his Lordship that he had been misrepresented, or whether my Lord ordered him to bring his sermon and repeat it before him, is not certain; but the latter seems most probable: because Dr. Sharp afterwards understood that his Lordship's design in sending for him and discoursing with him, was, that he might tell the King that he had reprimanded the Doctor, and that he was sorry for having given occasion of offence to his Majesty, hoping by this means to release Dr. Sharp from any further trouble. However it was, his Lordship took upon him, while the Doctor was reading over his sermon, to chide him for several passages which the Doctor thought gave no occasion for chiding; and he desired his Lordship when he objected to these less obnoxious passages, to be patient, for there was a great deal worse yet to come.”

The sermon nevertheless was a good sermon, as temperate as it was properly timed, and the circumstance was as important in English history, as the anecdote is pertinent in this place. For that sermon gave rise to the Ecclesiastical Commission, which, in its consequences, produced, within two years, the Revolution.

THE AUTHOR MORALIZES UPON THE VANITY OF FAME; AND WISHES THAT HE HAD BOSWELLIZED WHILE IT WAS IN HIS POWER TO HAVE DONE SO.

Mucho tengo que llorar,Mucho tengo que reir.GONGORA.

It is a melancholy consideration that Fame is as unjust as Fortune. To Fortune indeed injustice ought not to be imputed, for Fortune is blind, and disposes of her favours at random. But Fame with all her eyes and ears and tongues, overlooks more than she perceives, and sees things often in a wrong light, and hears and reports as many falsehoods as truths.

We need not regret that the warriors who lived before Agamemnon should be forgotten, for the world would have been no worse if many of those who lived after him had been forgotten in like manner. But the wise also perish, and leave no memorial. What do we know of “Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol,” whom it was accounted an honour for Solomon to have excelled in wisdom? Where is now the knowledge for which Gwalchmai ab Gwyar, and Llechau ab Arthur, and Rhiwallawn Wallt Banadlen were leashed in a Triad as the three Physiologists or Philosophers of the Isle of Britain; because “there was nothing of which they did not know its material essence, and its properties, whether of kind, or of part, or of quality, or of compound, or of coincidence, or of tendency, or of nature, or of essence, whatever it might be?” Where is their knowledge? where their renown? They are now “merelynuda nomina, naked names!” “For there is no remembrance of the wise, more than of the fool for ever; seeing that which now is, in the days to come shall all be forgotten!”

——If our virtuesDid not go forth of us, 'twere all alikeAs if we had them not.1

The Seven Wise Men have left almost as little as the Sybils.

1SHAKESPEAR.

“What satisfaction,” says Sir John Hawkins, “does the mind receive from the recital of the names of those who are said to have increased the chords of the primitive lyre from four to seven, Chorebus, Hyagius, and Terpander? Or when we are told that Olympus invented the enarmonic genus, as also the Harmatian mood? Or that Eumolpus and Melampus were excellent musicians, and Pronomus, Antigenides and Lamia celebrated players on the flute? In all these instances, where there are no circumstances that constitute a character, and familiarize to us the person spoken of, we naturally enquire who he is, and for want of farther information become indifferent as to what is recorded of him.” The same most learned and judicious historian of his favourite art, laments that most of the many excellent musicians who flourished in the ages preceding our own, are all but utterly forgotten. “Of Tye,” he says, “of Redford, Shephard, Douland, Weelkes, Welbye, Est, Bateson, Hilton and Brewer, we know little more than their names. These men composed volumes which are now dispersed and irretrievably lost; yet did their compositions suggest those ideas of the power and efficacy of music, and those descriptions of its manifold charms, that occur in the verses of our best poets.”

Is there one of my Readers in a thousand who knows that Philistes was a Greco-Phœnician, or Phœnico-Grecian Queen of Malta and Gozo, before the Carthaginians obtained the dominion of those islands, in which their language continues living, though corrupted, to this day?—Are there ten men in Cornwall who know that Medacritus was the name of the first man who carried tin from that part of the world?

What but his name is now known of Romanianus, who in St. Augustin's opinion was the greatest genius that ever lived; and how little is his very name known now! What is now remembered “of the men of renown before the Flood?” Sir Walter Raleigh hath a chapter concerning them, wherein he says, “of the war, peace, government and policy of these strong and mighty men, so able both in body and wit, there is no memory remaining; whose stories if they had been preserved, and what else was then performed in that newness of the world, there could nothing of more delight have been left to posterity. For the exceeding long lives of men, (who to their strength of body and natural wits had the experience added of eight and nine hundred years,) how much of necessity must the same add of wisdom and understanding? Likely it is that their works excelled all whatsoever can be told of after-times; especially in respect of this old age of the world, when we no sooner begin to know than we begin to die: according to Hippocrates,Vita brevis, ars longa, tempus præceps, which is, life is short, art is long, and time is headlong. And that those people of the first age performed many things worthy of admiration, it may be gathered out of these words of Moses, these were mighty men, which in old time were men of renown.” What is known of them now? Their very names have perished!

Who now can explain the difference between the Agenorian, the Eratoclean, the Epigonian, and the Damonian sects of musicians, or knows any thing more than the names of their respective founders, except that one of them was Socrates's music-master?

What Roman of the age of Horace would have believed that a contemporaneous Consul's name should only live to posterity, as a record of the date of some one of the Poet's odes?

Who now remembers that memorable Mr. Clinch, “whose single voice, as he had learned to manage it, could admirably represent a number of persons at sport, and in hunting, and the very dogs and other animals,”—himself a whole pack and a whole field in full cry: “but none better than a quire of choristers chanting an Anthem”—himself a whole quire.

“How subdued,” says Mr. David Laing, who has rescued from oblivion so much that is worthy of being held in remembrance,—“how subdued is the interest that attaches to a mere name, as for instance, to that of Dunbar's contemporaries, Stobo, Quintyne, or St. John the Ross, whose works have perished!”

Who was that famous singer nick-named Bonny Boots, who, because of his excellent voice, or as Sir John Hawkins says, “for some other reason, had permission to call Queen Elizabeth his Lady:” and of whom it is said in the canzonet,

Our Bonny Boots could toot it,Yea and foot it,Say lusty lads, who now shall Bonny-Boot it?

Sir John thinks it might “possibly be one Mr. Hale.” But what is Fame when it ends in a poor possibility that Bonny Boots who called the Queen his Lady, and that Queen, not Bergami's popular Queen, but Queen Elizabeth, the nation's glorious Queen Elizabeth, the people's good Queen Bess,—what, I repeat, is Fame, when it ends in a mere conjecture that the Bonny Boots who was permitted to call such a Queen his Lady, might be “one Hale or Hales in whose voice she took some pleasure.” Well might Southey say

Fame's loudest blast upon the ear of TimeLeaves but a dying echo!

And what would posterity have heard of my Dove, my Daniel, my Doctor,—my Doctor Daniel Dove,—had it not been for these my patient and humble labours;—patient, but all too slow; humble, if compared with what the subject deserves, and yet ambitious, in contemplation of that desert, that inadequate as they are, they will however make the subject known; so that my Dove, my Daniel, my Doctor, shall be every-body's Dove, every-body's Daniel, every-body's Doctor,—yea the World's Doctor, the World's Doctor Daniel Dove!

O his desert speaks loud; and I should wrong it,To lock it in the wards of covert bosom,When it deserves with characters of brassA forted residence, 'gainst the tooth of timeAnd razure of oblivion.2

2MEASURE FORMEASURE.

Alas that there should have been in that generation but one Boswell. Why did Nature break his mould? Why did she not make two? for I would not have had Johnson deprived of what may almost be called his better part;—but why were there not two Boswells, as there are two Dromios in the Comedy of Errors, and two Mr. Bulwers at this day, and three Hunchbacks in the Arabian Tale. Why was there not a duplicate Boswell, a fac-simile of the Laird of Auchinleck, an undistinguishable twin-brother, to have lived at Doncaster, and have followed my Doctor, like his dog, or his shadow, or St. Anthony's pig, and have gathered up the fragments of his wit and his wisdom, so that nothing should have been lost? Sinner that I am, that I should have had so little forethought in the golden days of youth and opportunity! As Brantôme says when speaking of Montluc,j'etois fort souvent avec luy, et m'aymoit fort, et prenoit grand plaisir quand je le mettois en propos et en train et luy faisois quelques demandes,—car je ne suis jamais esté si jeune, que je n'aye tousjours esté fort curieux d'apprendre; et luy, me voyant en cette volonte, il me respondoit de bon cœur, et en beaux termes; car il avoit une fort belle eloquence.Truly therefore may I say of thee, O my friend and master!

——s'alcun bel fruttoNasce di me, da voi vien prima il seme.Io per me son quasi un terreno asciuttoColto da voi, e'l pregio è vostro in tutto.3

3PETRARCH.

Sinner that I was! not to have treasured up all his words when I enjoyed and delighted in his presence; improvident wretch! that I did not faithfully record them every night before I went to bed, while they were yet fresh in memory! How many things would I fain recall, which are now irrecoverably lost! How much is there, that if it were possible to call back the days that are past, I would eagerly ask and learn! But the hand of Time is on me.Non solebat mihi tam velox tempus videri; nunc incredibilis cursus apparet: sive quia admoveri lineas sentio, sive quia attendere cœpi et computare damnum meum.4I linger over these precious pages while I write, pausing and pondering in the hope that more recollections may be awakened from their long sleep; that one may jog and stir up another. By thus rummaging in the stores of memory many things which had long been buried there have been brought to light;—but O reader! how little is this all to what it might have been! It is but as a poor armful of gleanings compared to a waggon well piled with full sheaves, carrying the harvest home.

4SENECA.

Here too I may apply with the alteration of only one word what that good man Gotthilf Franck says in his Preface to the History of the Danish Mission in India, as translated into Latin from Niecamp's German Work.Quamquam vero huic æquo desiderio gratificandi animum tanto promptiorem gessimus, quanto plus ad illustrationem nominis dilecti ex tali compendio redundaturum esse perspeximus, multa tamen impedimenta in dies subnata sunt, quo minus res in effectum dari potuerit. Siquidem ad ejusmodi epitomen accurate conscribendum et res præcipuas breviter complectendas non solum multum temporis, patientiæ et laboris, sed singularis etiam epitomatoris ἱκανοτης et dexteritas requiritur.

The Doctor himself was careless of Fame. As he did nothing to be seen of men, so he took no thought for anything through which he might be remembered by them. It was enough for him if his jests and whims and fancies and speculations, whether sportive or serious, pleased himself, brought a smile to his wife's lips and a dimple to her cheek, or a good-humoured frown which was hardly less agreeable, to her brow;—it was enough for him if they amused or astonished those to whom they were addressed. Something he had for every one within the sphere of his little rounds; a quip for this person and a crank for that; “nods and becks and wreathed smiles” for those who were in the May-day of youth, or the hey-day of hilarity and welfare; a moral saying in its place and a grave word in season; wise counsel kindly given for those who needed it, and kind words for all,—with which kind actions always kept pace, instead of limping slowly and ungraciously behind. But of the world beyond that circle, he thought as little as that world thought of him; nor had he the slightest wish for its applause. The passion which has been called “the last infirmity of noble minds” had no place in his;—for he was a manin quo, as Erasmus says of his Tutor Hegius,unum illud vel Momus ipse calumniari fortasse potuisset, quod famæ plus æquo negligens, nullam posteritatis haberet rationem.

FAME IN THE BOROUGH ROAD. THE AUTHOR DANIELIZES.

Duc, Fama,—Duc me insolenti tramite; deviusTentabo inaccessos profanisInvidiæ pedibus recessus.VINCENTBOURNE.

Guess, Reader, where I once saw a full-sized figure of Fame, erect, tip-toe in the act of springing to take flight and soar aloft, her neck extended, her head raised, the trumpet at her lips, and her cheeks inflated, as if about to send forth a blast which the whole city of London was to hear? Perhaps thou mayest have seen this very figure thyself, and surely if thou hast, thou wilt not have forgotten it. It was in the Borough Road, placed above a shop-board which announced that Mr. Somebody fitted up Water-Closets upon a new and improved principle.

But it would be well for mankind if Fame were never employed in trumpeting any thing worse. There is a certain stage of depravity, in which men derive an unnatural satisfaction from the notoriety of their wickedness, and seek for celebrity “ob magnitudinem infamiæ, cujus apud prodigos novissima voluptas est.”1—“Ils veulent faire parler d'eux,” says Bayle, “et leur vanité ne seroit pas satisfaite s'il n'y avoit quelque chose de superlatif et d'eminent dans leur mauvaise reputation. Le plus haul degré de l'infamie est le but de leurs souhaits, et il y a des choses qu'ils ne feroient pas si elles n'etoient extraordinairement odieuses.”

1TACITUS.

Plutarch has preserved the name of Chærephanes who was notorious among the ancients for having painted such subjects as Julio Romano has the everlasting infamy of having designed for the flagitious Aretine. He has also transmitted to posterity the name of Parmeno, famous for grunting like a pig, and of Theodorus, not less famous for the more difficult accomplishment of mimicking the sound of a creaking cart-wheel. Who would wish to have his name preserved for his beggarliness, like Pauson the painter, and Codrus the poet? Or for his rascality and wickedness like Phrynondas? Or like Callianax the physician for callous brutality? Our Doctor used to instance these examples when he talked of “the bubble reputation,” which is sometimes to be had so cheaply, and yet for which so dear a price has often been paid in vain. It amused him to think by what odd, or pitiful accidents that bubble might be raised. “Whether the regular practitioner may sneer at Mr. Ching,” says the Historian of Cornwall, “I know not; but the Patent Worm-Lozenges have gained our Launceston Apothecary a large fortune, and secured to him perpetual fame.”

Would not John Dory's name have died with him, and so been long ago dead as a door-nail, if a grotesque likeness for him had not been discovered in the Fish, which being called after him, has immortalized him and his ugliness? But if John Dory could have anticipated this sort of immortality when he saw his own face in the glass, he might very well have “blushed to find it fame.” There would have been no other memorial of Richard Jaquett at this day, than the letters of his name in an old deed and obsolete hand, now well nigh rendered illegible by time, if he had not in the reign of Edward VI. been Lord of the Manor of Tyburn with its appurtenances, wherein the gallows was included, wherefore from the said Jaquett it is presumed by antiquaries that the hangman hath been ever since corruptly called Jack Ketch. A certain William Dowsing who during the Great Rebellion was one of the Parliamentary Visitors for demolishing superstitious pictures and ornaments of Churches, is supposed by a learned critic to have given rise to an expression in common use among school-boys and blackguards. For this worshipful Commissioner broke so many “mighty great Angels” in glass, knocked so many Apostles and Cherubims to pieces, demolished so many pictures and stone-crosses, and boasted with such puritanical rancour of what he had done, that it is conjectured the threat of giving any onea dowsing, preserves his rascally name. So too while Bracton and Fleta rest on the shelves of some public Library, Nokes and Stiles are living names in the Courts of Law: and for John Doe and Richard Roe, were there ever two litigious fellows so universally known as these eternal antagonists!

Johnson tells a story of a man who was standing in an inn kitchen with his back to the fire, and thus accosted a traveller who stood next him, “Do you know Sir, who I am?” “No Sir,” replied the traveller—“I have not that advantage.” “Sir,” said the man, “I am the great Twalmley who invented the new Flood-gate Iron.”—Who but for Johnson would have heard of the great Twalmley now? Reader I will answer the question which thou hast already asked, and tell thee that his invention consisted in applying a sliding door, like a flood-gate, to an ironing-box, flat-irons having till then been used, or box-irons with a door and bolt.

Who was Tom Long the Carrier? when did he flourish? what road did he travel? did he drive carts, or waggons, or was it in the age of pack-horses? Who was Jack Robinson? not the once well known Jack Robinson of the Treasury, (for his celebrity is now like a tale that is told,) but the one whose name is in every body's mouth, because it is so easily and so soon said. Who was Magg? and what was his diversion? was it brutal, or merely boorish? the boisterous exuberance of rude and unruly mirth, or the gratification of a tyrannical temper and a cruel disposition? Who was Crop the Conjuror, famous in trivial speech, as Merlin in romantic lore, or Doctor Faustus in the school of German extravagance? What is remembered now of Bully Dawson? all I have read of him is, that he lived three weeks on the credit of a brass shilling because nobody would take it of him. “There goes a story of Queen Elizabeth,” says Ray, “that being presented with a Collection of English Proverbs, and told by the Author that it contained them all, ‘Nay,’ replied she, ‘Bate me an ace, quoth Bolton!’ which proverb being instantly looked for, happened to be wanting in his collection.” “Who this Bolton was,” Ray says, “I know not, neither is it worth enquiring.” Nevertheless I ask who was Bolton? and when Echo answers “who?” say in my heartVanitas Vanitatum, omnia Vanitas. And having said this, conscience smites me with the recollection of what Pascal has said,Ceux qui écrivent contre la gloire, veulent avoir la gloire d'avoir bien écrit; et ceux qui le lisent, voulent avoir la gloire de l'avoir lu; et moi qui écris ceci, j'ai peut-être cette envie, et peut-être que ceux qui le liront, l'auront aussi.

Who was old Ross of Pottern, who lived till all the world was weary of him? all the world has forgotten him now. Who was Jack Raker, once so well known that he was named proverbially as a scape-grace by Skelton, and in the Ralph Roister Doister of Nicholas Udall,—that Udall, who on poor Tom Tusser's account, ought always to be called the bloody schoolmaster? Who was William Dickins, whose wooden dishes were sold so badly that when any one lost by the sale of his wares, the said Dickins and his dishes, were brought up in scornful comparison? Out-roaring Dick was a strolling singer of such repute that he got twenty shillings a day by singing at Braintree Fair: but who was that Desperate Dick that was such a terrible cutter at a chine of beef, and devoured more meat at ordinaries in discoursing of his frays and deep acting of his flashing and hewing, than would serve half a dozen brewers' draymen? It is at this day doubtful whether it was Jack Drum or Tom Drum whose mode of entertainment no one wishes to receive;—for it was to haul a man in by the head and thrust him out by the neck and shoulders. Who was that other Dick who wore so queer a hat-band that it has ever since served as a standing comparison for all queer things? By what name besides Richard was he known? Where did he live and when? His birth, parentage, education, life, character and behaviour, who can tell? Nothing, said the Doctor, is remembered of him now, except that he was familiarly called Dick, and that his queer hat-band, went nine times round and would not tie.

“O vain World's glory, and unstedfast stateOf all that lives on face of sinful earth!”2

Who was Betty Martin, and wherefore should she so often be mentioned in connection with my precious eye or yours? Who was Ludlam whose dog was so lazy that he leant his head against a wall to bark? And who was Old Cole whose dog was so proud that he took the wall of a dung-cart and got squeezed to death by the wheel? Was he the same person of whom the song says

Old King ColeWas a merry old soul,And a merry old soul was he?

And was his dog proud because his master was called King? Here are questions to be proposed in the Examination papers of some Australian Cambridge, two thousand years hence, when the people of that part of the world shall be as reasonably inquisitive concerning our affairs, as we are now concerning those of the Greeks. But the Burneys, the Parrs and the Porsons, the Elmsleys, Monks and Blomfields of that age, will puzzle over them in vain, for we cannot answer them now.

2SPENSER.

“Who was the Vicar of Bray? I have had a long chase after him,” said Mr. Brome to Mr. Rawlins, in 1735. “Simon Aleyn, or Allen, was his name; he was Vicar of Bray about 1540 and died in 1588; so he held the living near fifty years. You now partake of the sport that has cost me some pains to take. And if the pursuit after such game seems mean, one Mr. Vernon followed a butterfly nine miles before he could catch him.” Reader, do not refuse your belief of this fact, when I can state to you on my own recollection that the late Dr. Shaw, the celebrated Naturalist, a librarian of the British Museum and known by the name of the learned Shavius, from the facility and abundance of his Latin compositions, pointed out to my notice there many years ago two volumes written by a Dutchman upon the wings of a butterfly. “The dissertation is rather voluminous Sir, perhaps you will think,” said the Doctor, with somewhat of that apologetic air, which modest science is wont occasionally to assume in her communications with ignorance, “but it is immensely important.” Good natured, excellent enthusiast! fully didst thou appreciate the Book, the Dutchman, and above all the Butterfly.

“I have known a great man,” says Taylor the Water-Poet, “very expert on the Jews-harp; a rich heir excellent at Noddy; a Justice of the Peace skilful at Quoytes; a Merchant's Wife a quick gamester at Irish, especially when she came to bearing of men, that she would seldom miss entering.” Injurious John Taylor! thus to defraud thy friends of their fame, and leave in irremediable oblivion the proper name of that expert Jews-Harper, that person excellent at Noddy, that great Quoytes-man, and that Mistress who played so masterly a game at Irish!—But I thank thee for this, good John the Water-Poet; thou hast told us that Monsieur La Ferr, a Frenchman, was the first inventor of the admirable game of Double-hand, Hot Cockles, &c., and that Gregory Dawson, an Englishman, devised the unmatchable mystery of Blind-man's-buff. But who can tell me what the game of Carps was, theLudus Carparum, which Hearne says was used in Oxford much, and being joined with cards, and reckoned as a kind ofalea, is prohibited in some statutes. When Thomas Hearne, who learned whatever Time forgot, was uncertain what game or play it really was, and could only conjecture that perhaps it might be a sort of Back-gammon, what antiquary can hope to ascertain it?

“Elizabeth Canning, Mary Squires the Gipsey, and Miss Blandy,” says one who remembered their days of celebrity, “were such universal topics in 1752, that you would have supposed it the business of mankind to talk only of them; yet now, in 1790, ask a young man of twenty-five or thirty a question relative to these extraordinary personages, and he will be puzzled to answer.”

Who now knows the steps of that dance, or has heard the name of its author, of which in our father's days it was said in verse that

Isaac's rigadoon shall live as longAs Rafael's painting, or as Virgil's song.

Nay, who reads the poem wherein those lines are found, though the author predicted for them in self-applauding pleasantry, that

Whilst birds in air, or fish in streams we find,Or damsels fresh with aged partners join'd,As long as nymphs shall with attentive earA fiddle rather than a sermon hear,So long the brightest eyes shall oft peruseThese useful lines of my instructive muse.

Even of the most useful of those lines, the “uses are gone by.” Ladies before they leave the ball room, are now no longer fortified against the sudden change of temperature by a cup of generous white wine mulled with ginger; nor is it necessary now to caution them at such times against a draught of cold small beer, because as the Poet in his own experience assured them

Destruction lurks within the poisonous dose,A fatal fever, or a pimpled nose.3

3SOAMEJENYNS.

MR. BAXTER'S OFFICES. MILLER'S CHARACTER OF MASON; WITH A FEW REMARKS IN VINDICATION OF GRAY'S FRIEND AND THE DOCTOR'S ACQUAINTANCE.

——Te sonare quis mihiGenîque vim dabit tui?Stylo quis æquor hocce arare charteum,Et arva per papyrinaSatu loquace seminare literas?JANUSDOUSA.

That dwelling house which the reader may find represented in Miller's History of Doncaster, as it was in his time, and in the Doctor's, and in mine,—that house in which the paper-hangers and painters were employed during the parenthesis, or to use a more historical term, the Interim of this part of our history,—that house which when, after an interval of many years, I saw it last, had the name R. Dennison on the door, is now, the Sheffield Mercury tells me, occupied as Mr. Baxter's Offices. I mean no disrespect to Mr. R. Dennison. I mean no disrespect to Mr. Baxter. I know nothing of these gentlemen, except that in 1830 the one had his dwelling there, and in 1836 the other his offices. But for the house itself, which can now be ascertained only by its site, totally altered as it is in structure and appearance, without and within,—when I think of it I cannot but exclaim, in what Wordsworth would call “that inward voice” with which we speak to ourselves in solitude, “If thou be'est it,” with reference to that alteration,—and with reference to its change of tenants and present appropriation I cannot but carry on the verse, and say—“but oh how fallen, how changed!”

In that house Peter Hopkins had entertained his old friend Guy; and the elder Daniel once, upon an often pressed and special invitation, had taken the longest journey he ever performed in his life, to pass a week there. For many years Mr. Allison and Mr. Bacon made it their house of call whenever they went to Doncaster. In that house Miller introduced Herschel to Dr. Dove; and Mason when he was Mr. Copley's guest never failed to call there, and enquire of the Doctor what books he had added to his stores,—for to have an opportunity of conversing with him was one of the pleasures which Mason looked for in his visits at Netherhall.

Miller disliked Mason: described him as sullen, reserved, capricious and unamiable; and this which he declared to be “the real character of this celebrated poet,” he inserted, he said, “as a lesson to mankind, to shew them what little judgement can be formed of the heart of an author, either by the sublimity of his conceptions, the beauty of his descriptions, or the purity of his sentiments.”

Often as Miller was in company with Mason, there are conclusive proofs that the knowledge which he attained of Mason's character, was as superficial as the poet's knowledge of music, for which as has heretofore been intimated, the Organist regarded him with some contempt.

He says that the reason which Mason assigned for making an offer to the lady whom he married, was, that he had been a whole evening in her company with others, and observed, that during all that time she never spoke a single word. Mason is very likely to have said this; but the person who could suppose that he said it in strict and serious sincerity, meaning that it should be believed to the letter, must have been quite incapable of appreciating the character of the speaker.

Mason whom Gray described, a little before this offer, as repining at his four and twenty weeks residence at York, and longing for the flesh-pots and coffee-houses of Cambridge, was notwithstanding in his friend and fellow-poet's phrase, a long whilemariturient, “and praying to heaven to give him a good and gentle governess.” “No man,” says Gray, “wants such a thing more in all senses; but his greatest wants do not make him move a foot faster, nor has he, properly speaking, any thing one can call a passion about him, except a little malice and revenge.” Elsewhere he speaks of Mason's “insatiable repining mouth.” Yet there was no malice in these expressions. Gray loved him, taking him for all in all, and to have been the friend of Gray will always be considered as evidence of no ordinary worth; for it is not on intellect alone that the friendship of so good and wise a man as Gray could be founded.

When Gray first became acquainted with Mason he wrote concerning him thus. “He has much fancy, little judgement, and a good deal of modesty. I take him for a good and well-meaning creature; but then he is really in simplicity a child, and loves every body he meets with: he reads little or nothing, writes abundance, and that with a design to make his fortune by it.” In another letter “Mason grows apace in my good graces; he is very ingenious, with great good-nature and simplicity; a little vain, but in so harmless and so comical a way that it does not offend one at all; a little ambitious, but withal so ignorant in the world and its ways, that this does not hurt him in one's opinion. So sincere and so undisguised, that no mind with a spark of generosity would ever think of hurting him, he lies so open to injury; but so indolent that if he cannot overcome this habit, all his good qualities will signify nothing at all.”

This surely is the character of an amiable and very likeable man. Mason said when he printed it, “my friends, I am sure will be much amused at this; my enemies (if they please) may sneer at it, and say (which they will very truly,) that twenty-five years have made a very considerable abatement in my general philanthropy. Men of the world will not blame me for writing from so prudent a motive, as that of making my fortune by it; and yet the truth I believe, at the time was, that I was perfectly well satisfied if my publications furnished me with a few guineas to see a Play, or an Opera.”

During the short time that his wife lived after his marriage, Miller observed that he appeared more animated and agreeable in his conversation, that is to say, he was cheerful because he was happy. After her death (and who has ever perused her epitaph without emotion?) he relapsed into a discontented habit of mind, as might be expected from one who had remained unmarried too long, and who although he might be said in the worldly sense of the word to have been a fortunate man, was never, except during the short duration of his marriage, a happy one. He had no near relations, none to whom he was in any degree attached; and in Gray he lost the most intimate of his friends, probably the only one towards whom he ever felt anything approaching to a warmth of friendship. This produced a most uncomfortable effect upon him in the decline of life; for knowing that he was looked upon as one who had wealth to leave for which there were no near or natural claimants, he suspected that any marks of attention which were shewn him, whether from kindness or from respect, proceeded from selfish views. That in many cases such suspicions may be well-founded, any one who knows what the world is, will readily believe; and if they made him capricious, and rendered him liable to be accused of injustice and want of feeling, the effect is not so extraordinary as it is pitiable. It is one of the evils attendant upon the possession of riches where there is no certain heir; it is part of the punishment which those persons bring upon themselves who accumulate unnecessary wealth, without any just or definite object.

But Mason is chargeable with no such sin. When a young man he made a resolution that if he came into possession of an estate which was entailed upon him, he would accept of no additional preferment; and he adhered to that resolution, though many offers were made to him which might have induced a worldly man to depart from it. The first thing he did after the inheritance fell to him was to resign his King's Chaplainship: “a priest in that situation,” he said, “could not help looking forward to a bishoprick, a species of ambition incompatible with the simplicity and purity of the Christian character, for, the moment a man aspires to the purple that moment virtue goes out of him.” Mr. Greville who after a visit to Mason, related this in a letter to his friend Polwhele, was informed that his income was about £1500 a-year, and that of this one third was appropriated to patronage and charity.

He had made another resolution, which was not kept, because it was not reasonable. When the Earl of Holdernesse offered him the Rectory of Aston, he was not in orders, and he called upon Warburton to ask his advice. “I found him,” says Warburton, “yet unresolved whether he should take the Living. I said, was the question about a mere secular employment, I should blame him without reserve if he refused the offer. But as I regarded going into orders in another light, I frankly owned to him he ought not to go, unless he had acall:by which I meant, I told him, nothing fanatical or superstitious; but an inclination, and, on that, a resolution, to dedicate all his studies to the service of religion, and totally to abandon his poetry. This sacrifice, I said, I thought was required at any time, but more indispensably so in this, when we are fighting with infidelitypro aris et focis. This was what I said; and I will do him the justice to say, that he entirely agreed with me in thinking that decency, reputation, and religion, all required this sacrifice of him; and that, if he went into orders, he intended to give it.” “How much shall I honour him,” says Warburton in another letter, “if he performs his promise to me of putting away those idle baggages after his sacred espousals!” This unwise promise explains Mason's long silence as a poet, and may partly account for his uncomfortable state of mind as long as he considered himself bound by it.

There were other circumstances about him which were unfavourable to happiness; he seems never to have been of a cheerful, because never of a hopeful temper; otherwise Gray would not have spoken of his “insatiable repining mouth,”—the lively expression of one who clearly perceived his constitutional faults, and yet loved him, as he deserved to be loved, in spite of them. The degree of malice also, which Gray noticed as the strongest passion in his nature, is to be reckoned among those circumstances. By far the most popular of his compositions were those well known satires which he never owned, and which professional critics with their usual lack of acumen, pronounced not to be his because of their sarcastic humour and the strength of their language. He had a great deal of that sarcastic humour, and this it was which Gray called malice; in truth it partakes of maliciousness, and a man is the worse for indulging it, if he ever allows himself to give it a personal direction, except in cases where strong provocation may warrant and strict justice require it. That these satires were written by Mason will appear upon the most indisputable proof whenever his letters shall be published; and it is earnestly hoped those letters may not be allowed to perish, for in them and in them only will the character of the writer appear in its natural lights and shades.

Mason would not (especially after their signal success,) have refrained from acknowledging these satires, which are the most vigorous of his compositions, unless he had been conscious that the turn of mind they indicated was not that which ought to be found in a member of his profession. And it can only have been the same feeling which induced the Editor to withhold them from the only collective edition of his works. That edition was delayed till fourteen years after his death, and then appeared without any memoir of the author, or any the slightest prefatory mark of respect: it seems therefore that he had left none by whom his memory was cherished. But though this may have been in some degree his fault, it was probably in a far greater degree his misfortune.

Mason had obtained preferment for his literary deserts, and in such just measure as to satisfy himself, and those also who would wish that ecclesiastical preferment were always so properly bestowed. But he was not satisfied with his literary fame. Others passed him upon the stream of popularity with all their sails set, full speed before the wind, while he lay quietly upon his oars in a pleasant creek; and he did not sufficiently bear in mind that he was safe at his ease, when some of those who so triumphantly left him behind were upset and went to the bottom. He had done enough to secure for himself a respectable place among the poets of his country, and a distinguished one among those of his age. But more through indolence than from any deficiency or decay of power, he had fallen short of the promise of his youth, and of his own early aspirations. Discontent, especially when mingled with self-reproach, is an uneasy feeling, and like many others he appears to have sought relief by projecting it, and transferring as much of it as he could upon the world. He became an acrimonious whig, and took an active part in the factious measures by which Yorkshire was agitated about the close of the American war. Gray if he had been then living might perhaps have been able to have rendered him more temperate and more reasonable in his political views; certainly he would have prevailed upon him not to write, or having written not to publish or preserve, the last book of his English Garden, which is in every respect miserably bad; bad in taste as recommending sham castles and modern ruins; bad in morals, as endeavouring to serve a political cause and excite indignation against the measures of Government by a fictitious story, (which if it had been true could have had no bearing whatever upon the justice or injustice of the American war;) and bad in poetry because the story is in itself absurd. Not the least absurd part of this puerile tale is the sudden death of the heroine, at the unexpected sight of her betrothed husband, whom she was neither glad nor sorry to see; and the description of thefacies Hippocraticais applied to this person, thus dying in health, youth and beauty! Dr. Dove used to instance this as a remarkable example of knowledge ignorantly misapplied.

Yet though the Doctor did not rank him higher as a physiologist than Miller did as a musician, or than Sir Joshua must have done as a painter, he found more pleasure than the organist could do in his conversation; partly because there was an air of patronage in Mason's intercourse with Miller at first, and afterwards an air of estrangement, (a sufficient reason;) and partly because Mason was more capable of enjoying the richness of the Doctor's mind, and such of its eccentricities as were allowed to appear in company where he was not wholly without reserve, than he was of appreciating the simplicity of Miller's. That vein of humour which he indulged in his correspondence opened when he was conversing with one, like the Doctor, upon whom nothing was lost; at such times the heavy saturnine character of Mason's countenance, which might almost be called morose, seemed to be cast off; and pleasantry and good-nature animated its intellectual strength. But according to Polwhele's friend, there was a “sedate benignity in his countenance, which taught me,” says Mr. Greville, “instantaneously to rely on him as a man the leading traits of whose disposition were feeling and reflection. This immediate impression of his character I found afterwards to be strictly just. I never yet met with a human being whose head and heart appear to act and re-act so reciprocally, so concordantly upon each other as his.—In his style of conversation, you can trace nothing of thevis vividaof the poet. Here his inventive powers apparently lie dormant. Those flashes of genius, those intellectual emanations which we are taught to believe great men cannot help darting forward in order to lighten up the gloom of colloquial communication, he seems to consider as affected; he therefore rejects them whenever they occur, and appears to pride himself on the preference which he gives to simplicity and perspicuity. Conversation (if you will excuse a pedantic allusion,) with him resembles the style of painting mentioned in the earlier part of the Athenian History, which consisted in representing the artist's ideas in a simple unaffected point of view, through the medium of one colour only; whereas his writings are like the pictures of Polygnotus. They glow with all the warmth of an invigorated imagination, an animated diction, and a rich luxuriant phraseology.

“His manners, too, are equally as chaste and unaffected as his conversation. The stream that winds its easy way through woods and verdant meads, is not less artificial or more insinuating than he is in doing the honours of the table, or promoting the graces of the drawing room. That peculiar happiness which some few I have met with possess, of reconciling you implicitly to their superiority, he enjoys in an eminent degree, by the amiability of his sentiments, the benignity of his attention, and particularly by an indescribable way with him, of making you appear to advantage, even when he convinces you of the erroneousness of your opinions, or the inconclusiveness of your reasoning.

“In regard to his morals, I believe from what I have collected, that few can look back upon a period of sixty years existence, spent so uniformly pure and correct. In the course of our chit chat, he informed me, in an unostentatious unaffected manner, that he never was intoxicated but once.”

There was another point of resemblance, besides their vein of humour, between Mason and the Doctor, in their latter days; they were nearly of the same age, and time had brought with it to both the same sober, contemplative, deep feeling of the realities of religion.

The French Revolution cured Mason of his whiggery, and he had the manliness to sing his palinode. The fearful prevalence of a false and impious philosophy made him more and more sensible of the inestimable importance of his faith. On his three last birth-days he composed three sonnets, which for their sentiment and their beauty ought to be inserted in every volume of select poems for popular use. And he left for posthumous publication a poem called RELIGIOCLERICI: as a whole it is very inferior to that spirited satire of Smedley's which bears the same title, and which is the best satire of its age; but its concluding paragraph will leave the reader with a just and very favourable impression of the poet and the man.

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