Chapter 16

A FRAGMENT ON BEARDS.

Yet have I more to say which I have thought upon, for I am filled as the moon at the full!

ECCLESIASTICUS.

The reader must not expect that we have done with our beards yet; shaving, as he no doubt knows but too well, is one of those things at which we may cut and come again, and in the present Chapter

To shave, or not to shave, that is the question;

a matter which, hath not hitherto been fully considered. The question as relates to the expenditure of time, has been, profitably I trust, disposed of; and that of its effect upon health has been, as Members of Parliament say, poo-pooh'd. But the propriety of the practice is yet to be investigated upon other grounds.

Van Helmont tells us that Adam was created without a beard, but that after he had fallen and sinned, because of the sinful propensities which he derived from the fruit of the forbidden Tree, a beard was made part of his punishment and disgrace, bringing him thus into nearer resemblance with the beasts towards whom he had made his nature approximate; “ut multorum quadrupedum compar, socius et similis esset, eorundem signaturam præ se ferret, quorum more ut salax, ita et vultum pilis hirtum ostenderet.” The same stigma was not inflicted upon Eve, because even in the fall she retained much of her original modesty, and therefore deserved no such opprobrious mark.

Van Helmont observes also that no good Angel ever appears with a beard, and this, he says, is a capital sign by which Angels may be distinguished,—a matter of great importance to those who are in the habit of seeing them. “Si apparuerit barbatus Angelus, malus esto. Eudæmon enim nunquam barbatus apparuit, memor casus ob quem viro barba succrevit.” He marvelled therefore that men should suppose the beard was given them for an ornament, when Angels abhor it, and when they see that they have it in common with he-goats. There must be something in his remark; for take the most beautiful Angel that ever Painter designed, or Engraver copied, put him on a beard, and the celestial character will be so entirely destroyed, that the simple appendage of a tail will cacodemonize the Eudæmon.

This being the belief of Van Helmont, who declares that he had profited more by reveries and visions than by study, though he had studied much and deeply, ought he, in conformity to his own belief, to have shaved, or not? Much might be alleged on either side: for to wear the beard might seem in a person so persuaded, a visible sign of submission to the Almighty will, in thus openly bearing the badge of punishment, the mark of human degradation which the Almighty has been pleased to appoint: but, on the other hand, a shaven face might seem with equal propriety, and in like manner denote, a determination in the man to put off, as far as in him lay this outward and visible sign of sin and shame, and thereby assert that fallen nature was in him regenerate,

Belle est vraiment l'opinion premiere;Belle est encores l'opinion derniere;A qui des deux est-ce doncq' que je suis?1

1PASQUIER.

Which of the two opinions I might incline to is of no consequence, because I do not agree with Van Helmont concerning the origin of the beard; though as to what he affirms concerning good Angels upon his own alleged knowledge, I cannot contradict him upon mine, and have moreover freely confessed that when we examine our notions of Angels they are found to support him. But he himself seems to have thought both opinions probable, and therefore, according to the casuists, safe; so, conforming to the fashion of his times, without offence to his own conscience, he neither did the one thing, nor the other; or perhaps it may be speaking more accurately to say that he did both; for he shaved his beard, and let his mustachios grow.

Upon this subject, P. Gentien Hervet, Regent of the College at Orleans printed three discourses in the year 1536. In the first of theseDe radendâ barbâ, he makes it appear that we are bound to shave the beard. In the secondDe alendâ barbâ, he proves we ought to let the beard grow. And in the thirdDe vel radendâ vel alendâ barbâhe considers that it is lawful either to shave or cultivate the beard at pleasure. “Si bien,” says the Doctor in Theology, M. Jean Baptiste Thiers, in his grave and eruditeHistoire des Perruques, publishedaux depens de l'Autheur, at Paris in 1690,—si bien, que dans la pensée de ce sçavant Theologien, le question des barbes, courtes ou longues, est une question tout-a-fait problematique, et où par consequent on peut prendre tel party que l'on veut, pour ou contre.

[The following Extracts were to have been worked up in this Chapter.]

D'Israeli quotes an author who, in his Elements of Education, 1640, says, “I have a favourable opinion of that young gentleman who is curious in fine mustachios. The time he employs in adjusting, dressing and curling them, is no lost time: for the more he contemplates his mustachios, the more his mind will cherish, and be animated by, masculine and courageous notions.”

There are men whose beards deserve not so honourable a grave as to stuff a botcher's cushion, or to be entombed in an ass's packsaddle.

SHAKSPEARE.

“Human felicity,” says Dr. Franklin, “is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day. Thus if you teach a poor young man to shave himself and keep his razor in order, you may contribute more to the happiness of his life than in giving him a thousand guineas. This sum may be soon spent, the regret only remaining of having foolishly consumed it: but in the other case he escapes the frequent vexation of waiting for barbers, and of their sometimes dirty fingers, offensive breaths and dull razors; he shaves when most convenient to him, and enjoys daily the pleasure of its being done with a good instrument.”

By Jupiter,Were I the wearer of Antonius' beardI would not shave 't to day.SHAKSPEARE.

D'Israeli says that a clergyman who had the longest and largest beard of any Englishman in Elizabeth's reign, gave as a reason for wearing it the motive it afforded “that no act of his life might be unworthy the gravity of his appearance.”

FRAGMENT ON MORTALITY.

When Fuller in his Pisgah Sight of Palestine, comes to the city of Aigalon, where Elon, Judge of Israel, was buried, “of whom nothing else is recorded save his name, time of his rule (ten years), and place of his interment; slight him not he says, because so little is reported of him, it tending much to the praise of his policy in preventing foreign invasions, and domestic commotions, so that the land enjoyed peace, as far better than victory, as health is to be preferred before a recovery from sickness. Yea, times of much doing are times of much suffering, and many martial achievements are rather for the Prince's honour, than the people's ease.”

“To what purpose,” says Norris, “should a man trouble both the world's and his own rest, to make himself great? For besides the emptiness of the thing, the Play will quickly be done, and the Actors must all retire into a state of equality, and then it matters not who personated the Emperor, or who the Slave.”

The Doctor's feelings were in unison with both these passages;—with the former concerning the quiet age in which it was his fortune to flourish; and with the latter in that it was his fortune to flourish in the shade. “It is with times,” says Lord Bacon, “as it is with ways; some are more up hill and down hill, and some are more flat and plain; and the one is better for the liver, and the other for the writer.”

He assented also to the Christian-Platonist of Bemerton when he asked, “to what purpose should a man be very earnest in the pursuit of Fame? He must shortly die, and so must those too who admire him.” But nothing could be more opposed to his way of thinking than what follows in that philosopher,—“Nay, I could almost say, to what purpose should a man lay himself out upon study and drudge so laboriously in the mines of learning? He is no sooner a little wiser than his brethren, but Death thinks him ripe for his sickle; and for aught we know, after all his pains and industry, in the next world, an ideot, or a mechanic will be as forward as he.” In the same spirit Horace Walpole said in his old age, “What is knowledge to me, who stand on the verge, and must leave my old stores as well as what I may add to them,—and how little could that be!”

When Johnson was told that Percy was uneasy at the thought of leaving his house, his study, his books—when he should die,—he replied—“a man need not be uneasy on these grounds, for as he will retain his consciousness, he may say with the Philosopher,omnia mea mecum porto.”

“Let attention,” says the thoughtful John Miller in his Bampton Lectures, which deserve to be side by side with those of the lamented Van Mildert, “let attention be requested to what seems here an accessory sign of the adaptation of all our heavenly Father's dealings to that which he ‘knows to be in man’—I mean his merciful shortening of the term of this present natural life, subsequently to the period when all-seeing justice had been compelled to destroy the old world for its disobedience.

“I call it merciful, because, though we can conceive no length of day which could enable man with his present faculties to exhaust all that is made subject to his intellect, yet observing the scarcely credible rapidity of some minds and the no less wonderful retention of others, we may well conceive a far severer, nay too severe a test of resignation and patience to arise from length of years. To learn is pleasant; but to be ‘ever learning, and never able to come to sure knowledge of the truth,’ (if it were only in matters of lawful and curious and ardent speculation,) is a condition which we may well imagine to grow wearisome by too great length of time. ‘Hope delayed’ might well ‘make the heart sick’ in many such cases. We may find an infidel amusing himself on the brink of the grave with many imaginary wishes for a little longer respite, that he might witness the result of this or that speculation; but I am persuaded that the heart which really loves knowledge most truly and most wisely will be affected very differently. From every fresh addition to its store (as far as concerns itself,) it will only derive increase to that desire wherewith it longs to become disentangled altogether from a state of imperfection, and to be present in the fulness of that light, wherein ‘every thing that is in part shall be done away.’ Here, then, in one of the most interesting and most important of all points (the shortening of human life) we find a representation in Scripture which may be accounted favourable to its credibility and divine authority on the safest grounds of reason and experience. For certainly, as to the bare matter of fact, such representation corresponds in the strictest manner (as far as we have known and have seen) with the state of life as at present existing; and accepting it as true, we can perceive at once, a satisfactory explanation of it by referring it, as a provision for man's well being, to the wisdom and mercy of an Omnipotent Spirit who knew, and knows ‘what is in man.’”

FRAGMENT OF SIXTH VOLUME.

Reader, we are about to enter upon the sixth volume of this our Opus; and as it is written in the forms of Herkeru, Verily the eye of Hope is upon the high road of Expectation.

Well begun, says the Proverb, is half done. Horace has been made to say the same thing by the insertion of an apt word which pentametrizes the verse,

Dimidium facti qui bene cæpit habet.

D. Juan de Villagutierre Soto-Mayor in setting forth the merits of Columbus for having discovered the New World, and thereby opened the way for its conquest by the Spaniards, observes thatel principio en todas las operaciones humanas es el mas dificultoso estado; y assi una vez vencido, se reputa y debe reputarse por la mitad della obra, ò por la principal de ella; y el proseguir despues en lo comenzado no contiene tanta dificultad.

When Gabriel Chappuis dedicated the eighteenth book of Amadis, by him translated from the Spanish, to the Noble and Virtuous Lord Jan Anthoine Gros, Sieur de S. Jouere, &c., he says, after a preamble of eulogies upon the Dedicates and the Book,Vous recevrez donc, s'il vous plaist ce petit livre d'aussy bon œil que ont fait ceux ausquels j'ay dedié les trois livres precedens, m'asseurant que s'il vous plaist en avoir la lecture, vous y trouverez grande delectation, comme à la verité l'histoire qui y est descrite, et mesmes en tous les precedens et en ceux qui viendront apres, a esté inventée pour delecter; mais avec tant de beaux traits, et une infinité de divers accidens et occurrences qu'il est impossible qu'avec le plaisir et le delectation, l'on n'en tire un grand proffet, comme vous experementerez, moyennant la grace de Dieu.

J'ay fait le précédent Chapitre un peu court; peut-être que celui-ce sera plus long; je n'en suis pourtant pas bien assuré, nous l'allons voir.

SCARRON.

Deborah's strong affection for her father was not weakened by marriage; nor his for her by the consequent separation. Caroline Bowles says truly, and feelingly and beautifully,

It is not love that steals the heart from love;'Tis the hard world and its perplexing cares,Its petrifying selfishness, its pride,Its low ambition, and its paltry aims.

There was none of that “petrifying selfishness” in the little circle which lost so much when Deborah was removed from her father's parsonage. In order that that loss might be less painfully felt, it was proposed by Mr. Allison that Sunday should always be kept at the Grange when the season or the weather permitted. The Doctor came if he could; but for Mrs. Dove it was always to be a holiday.

“The pleasures of a volatile head,” says Mrs. Carter, “are much less liable to disappointment, than those of a sensible heart.” For such as can be contented with rattles and raree-shows, there are rattles and raree-shows in abundance to content them; and when one is broken it is mighty easily replaced by another. But the pleasures arising from the endearments of social relations, and the delicate sensibilities of friendly affection, are more limited, and their objects incontrovertible; they are accompanied with perpetual tender solicitude, and subject to accidents not to be repaired beneath the Sun. It is no wonder however that the joys of folly should have their completion in a world with which they are to end, while those of higher order must necessarily be incompleat in a world where they are only to begin.1

1From the writing of the latter paragraph I should judge this to be one of the latest sentences Southey ever wrote.—In the MS. it was to have followed c. cxxxv. vol. iv. p. 361.

FRAGMENT WHICH WAS TO HAVE ANSWERED THE QUESTION PROPOSED IN THE TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY-SECOND CHAPTER.

Io udii già dire ad un valente uomo nostro vicino, gli uomini abbiano molte volte bisogno sì di lagrimare, come di ridere; e per tal cagione egli affermava essere state da principio trovate le dolorose favole, che si chiamarono Tragedie, accioche raccontate ne' teatri, come in qual tempo si costumava di fare, tirassero le lagrime agli occhi di coloro, che avevano di ciò mestiere; e cosi eglino piangendo della loro infirmita guarissero. Ma come ciò sia a noi non istà bene di contristare gli animi delle persone con cui favelliamo; massimamente colà dove si dimori per aver festa e sollazzo, e non per piagnere; che se pure alcuno è, che infermi per vaghezza di lagrimare, assai leggier cosa fia di medicarlo con la mostarda forte, o porlo in alcun luogo al fumo.

GALATEO,DELM. GIOVANNI DELLACASA.

The Reader may remember, when he is thus reminded of it, that I delayed giving an account of Pompey, in answer to the question who he was, till the Dog-days should come. Here we are, (ifheremay be applied to time) in the midst of them, July 24, 1830.

Horace Walpole speaks in a letter of two or three Mastiff-days so much fiercer were they that season than our common Dog-days. This year they might with equal propriety be called Iceland-Dog-days. Here we are with the thermometer every night and morning below the temperate point, and scarcely rising two degrees above it at middle day. And then for weather;—as Voiture says,Il pleut pla-ple-pli-plo-plus.

If then as Robert Wilmot hath written, “it be true that the motions of our minds follow the temperature of the air wherein we live, then I think the perusing of some mournful matter, tending to the view of a notable example, will refresh your wits in a gloomy day, and ease your weariness of the louring night:” and the tragical part of my story might as fitly be told now in that respect, as if “weary winter were come upon us, which bringeth with him drooping days and weary nights.” But who does not like to put away tragical thoughts? Who would not rather go to see a broad farce than a deep tragedy? Sad thoughts even when they are medicinal for the mind, are as little to the mind's liking, as physic is grateful to the palate when it is needed most.

FRAGMENT ON HUTCHINSON'S WORKS.1

1A Chapter was to have been devoted to the Hutchinsonian philosophy, and I am inclined to believe that this was a part of it.

These superstitions are unquestionably of earlier date than any existing records, and commenced with the oldest system of idolatry, the worship of the heavenly bodies. Hutchinson's view is that when Moses brought the Jews out of their captivity, all men believed that “Fire, Light, or the Operation of the Air, did every thing in this material system:” those who believed rightly in God, knew that these secondary causes acted as his instruments, but “those who had fallen and lost communication with the Prophets and the truth of tradition, and were left to reason, (though they reasoned as far as reason could reach) thought the Heavens of a divine nature, and that they not only moved themselves and the heavenly bodies but operated all things on earth; and influenced the bodies, and governed the minds and fortunes of men: and so they fell upon worshipping them, and consulting them for times and seasons.” “The Devil,” he says, “chose right; this was the only object of false worship which gave any temptation; and it had very specious inducements.” And it was because he thus prevailed over “the Children of disobedience,” that the Apostle stiles him “the Prince of the Powers of the Air.” “This made the Priests and Physicians of the antient heathen cultivate the knowledge of these Powers, and afterwards made them star-gazers and observe the motions of those bodies for their conjunctions and oppositions, and all the stuff of their lucky and unlucky days and times, and especially to make advantage of their eclipses, for which they were stiled Magi, and looked upon as acquaintance of their Gods; and so much of the latter as is of any use, and a great deal more, we are obliged to them for.” “But these,” he says, “who thought that the Heavens ordered the events of things by their motions and influences, and that they were to be observed and foreseen by men, robbed God of his chief attributes, and were ordered then, and ought still, to be punished with death.”

Hutchinson is one of the most repulsive writers that ever produced any effect upon his contemporaries. His language is such as almost justified Dr. Parr in calling it the Hutchinsonian jargon; and his system is so confusedly brought forward that one who wishes to obtain even a general knowledge of it, must collect it as he can from passages scattered through the whole of his treatises. Add to these disrecommendations that it is propounded in the coarsest terms of insolent assumption, and that he treats the offence of those who reject the authority of scripture,—that is of his interpretation of Hebrew, and his exposition of the Mosaic philosophy, as “an infectious scurvy or leprosy of the soul which can scarcely be cured by any thing but eternal brimstone.”

The Paradise Lost, he calls, “that cursed farce of Milton, where he makes the Devil his hero:” and of the ancient poets and historians he says that “the mischief which these vermin did by praising their heroes in their farces or princes for conquering countries, and thereby inciting other princes to imitate them were the causes of the greatest miseries that have befallen mankind.” But Sir Isaac Newton was the great object of his hatred. “Nothing but villainy,” he said, “was to be expected from men who had made a human scheme, and would construe every text concerning it, so as to serve their purpose; he could only treat them as the most treacherous men alive. I hope,” he says, “I have power to forgive any crimes which are committed only against myself; I am not required, nor have I any power to forgive treason against the king, much less to forgive any crimes whereby any attempt to dispossess Jehovah Aleim. Nay, if I know of them and do not reveal them, and do not my endeavour to disappoint them in either, I am accessary. I shall put these things where I can upon the most compassionate side; the most favourable wish I can make for them is, that they may prove their ignorance so fully, that it may abate their crimes; but if their followers will shew that he or his accomplices knew anything, I must be forced to make Devils of them. There are many other accidents besides design or malice, which make men atheists,—studying or arguing to maintain a system, forged by a man who does not understand it, and in which there must be some things false, makes a man a villain whether he will or no.

“He, (Newton) first framed a philosophy, which is two thirds of the business of the real scriptures, and struck off the rest. And when he found his philosophy was built upon, and to be supported by emptiness, he was forced to patch up a God to constitute space. His equipage appears to have been the translation of the apostate Jews, and some blind histories of the modern heathenDeus, and an empty head to make hisDeus;Kepler's banter of his powers, and some tacit acknowledgements as he only supposed, of the ignorantest heathens; an air-pump to make, and a pendulum or swing to prove a vacuum; a loadstone, and a bit of amber, or jet, to prove his philosophy; a telescope, a quadrant, and a pair of compasses to make infinite worlds, circles, crooked lines, &c.; a glass bubble, prisms and lenses, and a board with a hole in it, to let light into a dark room to form his history of light and colours; and he seems to have spent his time, not only when young, as some boys do, but when he should have set things right, in blowing his phlegm through a straw, raising bubbles, and admiring how the light would glare on the sides of them.”

No mention of Hutchinson is made in Dr. Brewster's Life of Newton, his system was probably thought too visionary to deserve notice, and the author unworthy of it because he had been the most violent and foul-mouthed of all Sir Isaac's opponents. The Mathematical Principles of Natural philosophy, he called a cobweb of circles and lines to catch flies. “Mathematics,” he said, “are applicable to anydata, real or imaginary, true or false, more pestilent and destructive positions had been fathered upon that science than upon all others put together, and mathematicians had been put to death, both by Heathens and Christians for attributing much less to the heavenly bodies than Newton had done.” He compared his own course of observations with Newton's. His had been in the dark bowels of the earth, with the inspired light of scripture in his hand,—there he had learnt his Hebrew, and there he had studied the causes and traced the effects of the Deluge. “The opportunities,” he said, “were infinitely beyond what any man can have by living in a box, peeping out at a window, or letting the light in at a hole: or in separating and extracting the spirit from light, which can scarce happen in nature, or from refracting the light, which only happens upon the rainbow, bubbles, &c., or by making experiments with the loadstone, talc or amber, which differ in texture from most other bodies, and are only found in masses of small size; or by arranging a pendulum, which perhaps has not a parallel case in nature: or by the effects produced by spirit or light upon mixing small parcels of extracted fluids or substances, scarce one of which ever happened, or will happen in nature: or by taking cases which others have put, or putting cases which never had, nor ever will have any place in nature: or by forming figures or lines of crooked directions of motions or things, which most of them have no place, so the lines no use in nature, other than to serve hypotheses of imaginary Powers, or courses, which always have been useless, when any other Powers, though false, have been assigned and received; and must all finally be useless, when the true Powers are shewn.”

Such passages show that Hutchinson was either grossly incapable of appreciating Newton's discoveries, or that he wilfully and maliciously depreciated them. His own attainments might render the first of these conclusions improbable, and the second would seem still more so upon considering the upright tenour of his life. But the truth seems to be, that having constructed a system with great labour, and no little ability, upon the assumption that the principles of natural philosophy as well as of our faith, are contained in the scriptures, and that the true interpretation of scripture depended upon the right understanding of the Hebrew primitives, which knowledge the apostate Jews had lost, and he had recovered, his belief in this system had all the intolerance of fanaticism or supposed infallibility; and those who strongly contravened it, deserved in his opinion the punishments appointed in the Mosaic law for idolatry and blasphemy. Newton and Clarke were in this predicament. Both, in his judgement, attributed so much to secondary causes,—those Powers which had been the first objects of idolatry, that he considered their Deity to be nothing more than the Jupiter of the philosophizing heathens; and he suspects that their esoteric doctrine resolved itself into Pantheism. Toland indeed had told him that there was a scheme in progress for leading men through Pantheism and Atheism, and made him acquainted with all their designs, divine or diabolical, and political or anarchical! and all the villanies and forgeries they had committed to accomplish them. First they sought to make men believe in a God who could not punish, and then—that there was no God, and Toland was engaged, for pay, in this scheme of propagandism, “because he had some learning, and more loose humour than any of them.” The Pantheisticon was written with this view. Toland was only in part the author, other hands assisted, and Hutchinson says, he knew “there was a physician, and a patient of his a divine, who was very serviceable in their respective stations in prescribing proper doses, even to the very last.” But they “carried the matter too far,” “they discovered a secret which the world had not taken notice of, and which it was highly necessary the world should know.” For “though it be true to a proverb, that a man should not be hanged for being a fool, they shewed the principles of these men so plainly, which were to have no superior, to conform to any religion, laws, oaths, &c., but be bound by none, and the consequences of propagating them, that they thereby shewed the wisdom of the heathen people, who because they could not live safely, stoned such men; and the justice of the heathen Emperors and Kings, who put such to death, because they could have no security from them, and if their doubts, or notions had prevailed, all must have gone to anarchy or a commonwealth, as it always did, when and where they neglected to cut them off.”

That atheism had its propagandists then as it has now is certain, and no one who has watched the course of opinion among his contemporaries can doubt that Socinianism, or semi-belief, gravitates towards infidelity. But to believe that Newton and Clarke were engaged in the scheme which is here imputed to them, we must allow more weight to Toland's character than to theirs, and to Hutchinson's judgement.

What has here been said of Hutchinson exhibits him in his worst light,—and it must not hastily be concluded that because he breathed the fiercest spirit of intolerance, he is altogether to be disliked as a man, or despised as an author. Unless his theory, untenable as it is, had been constructed with considerable talent, and supported with no common learning,—he could never have had such men as Bishop Horne and Jones of Nayland among his disciples. Without assenting to his system, a biblical student may derive instruction from many parts of his works.

There is one remarkable circumstance in his history. When he was a mere boy a stranger came to board with his father, who resided at Spennythorn in the North-Riding of Yorkshire, upon an estate of forty pounds a year. The father's intention was to educate this son for the office of steward to some great landed proprietor, and this stranger agreed to instruct him in every branch of knowledge requisite for such an employment, upon condition of being boarded free of expence, engaging at the same time to remain till he had completed the boy's education. What he had thus undertaken he performed well; “he was, perhaps,” says Hutchinson, “as great a mathematician as either of those whose books he studied, and taught me as much as I could see any use for, either upon the earth or in the heavens, without poisoning me with any false notions fathered upon the mathematics.” The curious part of this story is that it was never known who this scientific stranger was, for he carefully and effectually concealed every thing that could lead to a discovery. Hutchinson was born in 1674, and his education under this tutor was completed at the age of nineteen.

FRAGMENT RELATIVE TO THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL AT DONCASTER AND THE LIVING OF ROSSINGTON.1

1The Parish of Rossington in the union and soke of Doncaster was for many generations the seat of the Fossard and Mauley families. In the reign of Henry VII., it was granted by that monarch to the corporation of Doncaster.

The following extract is from Mr. John Wainwright's History and Antiquities of Doncaster and Conisbro'.

“Connected with the history of this village, is a singular and curious specimen of Egyptian manners, as practised by the itinerant gypsies of the British Empire. In a letter, which we had the pleasure of receiving from the Rev. James Stoven, D.D. the worthy and learned rector of this place, it is remarked, that about one hundred and twenty years ago, the gypsies commenced here a curious custom, which they practised once in almost every year, occasioned by the interment, in the churchyard of this place, (of) one of their principal leaders, Mr. Charles Bosville, on the 30th of June, 1708 or 9. Having, from a boy, been much acquainted with this village, I have often heard of their (the gypsies) abode here, and with them Mr. James Bosville, their king, under whose authority they conducted themselves with great propriety and decorum, never committing the least theft or offence. They generally slept in their farmers' barns, who, at those periods, considered their property to be more safely protected than in their absence. Mr. Charles Bosville (but how related to the king does not appear,) was much beloved in this neighbourhood, having a knowledge of medicine, was very attentive to the sick, well bred in manners, and comely in person. After his death, the gypsies, for many years, came to visit his tomb, and poured upon it hot ale; but by degrees they deserted the place,—(These circumstances must yet hang on their remembrance; as, only a year ago, 1821, an ill drest set of them encamped in our lanes, calling themselves Boswell's.)—These words in the parentheses came within my own knowledge.”

It is added in a note—“Boswell's Gang, is an appellation, very generally applied to a collection of beggars, or other idle itinerants, which we often see encamped in groups in the lanes and ditches of this part of England.”

In quoting this, I by no means assent to the statement that Gypsies are Egyptians.—They are of Hindostanee origin.

The Grammar school was next door to Peter Hopkins's, being kept in one of the lower apartments of the Town Hall. It was a free school for the sons of freemen, the Corporation allowing a salary of £50.per annumto the schoolmaster, who according to the endowment must be a clergyman. That office was held by Mr. Crochley, who had been bred at Westminster, and was elected from thence to Christ Church, Oxford in 1742. He came to Doncaster with a promise from the Corporation that the living of Rossington, which is in their gift and is a valuable benefice, should be given him provided he had fifty scholars when it became vacant. He never could raise their numbers higher than forty-five; the Corporation adhered to the letter of their agreement; the disappointment preyed on him, and he died a distressed and broken-hearted man.

Yet it was not Crochley's fault that the school had not been more flourishing. He was as competent to the office as a man of good natural parts could be rendered by the most compleat course of classical education. But in those days few tradesmen ever thought of bestowing upon their sons any further education than was sufficient to qualify them for trade; and the boys who were desirous to be placed there, must have been endued with no ordinary love of learning, for a grammar school is still any thing rather than aLudus Literarius.

Two or three years before the Doctor's marriage a widow lady came to settle at Doncaster, chiefly for the sake of placing her sons at the Grammar School there, which though not in high repute was at least respectably conducted. It was within five minutes walk of her own door, and thus the boys had the greatest advantage that school-boys can possibly enjoy, that of living at home, whereby they were saved from all the misery and from most of the evil with which boarding-schools, almost without an exception, abounded in those days, and from which it may be doubted whether there are any yet that are altogether free. Her name was Horseman, she was left with six children, and just with such means as enabled her by excellent management to make what is called a respectable appearance, the boys being well educated at the cheapest rate, and she herself educating two daughters who were fortunately the eldest children. Happy girls! they were taught what no Governess could teach them, to be useful as soon as they were capable of being so; to make their brother's shirts and mend their stockings; to make and mend for themselves, to cipher so as to keep accounts; to assist in household occupations, to pickle and preserve, to make pastry, to work chair-bottoms, to write a fair hand, and to read Italian. This may seem incongruous with so practical a system of domestic education. But Mrs. Horseman was born in Italy, and had passed great part of her youth there.

The father, Mr. Duckinton, was a man of some fortune, whose delight was in travelling, and who preferred Italy to all other countries. Being a whimsical person he had a fancy for naming each of his children, after the place where it happened to be born. One daughter therefore was baptized by the fair name of Florence, Mrs. Horseman, was christened Venetia, like the wife of Sir Kenelm Digby, whose husband was more careful of her complexion than of her character. Fortunate it was that he had no daughter born at Genoa or at Nantes, for if he had, the one must have concealed her true baptismal name under the alias of Jenny; and the other have subscribed herself Nancy, that she might not be reproached with the brandy cask. The youngest of his children was a son, and if he had been born in the French capital would hardly have escaped the ignominious name of Paris, but as Mr. Duckinton had long wished for a son, and the mother knowing her husband's wishes had prayed for one, the boy escaped with no worse name than Deodatus.

FRAGMENT OF INTERCHAPTER.

Kissing has proverbially been said to go by favour. So it is but too certain, that Preferment does in Army and Navy, Church and State; and so does Criticism.

That Kissing should do so is but fair and just; and it is moreover in the nature of things.

That Promotion should do so is also in the nature of things—as they are. And this also is fair where no injustice is committed. When other pretensions are equal, favour is the feather which ought to be put into the scale. In cases of equal fitness, no wrong is done to the one party, if the other is preferred for considerations of personal friendship, old obligations, or family connection; the injustice and the wrong would be if these were overlooked.

To what extent may favour be reasonably allowed in criticism?

If it were extended no farther than can be really useful to the person whom there is an intention of serving, its limits would be short indeed. For in that case it would never proceed farther than truth and discretion went with it. Far more injury is done to a book and to an author by injudicious or extravagant praise, than by intemperate or malevolent censure.

Some persons have merrily surmised that Job was a reviewer because he exclaimed “Oh that mine enemy had written a book!” Others on the contrary have inferred that reviewing was not known in his days, because he wished that his own words had been printed and published.

[The timbers were laid for a Chapter on wigs, and many notes and references were collected.—This Fragment is all that remains.]

Bernardin St. Pierre, who with all his fancies and oddities, has been not undeservedly a popular writer in other countries as well as in his own, advances in the most extravagant of his books, (theHarmonies de la Nature,) the magnificent hypothesis that men invented great wigs because great wigs aresemblables aux criniers des lions, like lion's manes. But as wigs are rather designed to make men look grave than terrible, he might with more probability have surmised that they were intended to imitate the appearance of the Bird of Wisdom.

The Doctor wore a wig: and looked neither like a Lion, nor like an Owl in it. Yet when he first put it on, and went to the looking-glass, he could not help thinking that he did not look like a Dove.

But then he looked like a Doctor, which was as it became him to look. He wore it professionally.

It was not such a wig as Dr. Parr's, which was of all contemporary wigsfacile princeps. Nor was it after the fashion of that which may be seen in “immortal buckle,” upon Sir Cloudesley Shovel's monument in Westminster Abbey——&c.

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