THE AUTHOR QUESTIONS THE PROPRIETY OF PERSONIFYING CIRCUMSTANCE, DENIES THE UNITY AND INDIVISIBILITY OF THE PUBLIC, AND MAY EVEN BE SUSPECTED OF DOUBTING ITS OMNISCIENCE AND ITS INFALLIBILITY.
DONCASTRIANA. POTTERIC CARR. SOMETHING CONCERNING THE MEANS OF EMPLOYING THE POOR, AND BETTERING THEIR CONDITION.
ANECDOTES OF PETER HEYLYN AND LIGHTFOOT, EXEMPLIFYING THAT GREAT KNOWLEDGE IS NOT ALWAYS APPLICABLE TO LITTLE THINGS; AND THAT AS CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME, SO IT MAY WITH EQUAL TRUTH SOMETIMES BE SAID THAT KNOWLEDGE ENDS THERE.
THE READER IS LED TO INFER THAT A TRAVELLER WHO STOPS UPON THE WAY TO SKETCH, BOTANIZE, ENTOMOLOGIZE OR MINERALOGIZE, TRAVELS WITH MORE PLEASURE AND PROFIT TO HIMSELF THAN IF HE WERE IN THE MAIL COACH.
Non servio materiæ sed indulgeo; quæ quo ducit sequendum est, non quo invitat.
ETYMOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES CONCERNING THE REMAINS OF VARIOUS TRIBES OR FAMILIES MENTIONED IN SCRIPTURAL HISTORY.
A CHAPTER FOR THE INFORMATION OF THOSE WHO MAY VISIT DONCASTER, AND ESPECIALLY OF THOSE WHO FREQUENT THE RACES THERE.
REMARKS ON THE ART OF VERBOSITY. A RULE OF COCCEIUS, AND ITS APPLICATION TO THE LANGUAGE AND PRACTICE OF THE LAW.
If they which employ their labour and travail about the public administration of justice, follow it only as a trade, with unquenchable and unconscionable thirst of gain, being not in heart persuaded that justice is God's own work, and themselves his agents in this business,—the sentence, of right, God's own verdict, and themselves his priests to deliver it; formalities of justice do but serve to smother right; and that which was necessarily ordained for the common good, is through shameful abuse made the cause of common misery.
WHEREIN THE AUTHOR MAKES KNOWN HIS GOOD INTENTIONS TO ALL READERS, AND OFFERS GOOD ADVICE TO SOME OF THEM.
I can write, and talk too, as soft as other men, with submission to better judgements,—and I leave it to you Gentlemen. I am but one, and I always distrust myself. I only hint my thoughts: You'll please to consider whether you will not think that it may seem to deserve your consideration.—This is a taking way of speaking. But much good may do them that use it!
HISTORICAL CIRCUMSTANCES CONNECTED WITH DONCASTER. THOMAS, EARL OF LANCASTER. EDWARD IV. ASKE'S INSURRECTION. ILLUSTRIOUS VISITORS. JAMES I. BARNABEE. CHARLES I. CHURCH LIBRARY.
They unto whom we shall appear tedious, are in no wise injured by us, because it is in their own hands to spare that labour which they are not willing to endure.
CONCERNING THE WORTHIES, OR GOOD MEN, WHO WERE NATIVES OF DONCASTER OR OTHERWISE CONNECTED WITH THAT TOWN.
CONTINGENT CAUSES. PERSONAL CONSIDERATIONS INDUCED BY REFLECTING ON THEM. THE AUTHOR TREMBLES FOR THE PAST.
DANIEL DOVE'S ARRIVAL AT DONCASTER. THE ORGAN IN ST. GEORGE'S CHURCH. THE PULPIT. MRS. NEALE'S BENEFACTION.
A FATHER'S MISGIVINGS CONCERNING HIS SON'S DESTINATION. PETER HOPKINS'S GENEROSITY. DANIEL IS SENT ABROAD TO GRADUATE IN MEDICINE.
CONCERNING THE INTEREST WHICH DANIEL THE ELDER TOOK IN THE DUTCH WAR, AND MORE ESPECIALLY IN THE SIEGE AND PROVIDENTIAL DELIVERY OF LEYDEN.
VOYAGE TO ROTTERDAM AND LEYDEN. THE AUTHOR CANNOT TARRY TO DESCRIBE THAT CITY. WHAT HAPPENED THERE TO DANIEL DOVE.
He took great content, exceeding delight in that his voyage. As who doth not that shall attempt the like?—For peregrination charms our senses with such unspeakable and sweet variety, that some count him unhappy that never travelled, a kind of prisoner, and pity his case that from his cradle to his old age he beholds the same still; still, still, the same, the same!
SHEWING HOW THE YOUNG STUDENT FELL IN LOVE—AND HOW HE MADE THE BEST USE OF HIS MISFORTUNE.
OF THE VARIOUS WAYS OF GETTING IN LOVE. A CHAPTER CONTAINING SOME USEFUL OBSERVATIONS, AND SOME BEAUTIFUL POETRY.
Let cavillers know, that as the Lord John answered the Queen in that Italian Guazzo, an old, a grave discreet man is fittest to discourse of love-matters; because he hath likely more experience, observed more, hath a more staid judgement, can better discern, resolve, discuss, advise, give better cautions and more solid precepts, better inform his auditors in such a subject, and by reason of his riper years, sooner divert.
A TRUCE WITH MELANCHOLY. GENTLEMEN SUCH AS THEY WERE IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1747. A HINT TO YOUNG LADIES CONCERNING THEIR GREAT GRANDMOTHERS.
AN ATTEMPT IS MADE TO REMOVE THE UNPLEASANT IMPRESSION PRODUCED UPON THE LADIES BY THE DOCTOR'S TYE-WIG AND HIS SUIT OF SNUFF-COLOURED DITTOS.
Chacun a son stile; le mien, comme vouz voyez, n'est pas laconique.
DEFENCE OF PORTRAIT-PAINTING. A SYSTEM OF MORAL COSMETICS RECOMMENDED TO THE LADIES. GWILLIM. SIR T. LAWRENCE. GEORGE WITHER. APPLICATION TO THE SUBJECT OF THIS WORK.
SOCIETY OF A COUNTRY TOWN. SUCH A TOWN A MORE FAVOURABLE HABITAT FOR SUCH A PERSON AS DR. DOVE THAN LONDON WOULD HAVE BEEN.
MR. COPLEY OF NETHERHALL. SOCIETY AT HIS HOUSE. DRUMMOND. BURGH. GRAY. MASON. MILLER THE ORGANIST AND HISTORIAN OF DONCASTER. HERSCHEL.
Il faut mettre les fables en presse pour en tirer quelque suc de verité.
ECCENTRIC PERSONS, WHY APPARENTLY MORE COMMON IN ENGLAND THAN IN OTHER COUNTRIES. HARRY BINGLEY.
Some proverb maker, I forget who, says, “God hath given to some men wisdom and understanding, and to others the art of playing on the fiddle.”
SHEWING THAT ANY HONEST OCCUPATION IS BETTER THAN NONE, BUT THAT OCCUPATIONS WHICH ARE DEEMED HONOURABLE ARE NOT ALWAYS HONEST.
J'ai peine à concevoir pourquoi le plûpart des hommes ont une si forte envie d'être heureux, et une si grande incapacité pour le devenir.
TRANSITION IN OUR NARRATIVE PREPARATORY TO A CHANGE IN THE DOCTOR'S LIFE. A SAD STORY SUPPRESSED. THE AUTHOR PROTESTS AGAINST PLAYING WITH THE FEELINGS OF HIS READERS. ALL ARE NOT MERRY THAT SEEM MIRTHFUL. THE SCAFFOLD A STAGE. DON RODRIGO CALDERON. THISTLEWOOD. THE WORLD A MASQUERADE, BUT THE DOCTOR ALWAYS IN HIS OWN CHARACTER.
IN WHICH THE FOURTH OF THE QUESTIONS PROPOSED IN CHAPTER II. P. I. IS BEGUN TO BE ANSWERED; SOME OBSERVATIONS UPON ANCESTRY ARE INTRODUCED, AND THE READER IS INFORMED WHY THE AUTHOR DOES NOT WEAR A CAP AND BELLS.
RASH MARRIAGES. AN EARLY WIDOWHOOD. AFFLICTION RENDERED A BLESSING TO THE SUFFERER; AND TWO ORPHANS LEFT, THOUGH NOT DESTITUTE, YET FRIENDLESS.
A LADY DESCRIBED WHOSE SINGLE LIFE WAS NO BLESSEDNESS EITHER TO HERSELF OR OTHERS. A VERACIOUS EPITAPH AND AN APPROPRIATE MONUMENT.
A SCENE WHICH WILL PUT SOME OF THOSE READERS WHO HAVE BEEN MOST IMPATIENT WITH THE AUTHOR, IN THE BEST HUMOUR WITH HIM.
There is no argument of more antiquity and elegancy than is the matter of Love; for it seems to be as old as the world, and to bear date from the first time that man and woman was: therefore in this, as in the finest metal, the freshest wits have in all ages shewn their best workmanship.
A STORY CONCERNING CUPID WHICH NOT ONE READER IN TEN THOUSAND HAS EVER HEARD BEFORE; A DEFENCE OF LOVE WHICH WILL BE VERY SATISFACTORY TO THE LADIES.
How would it have astonished Peter Hopkins if some one gifted with the faculty of second sight had foretold to him that, at the sale of Pews in a new Church at Doncaster, eighteen of those Pews should produce upwards of sixteen hundred pounds, and that one of them should be bought at the price of £138,—a sum for which in his days lands enough might have been purchased to have qualified three men as Yorkshire Freeholders! How would it have surprized him to have been told that Doncaster races would become the greatest meeting in the North of England; that Princes would attend them, and more money would annually be won and lost there than might in old times have sufficed for a King's ransom! But the Doncaster of George the fourth's reign is not more like the Doncaster of George the second's, than George the fourth himself, in manners, habit, character and person is like his royal Great Grandfather;—not more like than to the Doncaster of the United States, if such a place there be there; or to the Doncaster that may be in New South Wales, Van Diemen's or Swan-river-land. It was a place of considerable importance when young Daniel first became an inhabitant of it; but it was very far from having attained all the advantages arising from its well-endowed corporation, its race-ground, and its position on the great north road.
It is beyond a doubt that Doncaster may be identified with the Danum of Antoninus and the Notitia, the Caer Daun of Nennius, and the Dona-cester of the Saxons: whether it were the Campo-Donum of Bede,—a royal residence of the Northumbrian Kings, where Paulinus the Romish Apostle of Northumbria built a Church, which with the town itself was burnt by the Welsh King Cadwallon, and his Saxon Ally the Pagan Penda, after a battle in which Edwin fell,—is not so certain; antiquaries differ upon this point, but they who maintain the affirmative appear to have the strongest case. In the charter granted to it by Richard Cœur de Lion the town is called Danecastre.
The name indicates that it was a Roman Station on the river Dan, Don or Dun, “so called,” says Camden, “because 'tis carried in a low deep channel, for that is the signification of the British word Dan.” I thank Dr. Prichard for telling me what it was not possible for Camden to know,—that Don in the language of the Ossetes, a Caucassian tribe, means water; and that in a country so remote as New Guinea, Dan has the same meaning. Our Doctor loved the river for its name's sake; and the better because the river Dove falls into it. Don however, though not without some sacrifice of feeling, he was content to call it, in conformity to the established usage. A more satisfactory reason to him would have been that of preserving the identity of name with the Don of Aberdeenshire and of the Cossacks, and the relationship in etymology with the Donau, but that the original pronunciation which was, as he deemed, perverted in that latter name was found in Danube; and that by calling his own river Don it ceased to be homonymous with that Dan which adds its waters, and its name to the Jor.
But the Yorkshire Don might be liked also for its own sake. Hear how its course is described in old prose and older verse! “The River Don or Dun,” says Dodsworth in his Yorkshire collections, “riseth in the upper part of Pennystone parish near Lady's Cross (which may be called our Appennines, because the rain water that falleth sheddeth from sea to sea;) cometh to Birchworth, so to Pennystone, thence to Boleterstone by Medop, leaveth Wharncliffe Chase (stored with roebucks, which are decayed since the great frost) on the north (belonging to Sir Francis Wortley, where he hath great iron works. The said Wharncliffe affordeth two hundred dozen of coal for ever to his said works. In this Chase he had red and fallow deer and roes) and leaveth Bethuns, a Chase and Tower of the Earl of Salop, on the south side. By Wortley to Waddsley, where in times past Everingham of Stainber had a park, now disparked. Thence to Sheffield, and washeth the castle wall; keepeth its course to Attercliffe, where is an iron forge of the Earl of Salop; from thence to Winkebank, Kymberworth and Eccles, where it entertaineth the Rother; cometh presently to Rotherham, thence to Aldwark Hall, the Fitzwilliams' ancient possession; then to Thriberg Park, the seat of Reresbyes Knights; then to Mexborough, where hath been a Castle; then to Conisborough Park and Castle of the Earls of Warrens, where there is a place called Horsas Tomb. From thence to Sprotebrough, the ancient seat of the famous family of Fitzwilliam who have flourished since the conquest. Thence by Newton to Donecastre, Wheatley and Kirk Sandal to Barnby-Dunn; by Bramwith and Stainforth to Fishlake; thence to Turnbrig, a port town serving indifferently for all the west parts, where he pays his tribute to the Ayre.”
Hear Michael Drayton next, who being as determined a personificator as Darwin himself, makes “the wide West Riding” thus address her favorite River Don;
Seldon's rich commentary does not extend to that part of the Polyolbion in which these lines occur, but a comment upon the supposed rising and falling of the Marshland with the waters, is supplied by Camden. “The Don,” he says after it has passed Hatfield Chase “divides itself, one stream running towards the river Idel which comes out of Nottinghamshire, the other towards the river Aire; in both which they continue till they meet again, and fall into the Æstuary of Humber. Within the island, or that piece of ground encompassed by the branches of these two rivers are Dikemarsh, and Marshland, fenny tracts, or rather river-islands, about fifteen miles round, which produce a very green rank grass, and are as it were set round with little villages. Some of the inhabitants imagine the whole island floats upon the water; and that sometimes when the waters are encreased 'tis raised higher; just like what Pomponius Mela tells us of the Isle of Autrum in Gaul.” Upon this passage Bishop Gibson remarks, “as to what our author observes of the ground being heaved up, Dr. Johnston affirms he has spoke with several old men who told him, that the turf-moor between Thorne and Gowle was so much higher before the draining, especially in winter time, than it is now, that before they could see little of the church steeple, whereas now they can see the church-yard wall.”
The poet might linger willingly with Ebenezer Elliott amid
but we must proceed with good matter of fact prose.
The river has been made navigable to Tinsley, within three miles of Sheffield, and by this means Sheffield, Rotherham and Doncaster carry on a constant intercourse with Hull. A cut was made for draining that part of Hatfield Chase called the Levels, by an adventurous Hollander, Cornelius Vermuyden by name, in the beginning of Charles the first's reign. Some two hundred families of French and Walloon refugees were induced to colonize there at that time. They were forcibly interrupted in their peaceful and useful undertaking by the ignorant people of the country, who were instigated and even led on by certain of the neighbouring gentry, as ignorant as themselves; but the Government was then strong enough to protect them; they brought about twenty-four thousand acres into cultivation, and many of their descendants are still settled upon the ground which was thus reclaimed. Into this new cut, which is at this day called the Dutch river, the Don was turned, its former course having been through Eastoft; but the navigation which has since proved so beneficial to the country, and toward which this was the first great measure, produced at first a plentiful crop of lawsuits, and one of the many pamphlets which this litigation called forth, bears as an alias in its title, “the Devil upon Don.”
Many vestiges of former cultivation were discovered when this cut was made,—such (according to Gibson's information) as gates, ladders, hammers and shoes. The land was observed in some places to lie in ridges and furrows, as if it had been ploughed; and oaks and fir trees were frequently dug up, some of which were found lying along, with their roots still fastened; others as if cut, or burnt, and severed from the ground. Roots were long to be seen in the great cut, some very large and standing upright, others with an inclination toward the east.
About the year 1665 the body of a man was found in a turf pit, some four yards deep, lying with his head toward the north. The hair and nails were not decayed, and the skin was like tanned leather; but it had lain so long there that the bones had become spongy.
Reader, if thou carest little or nothing for the Yorkshire river Don and for the town of Doncaster, and for the circumstances connected with it, I am sorry for thee. My venerable friend the Doctor was of a different disposition. He was one who loved, like Southey
He could not only find
but endeavoured to find all he could in them, and for that reason delighted to enquire into the history of places and of things, and to understand their past as well as their present state. The revolutions of a mansion house within his circuit were as interesting to him as those of the Mogul Empire; and he had as much satisfaction in being acquainted with the windings of a brook from its springs to the place where it fell into the Don, as he could have felt in knowing that the Sources of the Nile had been explored, or the course and termination of the Niger.
1 SHAKESPEAR.
Hear, Reader, what a journalist says upon rivers in the newest and most approved style of critical and periodical eloquence! He says, and he regarded himself no doubt with no small complacency while so saying,
“An acquaintance with” Rivers “well deserves to be erected into a distinct science. We hail Potamology with a cordial greeting, and welcome it to our studies, parlours, schools, reading-rooms, lecture-rooms, mechanics' institutes and universities. There is no end to the interest which Rivers excite. They may be considered physically, geographically, historically, politically, commercially, mathematically, poetically, pictorially, morally, and even religiously—In the world's anatomy they are its veins, as the primitive mountains, those mighty structures of granite, are its bones; they minister to the fertility of the earth, the purity of the air, and the health of mankind. They mark out nature's kingdoms and provinces, and are the physical dividers and subdividers of continents. They welcome the bold discoverer into the heart of the country, to whose coast the sea has borne his adventurous bark. The richest freights have floated on their bosoms, and the bloodiest battles have been fought upon their banks. They move the wheels of cotton mills by their mechanical power, and madden the souls of poets and painters by their picturesque splendor. They make scenery and are scenery, and land yields no landscape without water. They are the best vehicle for the transit of the goods of the merchant, and for the illustration of the maxims of the moralist. The figure is so familiar, that we scarcely detect a metaphor when the stream of life and the course of time flow on into the ocean of Eternity.”
Hear, hear, oh hear!
Yet the person who wrote this was neither deficient in feeling, nor in power; it is the epidemic vice prevailing in an age of journals that has infected him. They who frame their style ad captandum fall into this vein, and as immediate effect is their object they are wise in their generation. The public to which they address themselves are attracted by it, as flies swarm about treacle.
2 GIUSTO DE' CONTE.
We are advanced from the Age of Reason to the Age of Intellect, and this is the current eloquence of that age!—let us get into an atmosphere of common sense.
Topographical pursuits, my Doctor used to say, tend to preserve and promote the civilization of which they are a consequence and a proof. They have always prospered in prosperous countries, and flourished most in flourishing times when there have been persons enough of opulence to encourage such studies, and of leisure to engage in them. Italy and the Low Countries therefore took the lead in this branch of literature; the Spaniards and Portugueze cultivated it in their better days; and beginning among ourselves with Henry 8th, it has been continued with encreasing zeal down to the present time.
Whatever strengthens our local attachments is favorable both to individual and national character. Our home,—our birth place,—our native land,—think for a while what the virtues are which arise out of the feelings connected with these words; and if thou hast any intellectual eyes thou wilt then perceive the connection between topography and patriotism.
Shew me a man who cares no more for one place than another, and I will shew you in that same person one who loves nothing but himself. Beware of those who are homeless by choice! You have no hold on a human being whose affections are without a tap-root. The laws recognize this truth in the privileges which they confer upon freeholders; and public opinion acknowledges it also, in the confidence which it reposes upon those who have what is called a stake in the country. Vagabond and rogue are convertible terms; and with how much propriety any one may understand who knows what are the habits of the wandering classes, such as gypsies, tinkers and potters.
The feeling of local attachment was possessed by Daniel Dove in the highest degree. Spurzheim and the crazyologists would have found out a bump on his head for its local habitation;—letting that quackery pass, it is enough for me to know that he derived this feeling from his birth as a mountaineer, and that he had also a right to it by inheritance, as one whose ancestors had from time immemorial dwelt upon the same estate. Smile not contemptuously at that word, ye, whose domains extend over more square miles than there were square roods upon his patrimony! To have held that little patrimony unimpaired, as well as unenlarged, through so many generations implies more contentment, more happiness, and a more uniform course of steadiness and good conduct, than could be found in the proudest of your genealogies!
The most sacred spot upon earth to him was his father's hearth-stead. Rhine, Rhone, Danube, Thames or Tyber, the mighty Ganges or the mightier Maranon, even Jordan itself, affected his imagination less than the Greta, or Wease as he was wont to call it, of his native fields; whose sounds in his boyhood were the first which he heard at morning and the last at night, and during so many peaceful and happy years made as it were an accompaniment to his solitary musings, as he walked between his father's house and his schoolmaster's, to and fro.
Next to that wild river Wease whose visible course was as delightful to the eye and ear, as its subterranean one was to the imagination, he loved the Don. He was not one of those refined persons who like to lessen their admiration of one object by comparing it with another. It entered as little into his mind to depreciate the Don because it was not a mountain stream, as it did into Corporal Trim's or Uncle Toby's to think the worse of Bohemia because it has no sea coast. What if it had no falls, no rapids or resting-places, no basins whose pellucid water might tempt Diana and the Oreades to bathe in it; instead of these the Don had beauties of its own, and utilities which give to such beauties when combined with them an additional charm. There was not a more pleasing object in the landscape to his eyes than the broad sail of a barge slowly moving between the trees, and bearing into the interior of England the produce of the Baltic, and of the East and West.
The place in the world which he loved best was Ingleton, because in that little peaceful village, as in his childhood it was, he had once known every body and every body had known him; and all his recollections of it were pleasurable, till time cast over them a softening but a pensive hue. But next to Ingleton he loved Doncaster.
And wherefore did he thus like Doncaster? For a better reason than the epigrammatist could give for not liking Dr. Fell, though perhaps many persons have no better than that epigrammatist had in this case, for most of their likings and dislikings. He liked it because he must have been a very unreasonable man if he had not been thankful that his lot had fallen there—because he was useful and respected there, contented, prosperous, happy; finally because it is a very likeable place, being one of the most comfortable towns in England: for it is clean, spacious, in a salubrious situation, well-built, well-governed, has no manufactures, few poor, a greater proportion of inhabitants who are not engaged in any trade or calling, than perhaps any other town in the kingdom, and moreover it sends no members to parliament.
THE AUTHOR QUESTIONS THE PROPRIETY OF PERSONIFYING CIRCUMSTANCE, DENIES THE UNITY AND INDIVISIBILITY OF THE PUBLIC, AND MAY EVEN BE SUSPECTED OF DOUBTING ITS OMNISCIENCE AND ITS INFALLIBILITY.
“What a kind of Being is circumstance!” says Horace Walpole in his atrocious tragedy of the Mysterious Mother.—A very odd kind of Being indeed. In the course of my reading I remember but three Beings equally remarkable,—as personified in prose and verse. Social-Tie was one; Catastrophe another; and Inoculation, heavenly Maid! the third.
But of all ideal Beings the most extraordinary is that which we call the Public. The Public and Transubstantiation I hold to be the two greatest mysteries in, or out of nature. And there are certain points of resemblance between them.—For as the Priest creates the one mystery, so the author, or other appellant to the said Public, creates the other, and both bow down in worship, real or simulated, before the Idol of their own creation. And as every fragment of the wafer break it into as many as you may, contains in itself the whole entire mystery of Transubstantiation, just in the same manner every fractional part of the Public assumes to itself the powers, privileges and prerogatives of the whole, as virtually, potentially and indefeasably its own. Nay, every individual who deems himself a constituent member of the said Public arrogates them also, and when he professes to be acting pro bono publico, the words mean with him all the good he can possibly get for himself.
The old and famous illustration of Hermes may be in part applied to the Public; it is a circle of which the centre is every where: in part I say, for its circumference is defined. It is bounded by language, and has many intercircles. It is indeed a confused multiplicity of circles intersecting each other, perpetually in motion and in change. Every man is the centre of some circle, and yet involved in others; he who is not sometimes made giddy by their movements, has a strong head; and he who is not sometimes thrown off his balance by them, stands well upon his legs.
Again, the Public is like a nest of patent coffins packed for exportation, one within another. There are Publics of all sizes, from the genus generalissimum, the great general universal Public, whom London is not large enough to hold, to the species specialissima, the little Thinking Public, which may find room in a nutshell.
There is the Fashionable Public, and the Religious Public, and the Play-going Public, and the Sporting Public, and the Commercial Public, and the Literary Public, and the Reading Public, and Heaven knows how many Publics more. They call themselves Worlds sometimes,—as if a certain number of worldlings made a World!
He who pays his homage to any or all of these Publics, is a Publican and a Sinner.
“Nunquam valui populo placere; nam quæ ego scio non probat populus; quæ probat populas, ego nescio.”1
“Bene et ille, quisquis fuit, (ambigitur enim de auctore,) cum quæreretur ab illo, quo tanta diligentia artis spectaret ad paucissimos perventuræ? Satis sunt, inquit, mihi pauci; satis est unus; satis est nullus.”2
1 SENECA, 2, 79.
2 IB, ib. 17.
DONCASTRIANA. POTTERIC CARR. SOMETHING CONCERNING THE MEANS OF EMPLOYING THE POOR, AND BETTERING THEIR CONDITION.
Doncaster is built upon a peninsula, or ridge of land, about a mile across, having a gentle slope from east to west, and bounded on the west by the river; this ridge is composed of three strata; to wit,—of the alluvial soil deposited by the river in former ages, and of limestone on the north and west; and of sandstone to the south and east. To the south of this neck of land lies a tract called Potteric Carr which is much below the level of the river, and was a morass, or range of fens when our Doctor first took up his abode in Doncaster. This tract extends about four miles in length and nearly three in breadth, and the security which it afforded against an attack on that side, while the river protected the peninsula by its semicircular bend on the other, was evidently one reason why the Romans fixed upon the site of Doncaster for a station. In Brockett's Glossary of North-Country words, Carr is interpreted to mean “flat marshy land; a pool or lake;” but the etymology of the word is yet to be discovered.
These fens were drained and enclosed pursuant to an Act of Parliament which was obtained for that purpose in the year 1766. Three principal drains were then cut, fourteen feet wide, and about four miles long, into which the water was conducted from every part of the Carr, southward, to the little river Torne at Rossington Bridge, whence it flows into the Trent. Before these drainings the ground was liable to frequent inundations; and about the centre there was a decoy for wild ducks: there is still a deep water there of considerable extent, in which very large pike and eels are found. The soil, which was so boggy at first that horses were lost when attempting to drink at the drains, has been brought into good cultivation (as all such ground may be) to the great improvement of the district; for till this improvement was effected intermittent fevers and sore throats were prevalent there, and they have ceased from the time that the land was drained. The most unhealthy season now is the Spring, when cold winds from the North and North East, usually prevail during some six weeks; at other times Doncaster is considered to be a healthy place. It has been observed that when endemic diseases arrive there, they uniformly come from the south; and that the state of the weather may be foretold from a knowledge of what it has been at a given time in London, making an allowance of about three days, for the chance of winds. Here, as in all places which lie upon a great and frequented road, the transmission of diseases has been greatly facilitated by the increase of travelling.
But before we leave Potteric Carr, let us try reader, whether we cannot improve it in another way, that is in the dissenting and, so called, evangelical sense of the word, in which sense the battle of Trafalgar was improved, in a sermon by the Reverend John Evans. Gentle Reader, let you and I in like manner endeavour to improve this enclosure of the Carr.
Four thousand acres of bog whereof that Carr consisted, and upon which common sand, coal ashes, and the scrapings of a limestone road were found the best manure, produce now good crops of grain and excellent pasturage.
There are said to be in England and Wales at this time 3,984,000 acres of uncultivated but cultivable ground; 5,950,000 in Scotland; 4,900,000 in Ireland; 166,000 in the smaller British Islands. Crags, woods, and barren land are not included in this statement. Here are 15,000,000 acres, the worst of which is as good as the morass which has been reclaimed near Doncaster, and the far greater part very materially better.
I address myself now to any one of my readers who pays poor rates; but more especially to him who has any part in the disposal of those rates; and most especially to a clergyman, a magistrate, and a member of Parliament.
The money which is annually raised for poor-rates in England and Wales has for some years amounted to from five to six millions. With all this expenditure cases are continually occurring of death from starvation, either of hunger or cold, or both together; wretches are carried before the magistrates for the offence of lying in the streets or in unfinished houses, when they have not where to hide their heads; others have been found dead by the side of limekilns, or brickkilns, whither they had crept to save themselves from perishing for cold; and untold numbers die of the diseases produced by scanty and unwholesome food.
This money moreover is for the most part so applied, that they who have a rightful claim upon it, receive less than in justice, in humanity, and according to the intent of a law wisely and humanely enacted, ought to be their portion; while they who have only a legal claim upon it, that claim arising from an evil usage which has become prescriptive, receive pay where justice, policy, and considerate humanity, and these very laws themselves if rightly administered, would award restraint or punishment.
Thus it is in those parts of the United Kingdom, where a provision for the poor is directly raised by law. In Scotland the proportion of paupers is little less, and the evils attendant upon poverty are felt in an equal or nearly equal degree. In Ireland they exist to a far greater extent, and may truly be called terrible.
Is it fitting that this should be while there are fifteen millions of cultivable acres lying waste? Is it possible to conceive grosser improvidence in a nation, grosser folly, grosser ignorance of its duty and interest, or grosser neglect of both, than are manifested in the continuance and growth and increase of this enormous evil, when the means of checking it are so obvious, and that too by a process in which every step must produce direct and tangible good?
But while the Government is doing those things which it ought not to have done, and leaves undone those which it ought to do, let Parishes and Corporations do what is in their power for themselves. And bestir yourselves in this good work ye who can! The supineness of the Government is no excuse for you. It is in the exertions of individuals that all national reformation must begin. Go to work cautiously, experimentally, patiently, charitably, and in faith! I am neither so enthusiastic as to suppose, nor so rash as to assert, that a cure may thus be found for the complicated evils arising from the condition of the labouring classes. But it is one of those remedial means by which much misery may be relieved, and much of that profligacy that arises from hopeless wretchedness be prevented. It is one of those means from which present relief may be obtained, and future good expected. It is the readiest way in which useful employment can be provided for the industrious poor. And if the land so appropriated should produce nothing more than is required for the support of those employed in cultivating it, and who must otherwise be partly or wholly supported by the poor-rates, such cultivation would even then be profitable to the public. Wherever there is heath, moor or fen,—which there is in every part of the Island,—there is work for the spade; employment and subsistence for man is to be found there, and room for him to encrease and multiply for generations.
Reader, if you doubt that bog and bad land may be profitably cultivated, go and look at Potteric Carr; (the members of both Houses who attend Doncaster Races, may spare an hour for this at the next meeting). If you desire to know in what manner the poor who are now helpless may be settled upon such land, so as immediately to earn their own maintenance, and in a short time to repay the first cost of their establishment, read the account of the Pauper Colonies in Holland; for there the experiment has been tried, and we have the benefit of their experience.
As for the whole race of Political Economists, our Malthusites, Benthamites, Utilitarians or Futilitarians, they are to the Government of this Country such counsellors as the magicians were to Pharaoh; whosoever listens to them has his heart hardened.—But they are no conjurors.
The Poet Crabbe has said that there subsists an utter repugnancy between the studies of topography and poetry. He must have intended by topography when he said so, the mere definition of boundaries and specification of land-marks, such as are given in the advertisement of an estate for sale; and boys in certain parts of the country are taught to bear in mind by a remembrance in tail when the bounds of a parish are walked by the local authorities. Such topography indeed bears as little relation to poetry as a map or chart to a picture.
But if he had any wider meaning, it is evident, by the number of topographical poems, good, bad and indifferent, with which our language abounds, that Mr. Crabbe's predecessors in verse, and his contemporaries also, have differed greatly from him in opinion upon this point. The Poly-olbion, notwithstanding its common-place personifications and its inartificial transitions, which are as abrupt as those in the Metamorphoses and the Fasti, and not so graceful, is nevertheless a work as much to be valued by the students and lovers of English literature, as by the writers of local history. Drayton himself, whose great talents were deservedly esteemed by the ablest of his contemporaries in the richest age of English poetry, thought he could not be more worthily employed than in what he calls the Herculean task of this topographical poem; and in that belief he was encouraged by his friend and commentator Selden, to whose name the epithet of learned was in old times always and deservedly affixed. With how becoming a sense of its dignity and variety the Poet entered upon his subject, these lines may shew:
I would not say of this Poet, as Kirkpatrick says of him, that when he
but I may say that if instead of sending his Muse to ride over the mountains, and resting contented with her report, he had ridden or walked over them himself, his poem would better have deserved that praise for accuracy which has been bestowed upon it by critics who had themselves no knowledge which could enable them to say whether it were accurate or not. Camden was more diligent; he visited some of the remotest counties of which he wrote.
This is not said with any intention of detracting from Michael Drayton's fame: the most elaborate criticism could neither raise him above the station which he holds in English literature, nor degrade him from it. He is extolled not beyond the just measure of his deserts in his epitaph which has been variously ascribed to Ben Jonson, to Randolph, and to Quarles, but with most probability to the former, who knew and admired and loved him.
He was a poet by nature, and carefully improved his talent;—one who sedulously laboured to deserve the approbation of such as were capable of appreciating, and cared nothing for the censures which others might pass upon him. “Like me that list,” he says,
And though he is not a poet virûm volitare per ora, nor one of those whose better fortune it is to live in the hearts of their devoted admirers, yet what he deemed his greatest work will be preserved by its subject; some of his minor poems have merit enough in their execution to ensure their preservation, and no one who studies poetry as an art will think his time mis-spent in perusing the whole,—if he have any real love for the art which he is pursuing. The youth who enters upon that pursuit without a feeling of respect and gratitude for those elder poets, who by their labours have prepared the way for him, is not likely to produce any thing himself that will be held in remembrance by posterity.
ANECDOTES OF PETER HEYLYN AND LIGHTFOOT, EXEMPLIFYING THAT GREAT KNOWLEDGE IS NOT ALWAYS APPLICABLE TO LITTLE THINGS; AND THAT AS CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME, SO IT MAY WITH EQUAL TRUTH SOMETIMES BE SAID THAT KNOWLEDGE ENDS THERE.
There was a Poet who wrote a descriptive poem, and then took a journey to see the scenes which he had described. Better late than never, he thought; and thought wisely in so thinking. Drayton was not likely to have acted thus upon after consideration, if in the first conception of his subject he did not feel sufficient ardour for such an undertaking. It would have required indeed a spirit of enterprize as unusual in those days as it is ordinary now. Many a long day's ride must he have taken over rough roads, and in wild countries; and many a weary step would it have cost him, and many a poor lodging must he have put up with at night, where he would have found poor fare, if not cold comfort. So he thought it enough, in many if not most parts, to travel by the map, and believed himself to have been sufficiently “punctual and exact in giving unto every province its peculiar bounds, in laying out their several land-marks, tracing the course of most of the principal rivers, and setting forth the situation and estate of the chiefest towns.”
Peter Heylyn who speaks thus of his own exactness in a work partaking enough of the same nature as the Poly-olbion to be remembered here, though it be in prose and upon a wider subject, tells a humourous anecdote of himself, in the preface to his Cosmography. “He that shall think this work imperfect,” says he, “(though I confess it to be nothing but imperfections) for some deficiencies of this kind, may be likened to the country fellow, (in Aristophanes, if my memory fail not,) who picked a great quarrel with the map because he could not find where his own farm stood. And such a country customer I did meet with once, a servant of my elder brother, sent by him with some horses to Oxford, to bring me and a friend of mine unto his house; who having lost his way as we passed through the forest of Whichwood, and not being able to recover any beaten track, did very earnestly entreat me to lead the way, till I had brought him past the woods to the open fields. Which when I had refused to do, as I had good reason, alledging that I had never been there before, and therefore that I could not tell which way to lead him; ‘that's strange!’ said he; ‘I have heard my old master, your Father, say that you made a book of all the world; and cannot you find your way out of the wood?’”
Peter Heylyn was one who fell on evil times, and on whom, in consequence, evil tongues have fallen. But he was an able, honest, brave man who “stood to his tackling when he was tasted.” And if thou hast not read his Survey of the State of France, Reader, thou hast not read one of our liveliest books of travels in its lighter parts; and one of the wisest and most replete with information that ever was written by a young man.
His more learned contemporary Lightfoot, who steered a safer but not so straight a course, met with an adventure not unlike that of Heylyn's in the forest; but the application which in the cosmographist's case was ridiculously made by an ignorant and simple man was in this instance self-originated.
Lightfoot had promised to set forth as an accompaniment to his Harmony of the Evangelists, “A chorographical description of the land of Canaan, and those adjoining places, that we have occasion to look upon as we read the Gospels.”—“I went on in that work,” he says, “a good while, and that with much cheerfulness and content; for methought a Talmudical survey and history of the land of Canaan, (not omitting collections to be taken up out of the Scripture, and other writers) as it would be new and rare, so it might not prove unwelcome nor unprofitable to those that delighted in such a subject.”—It cost him as much pains to give the description as it would have done to travel thither; but says one of his Editors “the unhappy chance that hindered the publishing this elaborate piece of his, which he had brought to pretty good perfection, was the edition of Doctor Fuller's Pisgah Sight; great pity it was that so good a book should have done so much harm; for that book, handling the same matters and preventing his, stopped his resolution of letting his labors on that subject see the light. Though he went a way altogether different from Dr. Fuller; and so both might have shown their face together in the world; and the younger sister, if we may make comparisons, might have proved the fairer of the two.”
It is pleasant to see how liberally and equitably both Lightfoot and Fuller speak upon this matter;—“But at last,” says the former, “I understood that another workman, a far better artist than myself, had the description of the Land of Israel, not only in hand, but even in the press; and was so far got before me in that travel that he was almost at his journey's end, when I was but little more than setting out. It was grievous to me to have lost my labour, if I should now sit down; and yet I thought it wisdom not to lose more in proceeding farther, when one on the same subject, and of far more abilities in it, had got the start so far before me.
“And although I supposed, and at last was assured, even by that Author himself (my very learned and worthy friend) that we should not thrust nor hinder one another any whit at all, though we both went at once in the perambulation of that land, because he had not meddled with that Rabbinic way that I had gone; yet, when I considered what it was to glean after so clean a reaper, and how rough a Talmudical pencil would seem after so fine a pen, I resolved to sit down, and to stir no more in that matter, till time and occasion did show me more encouragement thereunto, than as yet I saw. And thus was my promise fallen to the ground, not by any carelessness or forgetfulness of mine, but by the happy prevention of another hand, by whom the work is likely to be better done. Yet was I unwilling to suffer my word utterly to come to nothing at all, though I might evade my promise by this fair excuse: but I was desirous to pay the reader something in pursuance of it, though it were not in this very same coin, nor the very same sum, that I had undertaken. Hereupon I turned my thoughts and my endeavours to a description of the Temple after the same manner, and from the same authors, that I had intended to have described the Land; and that the rather, not only that I might do some thing towards making good my promise; but also, that by a trial in a work of this nature of a lesser bulk, I might take some pattern and assay how the other, which would prove of a far larger pains and volume, would be accepted, if I should again venture upon it.”
Lightfoot was sincere in the commendation which he bestowed upon Fuller's diligence, and his felicitous way of writing. And Fuller on his part rendered justice in the same spirit to Lightfoot's well known and peculiar erudition. “Far be it from me,” he says, “that our pens should fall out, like the herdsmen of Lot and Abraham, the land not being able to bear them both, that they might dwell together. No such want of room in this subject, being of such latitude and receipt, that both we and hundreds more, busied together therein, may severally lose ourselves in a subject of such capacity. The rather, because we embrace several courses in this our description; it being my desire and delight, to stick only to the written word of God, whilst my worthy friend takes in the choicest Rabbinical and Talmudical relations, being so well seen in these studies, that it is questionable whether his skill or my ignorance be the greater therein.”
Now then—(for now and then go thus lovingly together, in familiar English—)—after these preliminaries, the learned Lightfoot, who at seven years of age, it is said could not only read fluently the biblical Hebrew, but readily converse in it, may tell his own story.
“Here by the way,” he says, “I cannot but mention, and I think I can never forget, a handsome and deserved check that mine own heart, meeting with a special occasion, did give me, upon the laying down of the other task, and the undertaking of this, for my daring to enter either upon the one or the other. That very day wherein I first set pen to paper to draw up the description of the Temple, having but immediately before laid aside my thoughts of the description of the Land, I was necessarily called out, towards the evening, to go to view a piece of ground of mine own, concerning which some litigiousness was emerging, and about to grow. The field was but a mile from my constant residence and habitation, and it had been in mine owning divers years together; and yet till that very time, had I never seen it, nor looked after it, nor so much as knew whereabout it lay. It was very unlikely I should find it out myself, being so utterly ignorant of its situation; yet because I desired to walk alone, for the enjoying of my thoughts upon that task that I had newly taken in hand, I took some direction which way to go, and would venture to find out the field myself alone. I had not gone far, but I was at a loss; and whether I went right or wrong I could not tell; and if right thither, yet I knew not how to do so farther; and if wrong I knew not which way would prove the right, and so in seeking my ground I had lost myself. Here my heart could not but take me to task; and, reflecting upon what my studies were then, and had lately been upon, it could not but call me fool; and methought it spake as true to me, as ever it had done in all my life,—but only when it called me sinner. A fool that was so studious, and had been so searching about things remote, and that so little concerned my interest,—and yet was so neglective of what was near me, both in place, and in my particular concernment! And a fool again, who went about to describe to others, places and buildings that lay so many hundred miles off, as from hence to Canaan, and under so many hundred years' ruins,—and yet was not able to know, or find the way to a field of mine own, that lay so near me!
“I could not but acknowledge this reproof to be both seasonable, and seasoned both with truth and reason; and it so far prevailed with me, that it not only put me upon a resolution to lay by that work that I had newly taken in hand that morning, but also to be wiser in my bookishness for the time to come, than for it, and through it, to neglect and sink my estate as I had done. And yet within a little time after, I know not how, I was fallen to the same studies and studiousness again,—had got my laid-up task into my hands again before I was aware,—and was come to a determination to go on in that work, because I had my notes and collections ready by me as materials for it; and when that was done, then to think of the advice that my heart had given me, and to look to mine own business.
“So I drew up the description of the Temple itself, and with it the History of the Temple-service.”
Lightfoot's heart was wise when it admonished him of humility; but it was full of deceit when it read him a lesson of worldly wisdom, for which his conscience and his better mind would have said to him “Thou Fool!” if he had followed it.
THE READER IS LED TO INFER THAT A TRAVELLER WHO STOPS UPON THE WAY TO SKETCH, BOTANIZE, ENTOMOLOGIZE OR MINERALOGIZE, TRAVELS WITH MORE PLEASURE AND PROFIT TO HIMSELF THAN IF HE WERE IN THE MAIL COACH.
Non servio materiæ sed indulgeo; quæ quo ducit sequendum est, non quo invitat.
Fear not, my patient reader, that I should lose myself and bewilder you, either in the Holy land, or Whichwood forest, or in the wide fields of the Poly-olbion, or in Potteric Carr, or in any part of the country about Doncaster, most fortunate of English towns for circumstances which I have already stated, and henceforth to be the most illustrious, as having been the place where my never-to-be-forgotten Philosopher and friend, passed the greater part of his innocent and useful and happy life. Good patient reader, you may confide in me as in one who always knows his whereabout, and whom the Goddess Upibilia will keep in the right way.
In treating of that flourishing and every way fortunate town, I have not gone back to visionary times, like the author who wrote a description and drew a map of Anglesea, as it was before the flood. Nor have I touched upon the ages when hyenas prowled over what is now Doncaster race-ground, and great lizards, huge as crocodiles, but with long necks and short tails, took their pleasure in Potteric Carr. I have not called upon thee, gentle and obsequious reader, to accompany me into a Præadamite world, nor even into the antediluvian one. We began with the earliest mention of Doncaster—no earlier; and shall carry our summary notices of its history to the Doctor's time,—no later. And if sometimes the facts on which I may touch should call forth thoughts, and those thoughts remind me of other facts, anecdotes leading to reflection, and reflection producing more anecdotes, thy pleasure will be consulted in all this, my good and patient reader, and thy profit also as much as mine; nay, more in truth, for I might think upon all these things in silence, and spare myself the trouble of relating them.
1 WORDSWORTH.
I might muse upon these things and let the hours pass by unheeded as the waters of a river in their endless course. And thus I might live in other years,—with those who are departed, in a world of my own, by force of recollection;—or by virtue of sure hope in that world which is theirs now, and to which I shall ere long be promoted.
For thy pleasure, Reader, and for thy improvement, I take upon myself the pains of thus materializing my spiritual stores. Alas! their earthly uses would perish with me unless they were thus embodied!
“The age of a cultivated mind,” says an eloquent and wise and thoughtful author, “is often more complacent, and even more luxurious, than the youth. It is the reward of the due use of the endowments bestowed by nature: while they who in youth have made no provision for age, are left like an unsheltered tree, stripped of its leaves and its branches, shaking and withering before the cold blasts of winter.
“In truth nothing is so happy to itself and so attractive to others, as a genuine and ripened imagination, that knows its own powers, and throws forth its treasures with frankness and fearlessness. The more it produces, the more capable it becomes of production; the creative faculty grows by indulgence; and the more it combines, the more means and varieties of combinations it discovers.
“When Death comes to destroy that mysterious and magical union of capacities and acquirements which has brought a noble genius to this point of power, how frightful and lamentable is the effect of the stroke that stops the current which was wont to put this mighty formation into activity! Perhaps the incomprehensible Spirit may have acted in conjunction with its corporeal adherents to the last. Then in one moment, what darkness and destruction follows a single gasp of breath!”2
2 SIR EGERTON BRYDGES.
This fine passage is as consolatory in its former part, as it is gloomy at the conclusion; and it is gloomy there, because the view which is there taken is imperfect. Our thoughts, our reminiscences, our intellectual acquirements, die with us to this world,—but to this world only. If they are what they ought to be, they are treasures which we lay up for Heaven. That which is of the earth, earthly, perishes with wealth, rank, honours, authority, and other earthly and perishable things. But nothing that is worth retaining can be lost. When Ovid says in Ben Jonson's play
the dramatist makes the Roman Poet speak like a sensualist, as he was, and the philosophy is as false as it is foul. Affections well placed and dutifully cherished; friendships happily formed and faithfully maintained; knowledge acquired with worthy intent, and intellectual powers that have been diligently improved as the talents which our Lord and Master has committed to our keeping; these will accompany us into another state of existence, as surely as the soul in that state retains its identity and its consciousness.
ETYMOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES CONCERNING THE REMAINS OF VARIOUS TRIBES OR FAMILIES MENTIONED IN SCRIPTURAL HISTORY.
That the lost ten Tribes of Israel may be found in London, is a discovery which any person may suppose he has made, when he walks for the first time from the city to Wapping. That the tribes of Judah and Benjamin flourish there is known to all mankind; and from them have sprung the Scripites, and the Omniumites and the Threepercentites.
But it is not so well known that many other tribes noticed in the Old Testament are to be found in this Island of Great Britain.
There are the Hittites, who excel in one branch of gymnastics. And there are the Amorites, who are to be found in town and country; and there are the Gadites who frequent watering places, and take picturesque tours.
Among the Gadites I shall have some of my best readers, who being in good humour with themselves and with every thing else, except on a rainy day, will even then be in good humour with me. There will be Amorites in their company; and among the Amorites too there will be some, who in the overflowing of their love, will have some liking to spare for the Doctor and his faithful memorialist.
The Poets, those especially who deal in erotics, lyrics, sentimentals or sonnets, are the Ah-oh-ites.
The gentlemen who speculate in chapels are the Puh-ites.
The chief seat of the Simeonites is at Cambridge; but they are spread over the land. So are the Man-ass-ites of whom the finest specimens are to be seen in St. James's Street, at the fashionable time of day for exhibiting the dress and the person upon the pavement.
The free-masons are of the family of the Jachinites.
The female Haggites are to be seen, in low life wheeling barrows, and in high life seated at card tables.
The Shuhamites are the cordwainers.
The Teamanites attend the sales of the East India Company.
Sir James Mackintosh, and Sir James Scarlett, and Sir James Graham, belong to the Jim-nites.
Who are the Gazathites if the people of London are not, where any thing is to be seen? All of them are Gettites when they can, all would be Havites if they could.
The journalists should be Geshurites, if they answered to their profession: instead of this they generally turn out to be Geshuwrongs.
There are however three Tribes in England, not named in the Old Testament, who considerably out number all the rest. These are the High Vulgarites, who are the children of Rahank and Phashan: the Middle Vulgarites, who are the children of Mammon and Terade, and the Low Vulgarites, who are the children of Tahag, Rahag, and Bohobtay-il.
With the Low Vulgarites I have no concern; but with the other two tribes, much. Well it is that some of those who are fruges consumere nati, think it proper that they should consume books also: if they did not, what a miserable creature wouldst thou be, Henry Colburn, who art their Bookseller! I myself have that kind of respect for the consumers which we ought to feel for every thing useful. If not the salt of the earth they are its manure, without which it could not produce so abundantly.
A CHAPTER FOR THE INFORMATION OF THOSE WHO MAY VISIT DONCASTER, AND ESPECIALLY OF THOSE WHO FREQUENT THE RACES THERE.
Well, reader, I have told thee something concerning the topography of Doncaster: and now in due order, and as in duty bound, will I give thee a sketch of its history; “summa sequar fastigia rerum,” with becoming brevity, according to my custom, and in conformity with the design of this book. The Nobility and Gentry who attend the races there, will find it very agreeable to be well acquainted with every thing relating to the place: and I particularly invite their attention to that part of the present chapter which concerns the Doncaster charters, because as a wise and ancient author hath said, turpe est homini nobili ejus civitatis in quâ versetur, jus ignorare, which may be thus applied, that every gentleman who frequents Doncaster races ought to know the form and history of its corporation.
In Edward the Confessor's reign, the soccage part of Doncaster and of some adjoining townships was under the manor of Hexthorp, though in the topsy-turveying course of time Hexthorp has become part of the soke of Doncaster. Earl Tostig was the Lord of that manor, one of Earl Godwin's sons, and one who holds like his father no honorable place in the records of those times, but who in the last scene of his life displayed a heroism that may well redeem his name. The manor being two miles and a half long, and one and a half broad, was valued at eighteen pounds yearly rent; but when Doomsday book was compiled that rent had decreased one third. It had then been given by the Conqueror to his half-brother Robert Earl of Montaigne in Normandy, and of Cornwall in England. The said Earl was a lay-pluralist of the first magnitude, and had no fewer than seven hundred and fifty manors bestowed upon him as his allotment of the conquered kingdom. He granted the lordship and soke of Doncaster with many other possessions to Nigel de Fossard, which Nigel is believed to have been the Saxon noble who at the time of the conquest held these same possessions under the crown.
The Fossard family ended in an heiress in Cœur de Lion's reign; and the only daughter of that heiress was given in marriage by John Lackland to Peter de Malolieu or Maulay, as a reward for his part in the murder of Prince Arthur. Peter de Maulay, bore, as such a service richly deserved, an ill name in the nation, being moreover a favorite of King John's, and believed to be one of his evil counsellors as well as of his wicked instruments: but the name was in good odour with his descendants, and was borne accordingly by eight Peters in succession. The eighth had no male issue; he left two daughters, and daughters are said by Fuller to be “silent strings sending no sound to posterity, but losing their own surnames in their matches.” Ralph Salvayne or Salvin, a descendant of the younger coheiress, in the reign of James I. claimed the Lordship of Doncaster; and William his son after a long suit with the Corporation resigned his claim for a large sum of money.
The Burgesses had obtained their Charter from Richard I. in the fifth year of his reign, that king confirming to them their Soke, and Town or Village of Danecastre, to hold of him and his heirs, by the ancient rent, and over and above that rent, by an annual payment at the same time of twenty-five marks of silver. For this grant the Burgesses gave the king fifty marks of silver, and were thereby entitled to hold their Soke and Town “effectually and peaceably, freely and quietly, fully and honorably, with all the liberties and free customs to the same appertaining, so that none hereupon might them disturb.” This charter with all and singular the things therein contained was ratified and confirmed by Richard II. to his beloved the then Burgesses of the aforesaid Town.
The Burgesses fearing that they might be molested in the enjoyment of these their liberties and free customs, through defect of a declaration and specification of the same, petitioned Edward IV. in the 7th year of his reign, that he would graciously condescend those liberties and free customs, under specifical declaration and express terms, to them and their heirs and successors, incorporating them, and making them persons fit and capable, with perpetual succession. Accordingly the king granted that Doncaster should be a free borough, and that the burgesses, tenants, resiants, and inhabitants and their successors, should be free burgesses and might have a Gild Merchant, and continue to have the same liberties and free customs, as they and their predecessors had theretofore reasonably used and enjoyed. And that they from thenceforth might be, in reality and name, one body and one perpetual community; and every year chuse out of themselves one fit person to be the Mayor, and two other fit persons for the Serjeants at Mace, of the same town, within the same town dwelling, to rule and govern the community aforesaid, for ever. And further of his more abundant grace the King granted that the cognizance of all manner of pleas of debt, trespass, covenant, and all manner of other causes and contracts whatsoever within the same borough, should be holden before the Mayor. He granted also to the corporation the power of attachment for debt, by their Serjeants at Mace; and of his abundant grace that the Mayor should hold and exercise the office of Coroner also, during his year; and should be also a Justice and Keeper of the King's peace within the said borough. And he granted them of his same abundant grace the right of having a Fair at the said Borough every year upon the vigil, and upon the feast, and upon the morrow of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to be held, and for the same three days to continue, with all liberties and free customs to this sort of fair appertaining, unless that fair should be to the detriment of the neighbouring fairs.
There appear to this Charter among others as witnesses, the memorable names of “our dearest brothers George of Clarence, and Richard of Gloucester, Dukes; Richard Wydevile de Ryvers, our Treasurer of England, Earl; and our beloved and faithful William Hastynges de Hastynges, Chamberlain of our Household, and Anthony Wydevile de Scales, Knights.” The charter is moreover decorated with the armorial bearings of the Corporation, a Lion sejeant, upon a cushion powdered ermine, holding in his paws and legs a banner with the castle thereon depicted, and this motto, Son Comfort et Liesse, his Comfort and Joy.
Henry VII. enlarged the charter, giving of his special grace, to the Mayor and Community all and singular the messuages, marshes, lands, tenements, rents, reversions and services, advowsons of churches, chantries and chapels, possessions and all hereditaments whatsoever within the Lordship and its dependencies, “with the court-leets, view-of-frank-pledges-courts, waters, mills, entry and discharge of waters, fairs, markets, tolls, picages, stallages, pontages, passages, and all and singular profits, commodities and emoluments whatsoever within that lordship and its precincts to the King, his heirs and successors howsoever appertaining, or lately belonging. And all and singular the issues, revenues, and profits of the aforesaid courts, view of frank pledge, waters, mills, fairs, markets, tolls, picages, stallages, pontages, passages, and the rest of the premises in what manner so ever accruing or arising.” For this the Mayor and Community were to pay into the Exchequer yearly in equal portions, at the feasts of St. Michael the Archangel, and Easter, without fee, or any other charge, the sum of seventy and four pounds, thirteen shillings eleven pence and an halfpenny. Further of his more extensive grace, he granted them to hold twice in every year a leet or view of frank pledge; and that they might have the superintendency of the assize of bread and ale, and other victuals vendible whatsoever, and the correction and punishment of the same, and all and whatsoever, which to a leet or view of frank pledge appertaineth, or ought to appertain. And that they might have all issues and profits and perquisites, fines, penalties, redemptions, forfeitures, and amerciaments in all and singular these kind of leets, or frank pledge to be forfeited, or assessed, or imposed; and moreover wayf, strayf, infang-thief, and outfang-thief; and the goods and chattels of all and singular felons, and the goods of fugitives, convicts and attainted, and the goods and chattels of outlaws and waived; and the wreck of sea when it should happen, and goods and chattels whatsoever confiscated within the manor, lordship, soke, towns, villages, and the rest of the premises of the precincts of the same, and of every of them found, or to be found for ever.
In what way any wreck of sea could be thrown upon any part of the Doncastrian jurisdiction is a question which might have occasioned a curious discussion between Corporal Trim and his good master. How it could happen I cannot comprehend, unless “the fatal Welland,” according to old saw,
Nor indeed do I see how it could happen then, unless Humber should at the same time drown all Lindsey, and the whole of the Yorkshire plain, and Trent bear a part also with all his thirty tributary streams, and the plain land of all the midland counties be once more flooded, “as it was in the days of Noah.” But if the official person who drew up this charter of Henry the Seventh contemplated any such contingency, he must have been a whimsical person; and moreover an unreasonable one not to have considered that Doncaster itself must be destroyed by such a catastrophe, and consequently that its corporation even then could derive no benefit from wreck at sea.
1 SPENSER.
Further of his more abundant grace King Henry granted to the Mayor and Community that they might hold two markets in the week for ever, to wit every Tuesday and every Saturday; and that they might hold a second fair, which was to be upon the vigil, and upon the day of St. James the Apostle, and upon the morrow of the day immediately following to continue: and that they might chuse a Recorder; and hold a weekly court in their Guild Hall, which court should be a Court of Record: and that the Recorder and three of the Aldermen should be Justices as well as the Mayor, and that they might have a gaol within the precincts of their town.
Henry VIII. confirmed this his father's charter, and Elizabeth that her father's confirmation. In the next reign when the corporation, after having “endured the charge of many great and tedious suits” had compounded with Ralph Salvin for what they called his pretended title, they petitioned the King that he would be pleased to accept from them a surrender of their estates, together with an assurance of Salvin's title, and then graciously assure and convey the said manors and premises to them and their successors, so to secure them against any farther litigation.
This accordingly was done. In the fourth year after the Restoration the Mayor, Aldermen and Burgesses petitioned for a ratification of their existing privileges and for an enlargement of them, which Charles II. granted, “the borough being an ancient and populous borough, and he being desirous that for the time to come, for ever, one certain and invariable method might be had of, for, and in the preservation of our peace, and in the rule and governance of the same borough, and of our people in the same inhabiting, and of others resorting thither; and that that borough in succeeding times, might be, and remain a borough of harmony and peace, to the fear and terror of the wicked, and for the support and reward of the good.” Wherefore he the King of his special grace, certain knowledge and mere motion, willed, granted, constituted, declared and confirmed, and by his then presents did will, grant, constitute, declare and confirm, that Doncaster should be, and continue for ever, a free borough itself; and that the Mayor and community, or commonalty thereof, should be one body corporate and politic in reality, deed and name, by the name of Mayor, Aldermen and Burgesses of the borough of Doncaster in the County of York, and by that name be capacitated and enabled to plead, and to be impleaded, answer and be answered; defend and be defended; and to have, purchase, receive, possess, give, grant and demise.
This body corporate and politic which was to have perpetual succession, was by the Charter appointed to consist of one Mayor, twelve Aldermen, and twenty-four capital Burgesses, the Aldermen to be “of the better and more excellent inhabitants of the borough,” and the capital Burgesses of the better, more reputable and discreet, and these latter were to be “for ever in perpetual future times, the Common Council of the borough.” The three Estates of the Borough as they may be called, in court or convocation gathered together and assembled, were invested “with full authority, power and ability of granting, constituting, ordaining, making, and rendering firm, from time to time, such kind of laws, institutes, bye-laws, ordinances and constitutions, which to them, or the greater part of them, shall seem to be, according to their sound understandings, good, salutary, profitable, honest or honorable, and necessary for the good rule and governance of the Mayor, Aldermen and Burgesses, and of all and singular, and other the inhabitants of the borough aforesaid; and of all the officers, ministers, artificers, and resiants whatsoever within the borough aforesaid, for the time being; and for the declaring in what manner and form, the aforesaid Mayor, Aldermen and Burgesses, and all and singular other the ministers, officers, artificers, inhabitants, and resiants of the borough aforesaid, and their factors or agents, servants and apprentices, in their offices, callings, mysteries, artifices and businesses, within the borough aforesaid, and the liberties of the same for the time being, shall have, behave and use themselves, and otherwise for the more ultimate public good, common utility and good regimen of the borough aforesaid.” And for the victualling of the borough, and for the better preservation, governance, disposing, letting and demising of the lands, tenements, possessions, revenues and hereditaments, vested in their body corporate, they had power to ordain and enforce such punishments, penalties, inflictions and imprisonments of the body, or by fines and amerciaments, or by both of them, against and upon all delinquents and offenders against these their laws as might to them seem necessary, so that nevertheless this kind of laws, ordinances, institutions and constitutions be not repugnant, nor contrary to the laws and statutes of the kingdom.
Persons refusing to accept the office of Mayor, Alderman, Capital Burgess, or any other inferior office of the borough, except the Recorders, might be committed to gaol, till they consented to serve, or fined at the discretion of the Corporation, and held fast in their gaol till the fine was paid.
This Charter also empowered the Corporation to keep a fair on the Saturday before Easter, and thenceforth on every alternate Saturday until the feast of St. Andrew, for cattle, and to hold at such times a court of pie-powder.
James II. confirmed the corporation in all their rights and privileges, and by the Charter of Charles II., thus confirmed, Doncaster is governed at this day.
It was during the mayoralty of Thomas Pheasant that Daniel Dove took up his abode in Doncaster.
REMARKS ON THE ART OF VERBOSITY. A RULE OF COCCEIUS, AND ITS APPLICATION TO THE LANGUAGE AND PRACTICE OF THE LAW.
If they which employ their labour and travail about the public administration of justice, follow it only as a trade, with unquenchable and unconscionable thirst of gain, being not in heart persuaded that justice is God's own work, and themselves his agents in this business,—the sentence, of right, God's own verdict, and themselves his priests to deliver it; formalities of justice do but serve to smother right; and that which was necessarily ordained for the common good, is through shameful abuse made the cause of common misery.
Reader, thou mayest perhaps have thought me at times disposed to be circumambagious in my manner of narration. But now, having cast thine eyes over the Doncaster charters, even in the abridged form in which I have considerately presented them, thou knowest what a round-about style is when amplified with all possible varieties of professional tautology.
You may hear it exemplified to a certain degree, in most sermons of the current standard, whether composed by those who inflict them upon their congregation, or purchased ready made and warranted orthodox as well as original. In a still greater degree you may hear it in the extempore prayers of any meeting-house, and in those with which the so-called Evangelical Clergymen of the Establishment think proper sometimes to prologize and epilogize their grievous discourses. But in tautology the Lawyers beat the Divines hollow.
Cocceius laid it down as a fundamental rule of interpretation in theology, that the words and phrases of scripture are to be understood in every sense of which they are susceptible; that is, that they actually signify every thing that they can possibly signify. The Lawyers carry this rule farther in their profession than the Leyden Professor did in his: they deduce from words not only every thing that they can possibly signify, but sometimes a great deal more; and sometimes they make them bear a signification precisely opposite to what they were intended to express.
That crafty politician who said the use of language is to conceal our thoughts, did not go farther in his theory, than the members of the legal profession in their practice; as every deed which comes from their hands may testify, and every Court of Law bears record. You employ them to express your meaning in a deed of conveyance, a marriage settlement, or a will; and they so smother it with words, so envelope it with technicalities, so bury it beneath redundancies of speech, that any meaning which is sought for may be picked out, to the confusion of that which you intended. Something at length comes to be contested: you go to a Court of Law to demand your right; or you are summoned into one to defend it. You ask for justice, and you receive a nice distinction—a forced construction,—a verbal criticism. By such means you are defeated and plundered in a civil cause; and in a criminal one a slip of the pen in the indictment brings off the criminal scot free. As if slips of the pen in such cases were always accidental! But because Judges are incorruptible, (as blessed be God they still are in this most corrupt nation) and because Barristers are not to be suspected of ever intentionally betraying the cause which they are fee'd to defend, it is taken for granted that the same incorruptibility, and the same principled integrity, or gentlemanly sense of honor which sometimes is its substitute, are to be found among all those persons who pass their miserable lives in quill-driving, day after day, from morning till night, at a scrivener's desk, or in an attorney's office!
Well, gentle Reader, we have made our way through the Charters, and seen that the Borough of Doncaster is, as it may be called, an imperium in imperio—or regnum, or rather if there were such word regnulum, in regno, (such a word there ought to be, and very probably was, and most certainly would be if the Latin were a living language)—a little kingdom in itself, modelled not unhappily after the form of that greater one whereof it is a part; differing from it, for reasons so evident that it would be a mere waste of words and time to explain them,—in being an elective instead of an hereditary monarchy, and also because the monarchy is held only for a year, not for life; and differing in this respect likewise that its three estates are analogous to the vulgar and mistaken notion of the English constitution, not to what that constitution is, as transmitted to us by our fathers.
We have seen that its Mayor (or Monarch,) its twelve Aldermen (or House of Lords,) all being of the better and more excellent inhabitants, and its four and twenty capital Burgesses (or House of Commons,) all of the better, more reputable and discreet Doncastrians, constitute one body corporate and politic in reality, deed and name, to the fear and terror of the wicked, and for the support and reward of the good; and that the municipal government has been thus constituted expressly to the end that Doncaster might remain for ever a borough of harmony and peace: to the better effecting of which most excellent intent, a circumstance which has already been adverted to, contributes greatly, to wit, that Doncaster sends no members to Parliament.
Great are the mysteries of Corporations; and great the good of them when they are so constituted, and act upon such principles as that of Doncaster.
There is an old Song which says
The two latter verses could never be applied to Doncaster. In the middle of the last century the revenues of the Corporation did not exceed £1500. a year: at the beginning of this they had encreased to nearly £6000., and this income was principally expended, as it ought to be, for the benefit of the Town. The public buildings have been erected from these funds; and liberal donations made from them to the Dispensary and other eleemosynary institutions. There is no constable-assessment, none for paving and lighting the street; these expences are defrayed by the Corporation, and families are supplied with river water chiefly at its expence.
Whether this body corporate should be commended or condemned for encouraging the horse-races, by building a grand stand upon the course; and giving annually a plate of the value of £50. to be run for, and two sums of twenty guineas each toward the stakes, is a question which will be answered by every one according to his estimate of right and wrong. Gentlemen of the Turf will approve highly of their conduct, so will those Gentlemen whose characteristics are either light fingers or black legs. Put it to the vote in Doncaster, and there will be few voices against them: take the sense of the nation upon it by universal suffrage, and there would be a triumphant majority in their favour.
In this, and alas! in too many other cases vox populi est vox diaboli.
A greater number of families are said to meet each other at Doncaster races, than at any other meeting of the same kind in England. That such an assemblage contributes greatly to the gaiety and prosperity of the town itself, and of the country round about, is not to be disputed. But horse races excite evil desires, call forth evil passions, encourage evil propensities, lead the innocent into temptation, and give opportunities to the wicked. And the good which arises from such amusements, either as mere amusement (which is in itself unequivocally a good when altogether innocent)—or by circulating money in the neighbourhood,—or by tending to keep up an excellent breed of horses, for purposes of direct utility,—these consequences are as dust in the balance when compared with the guilt and misery that arise from gambling.
Lord Exeter and the Duke of Grafton may perhaps be of a different opinion. So should Mr. Gully whom Pindar may seem to have prophetically panegyrized as
That gentleman indeed may with great propriety congratulate himself upon his knowledge of what is called the world, and the ability with which he has turned it to a good practical account. But Lord Burleigh methinks would shake his head in the antechamber of Heaven if he could read there the following paragraph from a Sunday Newspaper.
“PLEASURES AND PROFITS OF THE TURF.—We stated in a former number that Lord Exeter's turf-profits were for the previous season £26,000., this was intended to include bets. But we have now before us a correct and consecutive account of the Duke of Grafton's winnings from 1811 to 1829 inclusive, taking in merely the value of the stakes for which the horses ran, and which amounts to no less a sum than £99,211. 3s. 4d. or somewhat more than £5000. per annum. This, even giving in a good round sum for training and outlay, will leave a sufficiently pleasant balance in hand; to say nothing of the betting book, not often, we believe, light in figures. His Grace's greatest winnings were in 1822 and 1825: in the former of these years they amounted to £11,364. 5s.—in the latter £12,668. 16s. 8d.”
It is to be hoped that the Duke has with his crest and coronet his motto also upon the covers of his racing and betting books, and upon his prize plates and cups;
Before we pass from the Race-ground let me repeat to the reader a wish of Horace Walpole's that “some attempt were made to ennoble our horse-races, by associating better arts with the courses, as by contributing for odes, the best of which should be rewarded by medals. Our nobility,” says he, “would find their vanity gratified; for as the pedigrees of their steeds would soon grow tiresome, their own genealogies would replace them, and in the mean time poetry and medals would be improved. Their lordships would have judgement enough to know if the horse (which should be the impression on one side) were not well executed; and as I hold that there is no being more difficult to draw well than a horse, no bad artist could be employed. Such a beginning would lead farther; and the cup or plate for the prize might rise into beautiful vases.”
Pity that the hint has not been taken, and an auxiliary sporting society formed for promoting the education of Pindars and Benvenuto Cellinis!
WHEREIN THE AUTHOR MAKES KNOWN HIS GOOD INTENTIONS TO ALL READERS, AND OFFERS GOOD ADVICE TO SOME OF THEM.
I can write, and talk too, as soft as other men, with submission to better judgements,—and I leave it to you Gentlemen. I am but one, and I always distrust myself. I only hint my thoughts: You'll please to consider whether you will not think that it may seem to deserve your consideration.—This is a taking way of speaking. But much good may do them that use it!
Reader, my compliments to you!
This is a form of courtesy which the Turks use in their compositions, and being so courteous a form, I have here adopted it. Why not? Turks though they are, we learnt inoculation from them, and the use of coffee; and hitherto we have taught them nothing but the use of tobacco in return.
Reader, my compliments to you!
Why is it that we hear no more of Gentle Readers? Is it that having become critical in this age of Magazines and Reviews, they have ceased to be gentle? But all are not critical;
1 AKENSIDE.
In thus applying these lines I mean the servitude to which any rational man degrades his intellect when he submits to receive an opinion from the dictation of another, upon a point whereon he is just as capable of judging for himself;—the intellectual servitude of being told by Mr. A. B. or C. whether he is to like a book or not,—or why he is to like it: and the folly of supposing that the man who writes anonymously, is on that very account entitled to more credit for judgement, erudition and integrity, than the author who comes forward in his own person, and stakes his character upon what he advances.
All Readers however,—thank Heaven, and what is left among us of that best and rarest of all senses called Common Sense,—all Readers however are not critical. There are still some who are willing to be pleased, and thankful for being pleased; and who do not think it necessary that they should be able to parse their pleasure, like a lesson, and give a rule or a reason why they are pleased, or why they ought not to be pleased. There are still readers who have never read an Essay upon Taste;—and if they take my advice they never will; for they can no more improve their taste by so doing, than they could improve their appetite or their digestion by studying a cookery book.
I have something to say to all classes of Readers: and therefore having thus begun to speak of one, with that class I will proceed. It is to the youthful part of my lectors—(why not lectors as well as auditors?) it is virginibus puerisque that I now address myself. Young Readers, you whose hearts are open, whose understandings are not yet hardened, and whose feelings are neither exhausted nor encrusted by the world, take from me a better rule than any professors of criticism will teach you!
Would you know whether the tendency of a book is good or evil, examine in what state of mind you lay it down. Has it induced you to suspect that what you have been accustomed to think unlawful may after all be innocent, and that that may be harmless which you have hitherto been taught to think dangerous? Has it tended to make you dissatisfied and impatient under the controul of others; and disposed you to relax in that self government, without which both the laws of God and man tell us there can be no virtue—and consequently no happiness? Has it attempted to abate your admiration and reverence for what is great and good, and to diminish in you the love of your country and your fellow creatures? Has it addressed itself to your pride, your vanity, your selfishness, or any other of your evil propensities? Has it defiled the imagination with what is loathsome, and shocked the heart with what is monstrous? Has it disturbed the sense of right and wrong which the Creator has implanted in the human soul? If so—if you are conscious of all or any of these effects,—or if having escaped from all, you have felt that such were the effects it was intended to produce, throw the book in the fire whatever name it may bear in the title page! Throw it in the fire, young man, though it should have been the gift of a friend!—young lady, away with the whole set, though it should be the prominent furniture of a rose-wood book case!
The ecclesiastical history of Doncaster is not so much to the credit of all whom it concerns, as the municipal. Nigel Fossard in the year 1100, granted the advowson of its church to St. Mary's Abbey, York; and it was for rather more than two hundred years a rectory of two medieties, served by two resident rectors whom the Abbey appointed. In 1303, Archbishop Corbridge appropriated it to the abbey, and ordained it a perpetual vicarage. Fifty marks a year out of the profits of the rectory were then allowed for the Vicar's support, and he held the house and garden also which had formerly appertained to one of the Rectors. When upon the dissolution of the monasteries it fell to the crown, Henry VIII. gave it with other monastic impropriations to Archbishop Holgate, as some compensation for the valuable manors which he made the see of York alienate to himself. The church of Doncaster gained nothing by this transfer. The rectory was secured by Archbishop Sharp for his own family. At the beginning of the present century it was worth from £1000. to £1200. a year, while the Vicar had only an annual income of £80. charged upon that rectory, and £20. charged upon a certain estate. He had no tithes, no Easter offerings, and no other glebe than the church-yard, and an orchard attached to the vicarage. And he had to pay a curate to do the duty at Loversall church.
There is one remarkable epitaph in this church upon a monument of the altar form, placed just behind the reading desk.
Robin of Doncaster as he is now familiarly called by persons connected, or acquainted with the church, is remembered only by this record which he has left of himself: perhaps the tomb was spared for the singularity of the epitaph, when prouder monuments in the same church were despoiled. He seems to have been one who thinking little of any thing beyond the affairs of this world till the last year of his pilgrimage, lived during that year a new life. It may also be inferred that his property was inherited by persons to whom he was bound by no other ties than those of cold affinity; for if he had felt any concern for their welfare, he would not have considered those possessions as lost which were left to them.
Perhaps a farther inference may be fairly drawn, that though the deceased had stood in this uncomfortable relation to his heirs at law, he was too just a man to set aside the course of succession which the law appointed. They who think that in the testamentary disposal of their property they have a right to do whatever it is legally in their power to do, may find themselves woefully mistaken when they come to render their account. Nothing but the weightiest moral considerations can justify any one in depriving another of that which the law of the land would otherwise in its due course have assigned him. But rights of descent cease to be held sacred in public opinion in proportion as men consider themselves exempt from all duty to their forefathers; and that is in proportion as principles become sophisticated, and society more and more corrupt.
St. George's is the only church in Doncaster, a town which in the year 1800, contained 1246 houses, 5697 souls: twenty years afterwards the houses had increased to 1729, and the inhabitants to 8544. The state having made no other provision for the religious instruction of the townspeople than one church, one vicar, and one curate—if the vicar from other revenues than those of his vicarage can afford to keep one— the far greater part of the inhabitants are left to be absenters by necessity, or dissenters by choice. It was the boast of the corporation in an address to Charles II. that they had not “one factious seditious person” in their town, “being all true sons of the Church of England and loyal subjects;” and that “in the height of all the late troubles and confusion (that is during the civil wars and the commonwealth,—which might more truly have been called the common-woe) they never had any conventicle amongst them, the nurseries and seed plots of sedition and rebellion.”—There are conventicles there now of every denomination. And this has been occasioned by the great sin of omission in the Government, and the great sin of commission in that Prelate who appropriated the property of the church to his own family.
Hollis Pigot was Vicar when Daniel Dove began to reside in Doncaster; and Mr. Fawkes was his Curate.
The oldest monument in Doncaster is a Roman altar, which was discovered in the year 1781, in digging a cellar six feet deep, in St. Sepulchre's gate. An antiquary of Ferrybridge congratulated the corporation “on the great honor resulting therefrom.”
Was it a great honour to Doncaster,—meaning by Doncaster, its Mayor, its Aldermen, its capital burgesses, and its whole people,—was it, I say, an honour, a great honour to it, and these, and each and all of these, that this altar should have been discovered? Did the corporation consider it to be so? Ought it to be so considered? Did they feel that pleasurable though feverish excitement at the discovery which is felt by the fortunate man at the moment when his deserts have obtained their honorable meed? Richard Staveley was Mayor that year: Was it an honour to him and his mayoralty as it was to King Ferdinand of Spain that when he was King, Christopher Columbus discovered the New World,—or to Queen Elizabeth, that Shakespeare flourished under her reign? Was he famous for it, as old Mr. Bramton Gurdon of Assington in Suffolk, was famous, about the year 1627, for having three sons parliament men? If he was thus famous, did he “blush to find it fame,” or smile that it should be accounted so? What is fame? what is honour? But I say no more. “He that hath knowledge spareth his words; and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.”
It is a votive altar, dedicated to the Deæ Matres, with this inscription:
and it is curious because it is only the third altar dedicated to those Goddesses which has yet been found: the other two were also found in the North of England, one at Binchester near Durham, the other at Ribchester in Lancashire.
Next in antiquity to this Roman altar, is a Saxon font in the church; its date which is now obliterated, is said to have been A. D. 1061.
Not a wreck remains of any thing that existed in Doncaster between the time when Orbiotal erected his altar to the local Goddesses, and when the baptismal font was made: nor the name of a single individual; nor memorial, nor tradition of a single event.
There was a castle there, the dykes of which might partly be seen in Leland's time, and the foundation of part of the walls,—nothing more, so long even then had it been demolished. In the area where it stood the church was built, and Leland thought that great part of the ruins of one building were used for the foundations of the other, and for filling up its walls. It is not known at what time the church was founded. There was formerly a stone built into its east end, with the date of A. D. 1071; but this may more probably have been originally placed in the castle than the church. Different parts of the building are of different ages, and the beautiful tower is supposed to be of Henry the third's age.
The Hall Cross, as it is now called, bore this inscription;
There can be little doubt that this Otto de Tilli is the same person whose name appears as a witness to several grants about the middle of the twelfth century, and who was Seneschal to the Earl of Conisborough. It stood uninjured till the Great Rebellion, when the Earl of Manchester's army, on their way from the South to the siege of York in the year 1644, chose to do the Lord service by defacing it. “And the said Earl of Manchester's men, endeavouring to pull the whole shank down, got a smith's forge-hammer and broke off the four corner crosses; and then fastened ropes to the middle cross which was stronger and higher, thinking by that to pull the whole shank down. But a stone breaking off, and falling upon one of the men's legs, which was nearest it, and breaking his leg, they troubled themselves no more about it.” This account with a drawing of the cross in its former state was in Fairfax's collection of antiquities, and came afterwards into Thoresby's possession. The Antiquarian Society published an engraving of it by that excellent and upright artist Vertue, of whom it is recorded that he never would engrave a fictitious portrait. The pillar was composed of five columns, a large one in the middle, and four smaller ones around it, answering pretty nearly to the cardinal points: each column was surmounted by a cross, that in the middle being the highest and proportionally large. There were numeral figures on the south face, near the top, which seem to have been intended for a dial; the circumference of the pillar was eleven feet seven, the height eighteen feet.
William Paterson, in the year of his mayoralty 1678, “beautified it with four dials, ball and fane:” in 1792, when Henry Heaton was Mayor, it was taken down, because of its decayed state, and a new one of the same form was erected by the road side, a furlong to the south of its former site, on Hop-cross hill. This was better than destroying the cross; and as either renovation or demolition had become necessary, the Corporation are to be commended for what they did. But it is no longer the same cross, nor on the same site which had once been consecrated, and where many a passing prayer had been breathed in simplicity and sincerity of heart.
What signifies the change? Both place and monument had long been desecrated. As little religious feeling was excited by it as would have been by the altar to the Deæ Matres if it had stood there. And of the hundreds of travellers who daily pass it in, or outside of stage coaches, in their own carriages, on horseback, or on foot; and of the thousands who flock thither during the races; and of the inhabitants of Doncaster itself, not a single soul cares whether it be the original cross or not, nor where it was originally erected, nor when, nor wherefore, nor by whom!
“I wish I did not!” said Dr. Dove, when some one advanced this consideration with the intent of reconciling him to the change. “I am an old man,” said he, “and in age we dislike all change as naturally, and therefore no doubt, as fitly as in youth we desire it. The youthful generation in their ardour for improvement and their love of novelty, strive to demolish what ought religiously to be preserved; the elders in their caution and their fear endeavour to uphold what has become useless, and even injurious. Thus in the order of Providence we have both the necessary impulse and the needful check.
“But I miss the old cross from its old place. More than fifty years had I known it there; and if fifty years acquaintance did not give us some regard even for stocks and stones, we must be stocks and stones ourselves.”
HISTORICAL CIRCUMSTANCES CONNECTED WITH DONCASTER. THOMAS, EARL OF LANCASTER. EDWARD IV. ASKE'S INSURRECTION. ILLUSTRIOUS VISITORS. JAMES I. BARNABEE. CHARLES I. CHURCH LIBRARY.
They unto whom we shall appear tedious, are in no wise injured by us, because it is in their own hands to spare that labour which they are not willing to endure.
Nothing more than the scanty notices which have already been mentioned is recorded concerning the history of Doncaster, till King John ordered it “to be enclosed with hertstone and pale, according as the ditch required; and that a light brecost or barbican should be made upon the bridge, to defend the town if need should be.” The bridge was then of wood; in the following reign the townsmen “gave aid to make a stone bridge there:” in that reign a hospital for sick and leprous people was built there, the priories of St. James and St. Nicholas founded, a Dominican convent, and a Franciscan one. Henry III. slept there on his way to York. In the 23d year of Edward I. the borough was first summoned to send members to Parliament, from which burthen as it was then considered, it was relieved in the ensuing year.
In 1321, Thomas Earl of Lancaster held a council here with other discontented Barons against Edward II.; in its results it brought many of them to an untimely death, and Lancaster himself suffered by the axe at Pomfret, as much in revenge for Gaveston, as for this rebellion. “In this sort,” says an old chronicler, “came the mighty Earl of Lancaster to his end, being the greatest Peer in this realm, and one of the mightiest Earls in Christendom: for when he began to levy war against the King, he was possessed of five earldoms, Lancaster, Lincoln, Salisbury, Leicester and Derby, beside other seigniories, lands and possessions, great to his advancement in honor and puissance. But all this was limited within prescription of time, which being expired both honor and puissances were cut off with dishonor and death; for (O miserable state!)
“But now touching the foresaid Earl of Lancaster, great strife rose afterwards amongst the people, whether he ought to be reputed for a saint, or no. Some held that he ought to be no less esteemed, for that he did many alms-deeds in his lifetime, honored men of religion, and maintained a true quarrel till his life's end. Also his enemies continued not long after, but came to evil ends. Others conceived another opinion of him, alledging that he favoured not his wife, but lived in spouse-breach, defiling a great number of damsels and gentlewomen. If any offended him, he slew him shortly after in his wrathful mood. Apostates and other evil doers he maintained, and would not suffer them to be punished by due order of law. All his doings he used to commit to one of his secretaries, and took no heed himself thereof; and as for the manner of his death, he fled shamefully in the fight, and was taken and put to death against his will; yet by reason of certain miracles which were said to be done near the place both where he suffered and where he was buried, caused many to think he was a Saint. Howbeit, at length by the King's commandment the church doors of the Priory where he was buried, were shut and closed, so that no man might be suffered to come to the tomb to bring any offerings, or to do any other kind of devotion to the same. Also the hill where he suffered was kept by certain Gascoigners appointed by the Lord Hugh Spenser his son, then lying at Pomfret, to the end that no people should come and make their prayers there in worship of the said Earl, whom they took verily for a martyr.”
The next confederacy at Doncaster was more successful though it led eventually to bloodier consequences. Bolingbroke after landing at Ravensburg, was met here by Northumberland, Hotspur, Westmorland, and others, who engaged with him there, some of them probably not knowing how far his ambitious views extended, and who afterwards became the victims of their own turbulent policy. The Dragon's teeth which were then sown produced a plentiful harvest threescore years afterwards, when more than six and thirty thousand Englishmen fell by each others hands at Towton, between this town and York. Edward IV. beheaded Sir Robert Willis and Sir Ralph Grey here, whom he had taken in the rout of Lose-coat field; and when he mustered his people here to march against Warwick and Clarence whose intentions began then to be discovered, “it was said that never was seen in England so many goodly men and so well arranged in a field.” Afterwards he past through Doncaster when he returned from exile, on the way to his crowning victory at Barnet.
Richard III. also past through this place on the way to York where he was crowned. In Henry VIII's reign it became the actual seat of war, and a battle would have been fought there, if the Don had not by its sudden rising twice prevented Aske and his army of insurgents from attacking the Duke of Norfolk, with so superior a force that success would have been almost certain, and the triumph of the popish party a probable result. Here Norfolk, profiting by that delay, treated with the insurgents, and finally by offering them a free pardon, and engaging that a free Parliament should be held in the North, induced them to disperse.
In 1538 John Grigge the Mayor, lost a thumb in an affray at Marshgate, and next year the Prior of Doncaster was hanged for treason. In 1551 the town was visited by the plague: in that of 1582, 908 persons died here.
The next noticeable circumstance in the annals of Doncaster, is that James I. lodged there, at the sign of the Sun and Bear, on his way from Scotland to take possession of the Crown of England.
The maypole in the market place was taken down in 1634, and the market cross erected there in its place. But the removal of the maypole seems to have been no proof of any improved state of morals in the town; for Barnabee, the illustrious potator, saw there the most unbecoming sight that he met with in all his travels. On his second visit the frail Levite was dead; and I will not pick out a name from the succession of Vicars which might suit the time of the poem, because though Doncaster was the scene it does not follow that the Vicar was the actor; and whoever he may have been his name can be no object of legitimate curiosity, though Barnabee's justly was, till it was with so much ingenuity determined by Mr. Haslewood.
When the army which had been raised against the Scots was disbanded, Charles I. dined there at the house of Lady Carlingford, and a pear tree which he is said to have planted is now standing there in Mr. Maw's garden. Charles was there again in 1644, and attended service in the church. And from a house in the butter market it was that Morris with two companions attempted to carry off the parliamentary commander Rainsborough at noon-day, and failing in the attempt, killed him upon the spot.
A Church Library was founded here by the contributions of the clergy and gentry of the surrounding country in 1726. A chamber over the church porch was appropriated for the books, with the Archbishop's licence; and there was one curate of this town whose love of reading was so great, that he not only passed his days in this library, but had a bed fixed there, and spent his nights there also.
In 1731 all the streets were new paved, and the sign posts taken down; and in 1739, Daniel Dove, in remembrance of whom these volumes are composed, came to reside in Doncaster.
CONCERNING THE WORTHIES, OR GOOD MEN, WHO WERE NATIVES OF DONCASTER OR OTHERWISE CONNECTED WITH THAT TOWN.
Let good old Fuller answer the well-known question which is conveyed in the motto to this chapter. “And here,” he says, “be it remembered, that the same epithet in several places accepts sundry interpretations. He is called a Good Man in common discourse, who is not dignified with gentility: a Good Man upon the Exchange, who hath a responsible estate; a Good Man in a Camp, who is a tall man of his arms; a Good Man in the Church who is pious and devout in his conversation. Thus whatever is fixed therein in other relations, that person is a Good Man in history, whose character affords such matter as may please the palate of an ingenuous reader.”
Two other significations may be added which Fuller has not pretermitted, because he could not include them, they being relatively to him, of posthumous birth. A Good Man upon State trials, or in certain Committees which it might not be discreet to designate, is one who will give his verdict without any regard to his oath in the first case or to the evidence in both. And in the language of the Pugilists it signifies one who can bear a great deal of beating: Hal Pierce, the Game Chicken and unrivalled glory of the ring, pronounced this eulogium upon Mr. Gully, the present honorable member for Pontefract, when he was asked for a candid opinion of his professional merits:— “Sir he was the very Best Man as ever I had.”
Among the Good Men, in Fuller's acceptation of the term, who have been in any way connected with Doncaster, the first in renown as well as in point of time, is Robin Hood. Many men talk of him who never shot in his bow; but many think of him when they drink at his Well, which is at Skelbroke by the way side, about six miles from Doncaster on the York road. There is a small inn near with Robin Hood for its sign; this country has produced no other hero whose popularity has endured so long. The Duke of Marlborough, the Duke of Cumberland, and the Marquis of Granby have flourished upon sign-posts, and have faded there; so have their compeers Prince Eugene and Prince Ferdinand. Rodney and Nelson are fading; and the time is not far distant when Wellington also will have had his day. But while England shall be England Robin Hood will be a popular name.
Near Robin Hood's Well, and nearer to Doncaster, the Hermit of Hampole resided, at the place from which he was so called, “where living he was honored, and dead was buried and sainted.” Richard Role, however, for that was his name, was no otherwise sainted than by common opinion in those parts. He died in 1349, and is the oldest of our known Poets. His writings both in verse and prose which are of considerable extent ought to be published at the expense of some national institution.
In the next generation John Marse, who was born in a neighbouring village of that name, flourished in the Carmelite Convent at Doncaster, and obtained great celebrity in his time for writing against—a far greater than himself—John Wickliffe.
It is believed that Sir Martin Frobisher was born at Doncaster, and that his father was Mayor of that place. “I note this the rather,” says Fuller, “because learned Mr. Carpenter, in his Geography, recounts him among the famous men of Devonshire; but why should Devonshire which hath a flock of Worthies of her own, take a lamb from another country.” This brave seaman when he left his property to a kinsman who was very likely to dissipate it, said, “it was gotten at sea, and would never thrive long at land.”
Lord Molesworth having purchased the estate at Edlington, four miles from Doncaster, formerly the property of Sir Edward Stanhope, resided there occasionally in the old mansion, during the latter part of his life. His Account of Denmark is a book which may always be read with profit. The Danish Ambassador complained of it to King William, and hinted that if one of his Danish Majesty's subjects had taken such liberties with the King of England, his master would upon complaint, have taken off the author's head. “That I cannot do,” replied William; “but if you please I will tell him what you say, and he shall put it into the next edition of his book.”
Other remarkable persons who were connected with Doncaster, and were contemporaries with Dr. Dove will be noticed in due time. Here I shall only mention two who have distinguished themselves since his days (alas!) and since I took my leave of a place endeared to me by so many recollections. Mr. Bingley well known for his popular works upon Natural History, and Mr. Henry Lister Maw, the adventurous naval officer who was the first Englishman that ever came down the great river Amazons, are both natives of this town. I know not whether the Doncaster Maws are of Hibernian descent; but the name of M‛Coglan is in Ireland beautified and abbreviated into Maw; the M‛Coglan, or head of the family was called the Maw; and a district of King's County was known within the memory of persons now living by the appellation of the Maws County.
For myself, I am behind a veil which is not to be withdrawn: nevertheless I may say, without consideration of myself, that in Doncaster both because of the principal scene and of the subject of this work
CONTINGENT CAUSES. PERSONAL CONSIDERATIONS INDUCED BY REFLECTING ON THEM. THE AUTHOR TREMBLES FOR THE PAST.
“There is no action of man in this life,” says Thomas of Malmesbury, “which is not the beginning of so long a chain of consequences, as that no human providence is high enough to give us a prospect to the end.” The chain of causes however is as long as the chain of consequences,—peradventure longer; and when I think of the causes which have combined to procreate this book, and the consequences which of necessity it must produce, I am lost in admiration.
How many accidents might for ever have impossibilitated the existence of this incomparable work! If, for instance, I the Unknown, had been born in any other part of the world than in the British dominions; or in any other age than one so near the time in which the venerable subject of these memoirs flourished; or in any other place than where these localities could have been learnt, and all these personalities were remembered; or if I had not counted it among my felicities like the philosopher of old, and the Polish Jews of this day, (who thank God for it in their ritual), to have been born a male instead of a female; or if I had been born too poor to obtain the blessings of education, or too rich to profit by them: or if I had not been born at all. If indeed in the course of six thousand years which have elapsed since the present race of intellectual inhabitants were placed upon this terraqueous globe, any chance had broken off one marriage among my innumerable married progenitors, or thwarted the courtship of those my equally innumerable ancestors who lived before that ceremony was instituted, or in countries where it was not known,—where, or how would my immortal part have existed at this time, or in what shape would these bodily elements have been compounded with which it is invested? A single miscarriage among my millions of grandmothers might have cut off the entail of my mortal being!
The snuff of a candle,—a fall,—a fright,—nay, even a fit of anger! Such things are happening daily,—yea, hourly, upon this peopled earth. One such mishap among so many millions of cases, millions ten million times told, centillions multiplied beyond the vocabulary of numeration, and ascending to ψαμμακοσὶα,—which word having been coined by a certain Alexis (perhaps no otherwise remembered,) and latinized arenaginta by Erasmus, is now Anglicized sandillions by me;—one such among them all!—I tremble to think of it!
1 COWLEY.
Again. How often has it depended upon political events! If the Moors had defeated Charles Martel; if William instead of Harold had fallen in the Battle of Hastings; if bloody Queen Mary had left a child; or if blessed Queen Mary had not married the Prince of Orange! In the first case the English might now have been Musselmen; in the second they would have continued to use the Saxon tongue, and in either of those cases the Ego could not have existed; for if Arabian blood were put in, or Norman taken out, the whole chain of succession would have been altered. The two latter cases perhaps might not have affected the bodily existence of the Ego; but the first might have entailed upon him the curse of Popery, and the second if it had not subjected him to the same curse, would have made him the subject of a despotic government. In neither case could he have been capable of excogitating lucubrations, such as this high history contains: for either of these misfortunes would have emasculated his mind, unipsefying and unegofying the Ipsissimus Ego.
Another chance must be mentioned. One of my ancestors was, as the phrase is, out in a certain rebellion. His heart led him into the field and his heels got him out of it. Had he been less nimble,—or had he been taken and hanged, and hanged he would have been if taken,— there would have been no Ego at this day, no history of Dr. Daniel Dove. The Doctor would have been like the heroes who lived before Agamemnon, and his immortalizer would never have lived at all.
DANIEL DOVE'S ARRIVAL AT DONCASTER. THE ORGAN IN ST. GEORGE'S CHURCH. THE PULPIT. MRS. NEALE'S BENEFACTION.
It was in the Mayoralty of Thomas Pheasant (as has already been said) and in the year of our Lord 1739, that Daniel Dove the younger, having then entered upon his seventeenth year, first entered the town of Doncaster and was there delivered by his excellent father to the care of Peter Hopkins. They loved each other so dearly, that this, which was the first day of their separation, was to both the unhappiest of their lives.
The great frost commenced in the winter of that year; and with the many longing lingering thoughts which Daniel cast towards his home, a wish was mingled that he could see the frozen waterfall in Weathercote Cave.
It was a remarkable era in Doncaster also, because the Organ was that year erected, at the cost of five hundred guineas, raised by voluntary subscription among the parishioners. Harris and Byfield were the builders, and it is still esteemed one of the best in the kingdom. When it was opened, the then curate, Mr. Fawkes, preached a sermon for the occasion, in which after having rhetorized in praise of sacred music, and touched upon the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer and all kinds of instruments, he turned to the organ and apostrophized it thus;—“But O what—O what—what shall I call thee by? thou divine Box of sounds!”
That right old worthy Francis Quarles of quaint memory,—and the more to be remembered for his quaintness,—knew how to improve an organ somewhat better than Mr. Fawkes. His poem upon one is the first in his Divine Fancies, and whether he would have it ranked among Epigrams, Meditations, or Observations, perhaps he could not himself tell. The Reader may class it as he pleases.
The question whether instrumental music may lawfully be introduced into the worship of God in the Churches of the New Testament, has been considered by Cotton Mather and answered to his own satisfaction and that of his contemporary countrymen and their fellow puritans, in his “Historical Remarks upon the discipline practised in the Churches of New England.”—“The Instrumental Music used in the old Church of Israel,” he says, “was an Institution of God; it was the Commandment of the Lord by the Prophets; and the Instruments are called God's Instruments, and Instruments of the Lord. Now there is not one word of Institution in the New Testament for Instrumental Music in the Worship of God. And because the holy God rejects all he does not command in his worship, he now therefore in effect says to us, I will not hear the melody of thy Organs. But on the other hand the rule given doth abundantly intimate that no voice is now heard in the Church but what is significant, and edifying by signification; which the voice of Instruments is not.”
Worse logic than this and weaker reasoning no one would wish to meet with in the controversial writings of a writer from whose opinions he differs most widely. The Remarks form part of that extraordinary and highly interesting work the Magnalia Christi Americana. Cotton Mather is such an author as Fuller would have been if the old English Worthy, instead of having been from a child trained up in the way he should go, had been calvinisticated till the milk of human kindness with which his heart was always ready to overflow had turned sour.
“Though Instrumental Music,” he proceeds to say, “were admitted and appointed in the worship of God under the Old Testament, yet we do not find it practised in the Synagogue of the Jews, but only in the Temple. It thence appears to have been a part of the ceremonial Pedagogy which is now abolished; nor can any say it was a part of moral worship. And whereas the common usage now hath confined Instrumental Music to Cathedrals, it seems therein too much to Judaize,—which to do is a part of the Anti-Christian Apostacy,—as well as to Paganize.—If we admit Instrumental Music in the worship of God, how can we resist the imposition of all the instruments used among the ancient Jews? Yea, Dancing as well as playing, and several other Judaic actions?”
During the short but active reign of the Puritans in England, they acted upon this preposterous opinion, and sold the Church organs, without being scrupulous concerning the uses to which they might be applied. A writer of that age, speaking of the prevalence of drunkenness, as a national vice, says, “that nothing may be wanting to the height of luxury and impiety of this abomination, they have translated the organs out of the Churches to set them up in taverns, chaunting their dithyrambics and bestial bacchanalias to the tune of those instruments which were wont to assist them in the celebration of God's praises, and regulate the voices of the worst singers in the world,—which are the English in their churches at present.”
It cannot be supposed that the Organs which were thus disposed of, were instruments of any great cost or value. An old pair of Organs, (for that was the customary mode of expression, meaning a set,—and in like manner a pair of cards, for a pack;)—an old pair of this kind belonging to Lambeth Church was sold in 1565 for £1. 10s. Church Organs therefore, even if they had not been at a revolutionary price, would be within the purchase of an ordinary vintner. “In country parish Churches,” says Mr. Denne the Antiquary, “even where the district was small, there was often a choir of singers, for whom forms, desks and books were provided; and they probably most of them had benefactors who supplied them with a pair of organs that might more properly have been termed a box of whistles. To the best of my recollection there were in the chapels of some of the Colleges in Cambridge very, very, indifferent instruments. That of the chapel belonging to our old house was removed before I was admitted.”
The use of the organ has occasioned a great commotion, if not a schism, among the methodists of late. Yet our holy Herbert could call Church music the “sweetest of sweets;” and describe himself when listening to it, as disengaged from the body, and “rising and falling with its wings.”
Harris, the chief builder of the Doncaster Organ, was a contemporary and rival of Father Smith, famous among Organists. Each built one for the Temple Church, and Father Smith's had most votes in its favor. The peculiarity of the Doncaster Organ, which was Harris's masterpiece, is, its having, in the great organ, two trumpets and a clarion, throughout the whole compass; and these stops are so excellent, that a celebrated musician said every pipe in them was worth its weight in silver.
Our Doctor dated from that year, in his own recollections, as the great era of his life. It served also for many of the Doncastrians, as a date to which they carried back their computations, till the generation which remembered the erecting of the organ was extinct.
This was the age of Church improvement in Doncaster,—meaning here by Church, the material structure. Just thirty years before, the Church had been beautified and the ceiling painted, too probably to the disfigurement of works of a better architectural age. In 1721 the old peal of five bells was replaced with eight new ones, of new metal, heretofore spoken of. In 1723 the church floor and church yard, which had both been unlevelled by Death's levelling course, were levelled anew, and new rails were placed to the altar. Two years later the Corporation gave the new Clock, and it was fixed to strike on the watch bell,—that clock which numbered the hours of Daniel Dove's life from the age of seventeen till that of seventy. In 1736 the west gallery was put up, and in 1741, ten years after the organ, a new pulpit, but not in the old style; for pulpits which are among the finest works of art in Brabant and Flanders, had degenerated in England, and in other protestant countries.
This probably was owing, in our own country, as much to the prevalence of puritanism, as to the general depravation of taste. It was for their beauty or their splendour that the early Quakers inveighed with such vehemence against pulpits, “many of which places,” saith George Keith in his quaking days, “as we see in England and many other countries, have a great deal of superfluity, and vain and superfluous labour and pains of carving, painting and varnishing upon them, together with your cloth and velvet cushion in many places; because of which, and not for the height of them above the ground, we call them Chief Places. But as for a commodious place above the ground whereon to stand when one doth speak in an assembly, it was never condemned by our friends, who also have places whereupon to stand, when to minister, as they had under the Law.”
In 1743 a marble Communion Table was placed in the Church, and— (passing forward more rapidly than the regular march of this narration, in order to present these ecclesiastical matters without interruption,)—a set of chimes were fixed in 1754—merry be the memory of those by whom this good work was effected! The north and south galleries were re-built in 1765; and in 1767 the church was white-washed, a new reading desk put up, the pulpit removed to what was deemed a more convenient station, and Mrs. Neale gave a velvet embroidered cover and cushion for it,—for which her name is enrolled among the benefactors of St. George's Church.
That velvet which, when I remember it, had lost the bloom of its complexion, will hardly have been preserved till now even by the dyer's renovating aid: and its embroidery has long since passed through the goldsmith's crucible. Sic transit excites a more melancholy feeling in me when a recollection like this arises in my mind, than even the “forlorn hic jacet” of a neglected tombstone. Indeed such is the softening effect of time upon those who have not been rendered obdurate and insensible by the world and the world's law, that I do not now call to mind without some emotion even that pulpit, to which I certainly bore no good will in early life, when it was my fortune to hear from it so many somniferous discourses; and to bear away from it, upon pain of displeasure in those whose displeasure to me was painful, so many texts, chapter and verse, few or none of which had been improved to my advantage. “Public sermons”—(hear! hear! for Martin Luther speaketh!) “public sermons do very little edify children, who observe and learn but little thereby. It is more needful that they be taught and well instructed with diligence in schools; and at home that they be orderly heard and examined in what they have learned. This way profiteth much; it is indeed very wearisome, but it is very necessary.” May I not then confess that no turn of expression however felicitous,—no collocation of words however emphatic and beautiful—no other sentences whatsoever, although rounded, or pointed for effect with the most consummate skill, have ever given me so much delight, as those dear phrases which are employed in winding up a sermon, when it is brought to its long-wished-for close.
It is not always, nor necessarily thus; nor ever would be so if these things were ordered as they might and ought to be. Hugh Latimer, Bishop Taylor, Robert South, John Wesley, Robert Hall, Bishop Jebb, Bishop Heber, Christopher Benson, your hearers felt no such tedium! when you reached that period it was to them like the cessation of a strain of music, which while it lasted had rendered them insensible to the lapse of time.
“I would not,” said Luther, “have preachers torment their hearers and detain them with long and tedious preaching.”
The first years of Daniel's abode in Doncaster were distinguished by many events of local memorability. The old Friar's bridge was taken down, and a new one with one large arch built in its stead. Turnpikes were erected on the roads to Saltsbrook and to Tadcaster; and in 1742 Lord Semple's regiment of Highlanders marched through the town, being the first soldiers without breeches who had ever been seen there since breeches were in use. In 1746 the Mansion House was begun, next door to Peter Hopkins's, and by no means to his comfort while the work was going on, nor indeed after it was completed, its effect upon his chimnies having heretofore been noticed. The building was interrupted by the rebellion. An army of six thousand English and Hessians was then encamped upon Wheatley Hills; and a Hessian general dying there, was buried in St. George's Church; from whence his leaden coffin was stolen by the grave-digger.
Daniel had then compleated his twenty-second year. Every summer he paid a month's visit to his parents; and those were happy days, not the less so to all parties because his second home had become almost as dear to him as his first. Guy did not live to see the progress of his pupil; he died a few months after the lad had been placed at Doncaster, and the delight of Daniel's first return was overclouded by this loss. It was a severe one to the elder Daniel, who lost in the Schoolmaster his only intellectual companion.
I have sought in vain for Richard Guy's tombstone in Ingleton churchyard. That there is one there can hardly, I think, be doubted; for if he left no relations who regarded him, nor perhaps effects enough of his own to defray this last posthumous and not necessary expence; and if Thomas Gent of York, who published the old poem of Flodden Field from his transcript, after his death, thought he required no other monument; Daniel was not likely to omit this last tribute of respect and affection to his friend. But the churchyard, which, when his mortal remains were deposited there, accorded well with its romantic site, on a little eminence above the roaring torrent, and with the then retired character of the village, and with the solemn use to which it was consecrated, is now a thickly-peopled burial-ground. Since their time manufactures have been established in Ingleton, and though eventually they proved unsuccessful, and were consequently abandoned, yet they continued long enough in work largely to encrease the population of the church-yard. Amid so many tombs the stone which marked poor Guy's resting-place might escape even a more diligent search than mine. Nearly a century has elapsed since it was set up: in the course of that time its inscription not having been re-touched, must have become illegible to all but an antiquary's poring and practised eyes; and perhaps to them also unless aided by his tracing tact, and by the conjectural supply of connecting words, syllables or letters: indeed the stone itself has probably become half interred, as the earth around it has been disturbed and raised. Time corrodes our epitaphs, and buries our very tombstones.
Returning pensively from my unsuccessful search in the churchyard to the little inn at Ingleton, I found there upon a sampler, worked in 1824 by Elizabeth Brown, aged 9, and framed as an ornament for the room which I occupied, some lines in as moral a strain of verse, as any which I had that day perused among the tombs. And I transcribed them for preservation, thinking it not improbable that they had been originally composed by Richard Guy for the use of his female scholars, and handed down for a like purpose, from one generation to another. This may be only a fond imagination, and perhaps it might not have occurred to me at another time; but many compositions have been ascribed in modern as well as ancient times, and indeed daily are so, to more celebrated persons, upon less likely grounds. These are the verses;
A FATHER'S MISGIVINGS CONCERNING HIS SON'S DESTINATION. PETER HOPKINS'S GENEROSITY. DANIEL IS SENT ABROAD TO GRADUATE IN MEDICINE.
The elder Daniel saw in the marked improvement of his son at every yearly visit more and more cause to be satisfied with himself for having given him such a destination, and to thank Providence that the youth was placed with a master whose kindness and religious care of him might truly be called fatherly. There was but one consideration which sometimes interfered with that satisfaction, and brought with it a sense of uneasiness. The Doves from time immemorial had belonged to the soil as fixedly as the soil had belonged to them. Generation after generation they had moved in the same contracted sphere, their wants and wishes being circumscribed alike within their own few hereditary acres. Pride, under whatever form it may shew itself, is of the Devil; and though Family Pride may not be its most odious manifestation, even that child bears a sufficiently ugly likeness of its father. But Family Feeling is a very different thing, and may exist as strongly in humble as in high life. Naboth was as much attached to the vineyard, the inheritance of his fathers, as Ahab could be to the throne which had been the prize, and the reward, or punishment, of his father Omri's ambition.
This feeling sometimes induced a doubt in Daniel whether affection for his son had not made him overlook his duty to his forefathers;—whether the fixtures of the land are not happier and less in the way of evil than the moveables;—whether he had done right in removing the lad from that station of life in which he was born, in which it had pleased God to place him; divorcing him as it were from his paternal soil, and cutting off the entail of that sure independence, that safe contentment, which his ancestors had obtained and preserved for him, and transmitted to his care to be in like manner by him preserved and handed down. The latent poetry which there was in the old man's heart made him sometimes feel as if the fields and the brook, and the hearth and the graves reproached him for having done this! But then he took shelter in the reflection that he had consulted the boy's true welfare, by giving him opportunities of storing and enlarging his mind; that he had placed him in the way of intellectual advancement, where he might improve the talents which were committed to his charge, both for his own benefit and for that of his fellow-creatures. Certain he was that whether he had acted wisely or not, he had meant well. He was conscious that his determination had not been made without much and anxious deliberation, nor without much and earnest prayer; hitherto, he saw, that the blessing which he prayed for had followed it, and he endeavoured to make his heart rest in thankful and pious hope that that blessing would be continued. “Wouldst thou know,” says Quarles, “the lawfulness of the action which thou desirest to undertake, let thy devotion recommend it to divine blessing. If it be lawful thou shalt perceive thy heart encouraged by thy prayer; if unlawful thou shalt find thy prayer discouraged by thy heart. That action is not warrantable which either blushes to beg a blessing, or, having succeeded, dares not present a thanksgiving.” Daniel might safely put his conduct to this test; and to this test in fact his own healthy and uncorrupted sense of religion led him, though probably he had never read these golden words of Quarles the Emblemist.
It was therefore with no ordinary delight that our good Daniel received a letter from his son, asking permission to go to Leyden, in conformity with his Master's wishes, and there prosecute his studies long enough to graduate as a Doctor in medicine. Mr. Hopkins, he said, would generously take upon himself the whole expence, having adopted him as his successor, and almost as a son; for as such he was treated in all respects, both by him and by his mistress, who was one of the best of women. And indeed it appeared that Mr. Hopkins had long entertained this intention, by the care which he had taken to make him keep up and improve the knowledge of Latin which he had acquired under Mr. Guy.
The father's consent as might be supposed was thankfully given; and accordingly Daniel Dove in the twenty-third year of his age embarked from Kingston upon Hull for Rotterdam, well provided by the care and kindness of his benevolent master with letters of introduction and of credit; and still better provided with those religious principles which though they cannot ensure prosperity in this world, ensure to us things of infinitely greater moment,—good conduct, peace of mind, and the everlasting reward of the righteous.
CONCERNING THE INTEREST WHICH DANIEL THE ELDER TOOK IN THE DUTCH WAR, AND MORE ESPECIALLY IN THE SIEGE AND PROVIDENTIAL DELIVERY OF LEYDEN.
There were two portions of history with which the elder Daniel was better acquainted than most men,—that of Edward the Third's reign, and that of the Wars in the Netherlands down to the year 1608. Upon both subjects he was homo unius libri; such a man is proverbially formidable at his own weapon; and the book with which Johnson immortalized Osborne the bookseller, by knocking him down with it, was not a more formidable folio than either of those from which Daniel derived this knowledge.
Now of all the events in the wars of the Low Countries, there was none which had so strongly affected his imagination as the siege of Leyden. The patient fortitude of the besieged, and their deliverance, less by the exertions of man, (though no human exertions were omitted), than by the special mercy of Him whom the elements obey, and in whom they had put their trust, were in the strong and pious mind of Daniel, things of more touching interest than the tragedy of Haarlem, or the wonders of military science and of courage displayed at the siege of Antwerp. Who indeed could forget the fierce answer of the Leydeners when they were, for the last time, summoned to surrender, that the men of Leyden would never surrender while they had one arm left to eat, and another to fight with! And the not less terrible reply of the Burgemeester Pieter Adriaanzoon Vander Werf, to some of the townsmen when they represented to him the extremity of famine to which they were reduced; “I have sworn to defend this city,” he made answer, “and by God's help I mean to keep that oath! but if my death can help ye men, here is my body! cut it in pieces, and share it among ye as far as it will go.” And who without partaking in the hopes and fears of the contest, almost as if it were still at issue, can peruse the details of that amphibious battle (if such an expression may be allowed) upon the inundated country, when, in the extremity of their distress, and at a time when the Spaniards said that it was as impossible for the Hollanders to save Leyden from their power, as it was for them to pluck the stars from heaven, “a great south wind, which they might truly say came from the grace of God,” set in with such a spring tide, that in the course of eight and forty hours, the inundation rose half a foot, thus rendering the fields just passable for the flat-bottomed boats which had been provided for that service! A naval battle, among the trees; where the besieged, though it was fought within two miles of their walls, could see nothing because of the foliage; and amid such a labyrinth of dykes, ditches, rivers and fortifications, that when the besiegers retired from their palisades and sconces, the conquerors were not aware of their own success, nor the besieged of their deliverance!
“In this delivery,” says the historian, “and in every particular of the enterprise, doubtless all must be attributed to the mere providence of God, neither can man challenge any glory therein; for without a miracle all the endeavours of the Protestants had been as wind. But God who is always good, would not give way to the cruelties wherewith the Spaniards threatened this town, with all the insolencies whereof they make profession in the taking of towns (although they be by composition) without any respect of humanity or honesty. And there is not any man but will confess with me, if he be not some atheist, or epicure, (who maintain that all things come by chance,) that this delivery is a work which belongs only unto God. For if the Spaniards had battered the town but with four cannons only, they had carried it, the people being so weakened with famine, as they could not endure any longer: besides a part of them were ill affected, and very many of their best men were dead of the plague. And for another testimony that it was God only who wrought, the town was no sooner delivered, but the wind which was south-west, and had driven the water out of the sea into the country, turned to north-east, and did drive it back again into the sea, as if the south-west wind had blown those three days only to that effect; wherefore they might well say that both the winds and the sea had fought for the town of Leyden. And as for the resolution of the States of Holland to drown the country, and to do that which they and their Prince, together with all the commanders, captains and soldiers of the army shewed in this sea-course, together with the constancy and resolution of the besieged to defend themselves, notwithstanding so many miseries which they suffered, and so many promises and threats which were made unto them, all in like sort proceeded from a divine instinct.”
In the spirit of thoughtful feeling that this passage breathes, was the whole history of that tremendous struggle perused by the elder Daniel; and Daniel the son was so deeply imbued with the same feeling, that if he had lived till the time of the Peninsular War, he would have looked upon the condition to which Spain was reduced, as a consequence of its former tyranny, and as an awful proof how surely, soon or late, the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children.
Oh that all history were regarded in this spirit! “Even such as are in faith most strong, of zeal most ardent, should not,” says one of the best and wisest of Theologians, “much mispend their time in comparing the degenerate fictions, or historical relations of times ancient or modern, with the everlasting truth. For though this method could not add much increase either to their faith or zeal, yet would it doubtless much avail for working placid and mild affections. The very penmen of Sacred Writ themselves were taught patience, and instructed in the ways of God's providence, by their experience of such events as the course of time is never barren of; not always related by canonical authors, nor immediately testified by the Spirit; but oftimes believed upon a moral certainty, or such a resolution of circumstances concurrent into the first cause or disposer of all affairs as we might make of modern accidents, were we otherwise partakers of the Spirit, or would we mind heavenly matters as much as earthly.”
VOYAGE TO ROTTERDAM AND LEYDEN. THE AUTHOR CANNOT TARRY TO DESCRIBE THAT CITY. WHAT HAPPENED THERE TO DANIEL DOVE.
He took great content, exceeding delight in that his voyage. As who doth not that shall attempt the like?—For peregrination charms our senses with such unspeakable and sweet variety, that some count him unhappy that never travelled, a kind of prisoner, and pity his case that from his cradle to his old age he beholds the same still; still, still, the same, the same!
“Why did Dan remain in ships?” says Deborah the Prophetess in that noble song, which if it had been composed in Greek instead of Hebrew would have made Pindar hide his diminished head, or taught him a loftier strain than even he has reached in his eagle flights—“Why did Dan remain in ships?” said the Prophetess. Our Daniel during his rough passage from the Humber to the Maese, thought that nothing should make him do so. Yet when all danger real or imaginary was over, upon that deep
when all the discomforts and positive sufferings of the voyage were at an end; and when the ship,—
had entered the smooth waters of that stately river, and was gliding
he felt that the delight of setting foot on shore after a sea voyage, and that too the shore of a foreign country, for the first time, is one of the few pleasures which exceed any expectation that can be formed of them.
1 B. JONSON, v. 8, p. 37.
2 QUARLES.
He used to speak of his landing, on a fine autumnal noon, in the well-wooded and well-watered city of Rotterdam, and of his journey along what he called the high-turnpike canal from thence to Leyden, as some of the pleasantest recollections of his life. Nothing he said was wanting to his enjoyment, but that there should have been some one to have partaken it with him in an equal degree. But the feeling that he was alone in a foreign land sate lightly on him, and did not continue long,—young as he was, with life and hope before him, healthful of body and of mind, cheerful as the natural consequence of that health corporeal and mental, and having always much to notice and enough to do—the one being an indispensable condition of happiness, the other a source of pleasure as long as it lasts; and where there is a quick eye and an enquiring mind, the longest residence abroad is hardly long enough to exhaust it.
No day in Daniel's life had ever passed in such constant and pleasurable excitement as that on which he made his passage from Rotterdam to Leyden, and took possession of the lodgings which Peter Hopkins's correspondent had engaged for him. His reception was such as instantly to make him feel that he was placed with worthy people. The little apprehensions, rather than anxieties, which the novelty of his situation occasioned, the sight of strange faces with which he was to be domesticated, and the sound of a strange language, to which, harsh and uninviting as it seemed, his ear and speech must learn to accustom themselves, did not disquiet his first night's rest. And having fallen asleep notwithstanding the new position to which a Dutch bolster constrained him, he was not disturbed by the storks,
(for with Ben Jonson's leave, this may much more appropriately be said of them than of the ravens) nor by the watchmen's rappers, or clap-sticks, which seem to have been invented in emulous imitation of the stork's instrumental performance.
But you and I, Reader, can afford to make no tarriance in Leyden. I cannot remain with you here till you could see the Rector Magnificus in his magnificence. I cannot accompany you to the monument of that rash Baron who set the crown of Bohemia in evil hour upon the Elector Palatine's unlucky head. I cannot take you to the graves of Boerhaave and of Scaliger. I cannot go with you into that library of which Heinsius said, when he was Librarian there, “I no sooner set foot in it and fasten the door, but I shut out ambition, love, and all those vices of which idleness is the mother and ignorance the nurse; and in the very lap of Eternity among so many illustrious souls I take my seat, with so lofty a spirit that I then pity the great who know nothing of such happiness.”—Plerunque in quâ simulac pedem posui, foribus pessulum abdo, ambitionem autem, amorem, libidinem, &c. excludo, quorum parens est ignavia, imperitia nutrix; et in ipso æternitatis gremio, inter tot illustres animas sedem mihi sumo, cum ingenti quidem animo, ut subinde magnatum me misereat qui felicitatem hanc ignorant! I cannot walk with you round the ramparts, from which wide circling and well shaded promenade you might look down upon a large part of the more than two thousand gardens which a century ago surrounded this most horticultural city of a horticultural province, the garden, as it was called of Holland, that is of the land of Gardeners. I cannot even go up the Burgt with you, though it be pretended that the Hengist of Anglo-Saxon history erected it; nor can I stop at the entrance of that odd place, for you to admire, (as you could not but admire,) the Lion of the United Provinces, who stands there erect and rampant in menacing attitude, grinning horribly a ghastly smile, his eyes truculent, his tail in full elevation, and in action correspondent to his motto Pugno pro Patria, wielding a drawn sword in his dreadful right paw.
Dear reader, we cannot afford time for going to Oegstgeest, though the first Church in Holland is said to have been founded there by St. Willebord, and its burial ground is the Campo Santo of the Dutch Roman Catholics, as Bunhill Fields of the English Dissenters. Nor can I accompany thee to Noortwyck and describe to thee its fish-ponds, its parterres, the arabesque carpet work of its box, and the espalier walls or hedges, with the busts which were set in the archways, such as they existed when our Doctor, in his antedoctorial age, was a student at Leyden, having been kept up till that time in their old fashion by the representatives of Janus Dousa. We cannot, dear Reader, tarry to visit the gardens in that same pleasant village from which the neighbouring cities are supplied with medicinal plants; where beds of ranunculuses afford, when in blossom, a spectacle which no exhibition of art could rival in splendour and in beauty; and from whence rose leaves are exported to Turkey, there to have their essential oil extracted for Mahometan luxury.
We must not go to see the sluices of the Rhine, which Daniel never saw, because in his time the Rhine had no outlet through these Downs. We cannot walk upon the shore at Katwyck, where it was formerly a piece of Dutch courtship for the wooer to take his mistress in his arms, carry her into the sea till he was more than knee deep, set her down upon her feet, and then bearing her out again, roll her over and over upon the sand hills by way of drying her. We have no time for visiting that scene of the Batavian Arcadia. No, reader, I cannot tarry to shew thee the curiosities of Leyden, nor to talk over its memorabilia, nor to visit the pleasant parts of the surrounding country; though Gerard Goris says, that comme la Ville de Leide, entourée par les plaisants villages de Soeterwoude, Stompvic, Wilsveen, Tedingerbroek, Ougstgeest, Leiderdorp et Vennep, est la Cêntre et la Delice de toute Hollande, ainsi la Campagne à l'entour de cette celèbre Ville est comme un autre Eden ou Jardin de plaisance, qui avec ses beaux attraits tellement transporte l'attention du spectateur qu'il se trouve contraint, comme par un ravissment d'esprit, de confesser qu'il n'a jamais veu pais au monde, ou l'art et la nature si bien ont pris leurs mesures pour aporter et entremêler tout ce qui peut servir à l'aise, a la recreation, et au profit.
No, Reader, we must not linger here,
3 LEYDEN'S RAMP.
We must return to Doncaster. It would not be convenient for me to enter minutely, even if my materials were sufficient for that purpose, into the course of our student's life, from the time when he was entered among the Greenies of this famous University; nor to describe the ceremonies which were used at his ungreening, by his associates; nor the academical ones with which at the termination of his regular terms his degree in medicine was conferred. I can only tell thee that during his residence at Leyden he learnt with exemplary diligence whatever he was expected to learn there, and by the industrious use of good opportunities a great deal more.
But,—he fell in love with a Burgemeester's Daughter.
The arms of Leyden are two cross keys, gules in a field argent; and having been entrusted with the power of those keys to bind and to loose,—and moreover to bleed and to blister, to administer at his discretion pills, potions, and powders, and employ the whole artillery of the pharmacopœia,—Daniel returned to Doncaster. The papal keys convey no such general power as the keys of Leyden: they give authority over the conscience and the soul; now it is not every man that has a conscience, or that chuses to keep one; and as for souls, if it were not an article of faith to believe otherwise,—one might conclude that the greater part of mankind had none from the utter disregard of them which is manifested in the whole course of their dealings with each other. But bodily diseases are among the afflictions which flesh is heir to; and we are not more surely fruges consumere nati, than we are born to consume physic also, greatly to the benefit of that profession in which Daniel Dove had now obtained his commission.
But though he was now M. D. in due form, and entitled to the insignia of the professional wig, the muff, and the gold-headed cane, it was not Mr. Hopkins's intention that he should assume his title, and commence practice as a physician. This would have been an unpromising adventure; whereas on the other hand the consideration which a regular education at Leyden, then the most flourishing school of medicine, would obtain for him in the vicinity, was a sure advantage. Hopkins could now present him as a person thoroughly qualified to be his successor: and if at any future time Dove should think proper to retire from the more laborious parts of his calling, and take up his rank, it would be in his power to do so.
But one part of my Readers are I suspect, at this time a little impatient to know something about the Burgemeester's Daughter; and I, because of the
am bound to satisfy their natural and becoming curiosity. Not however in this place; for though love has its bitters I never will mix it up in the same chapter with physic. Daniel's passion for the Burgemeester's Daughter must be treated of in a chapter by itself, this being a mark of respect due to the subject, to her beauty, and to the dignity of Mynheer, her Wel Edel, Groot, Hoogh-Achtbaer father.
1 SPENSER.
First however I must dispose of an objection.
There may be readers who, though they can understand why a lady instead of telling her love, should
will think it absurd to believe that any man should fix his affections as Daniel did upon the Burgemeester's Daughter, on a person whom he had no hopes of obtaining, and with whom, as will presently appear, he never interchanged a word. I cannot help their incredulity. But if they will not believe me they may perhaps believe the newspapers which about the year 1810 related the following case in point.
“A short time since a curious circumstance happened. The Rector of St. Martin's parish was sent for to pray by a gentleman of the name of Wright, who lodged in St. James' street, Pimlico. A few days afterwards Mr. Wright's solicitor called on the Rector, to inform him that Mr. Wright was dead, and had made a codicil to his will wherein he had left him £1000., and Mr. Abbott the Speaker of the House of Commons £2000., and all his personal property and estates, deer-park and fisheries &c. to Lady Frances Bruce Brudenell, daughter of the Earl of Ailesbury. Upon the Rector's going to Lord Ailesbury's to inform her Ladyship, the house steward said she was married to Sir Henry Wilson of Chelsea Park, but he would go to her Ladyship and inform her of the matter. Lady Frances said she did not know any such person as Mr. Wright, but desired the Steward to go to the Rector to get the whole particulars, and say she would wait on him the next day: she did so, and found to her great astonishment that the whole was true. She afterwards went to St. James' Street and saw Mr. Wright in his coffin; and then she recollected him, as having been a great annoyance to her many years ago at the Opera House, where he had a box next to hers: he never spoke to her, but was continually watching her, look wherever she would, till at length she was under the necessity of requesting her friends to procure another box. The estates are from 20 to £30,000. a-year. Lady Frances intends putting all her family into mourning out of respect.”
Whether such a bequest ought to have been held good in law, and if so, whether it ought in conscience to have been accepted, are points upon which I should probably differ both from the Lord Chancellor, and the Lady Legatee.
SHEWING HOW THE YOUNG STUDENT FELL IN LOVE—AND HOW HE MADE THE BEST USE OF HIS MISFORTUNE.
Dear Ladies, I can neither tell you the name of the Burgemeester's Daughter, nor of the Burgemeester himself. If I ever heard them they have escaped my recollection. The Doctor used to say his love for her was in two respects like the small-pox; for he took it by inoculation, and having taken it, he was secured from ever having the disease in a more dangerous form.
The case was a very singular one. Had it not been so it is probable I should never have been made acquainted with it. Most men seem to consider their unsuccessful love, when it is over, as a folly which they neither like to speak of, nor to remember.
Daniel Dove never was introduced to the Burgemeester's Daughter, never was in company with her, and as already has been intimated never spoke to her. As for any hope of ever by any possibility obtaining a return of his affection, a devout Roman Catholic might upon much better grounds hope that Saint Ursula, or any of her Eleven Thousand Virgins would come from her place in Heaven to reward his devotion with a kiss. The gulph between Dives and Lazarus was not more insuperable than the distance between such an English Greeny at Leyden and a Burgemeester's Daughter.
Here, therefore, dear Ladies, you cannot look to read of
Nor will it be possible for me to give you
This I cannot do; for I never saw her picture, nor heard her features described. And most likely if I had seen her herself, in her youth and beauty, the most accurate description that words could convey might be just as like Fair Rosamond, Helen, Rachæl, or Eve. Suffice it to say that she was confessedly the beauty of that city, and of those parts.
1 METASIA.
But it was not for the fame of her beauty that Daniel fell in love with her: so little was there of this kind of romance in his nature, that report never raised in him the slightest desire of seeing her. Her beauty was no more than Hecuba's to him, till he saw it. But it so happened that having once seen it, he saw it frequently, at leisure, and always to the best advantage: “and so,” said he, “I received the disease by inoculation.”
Thus it was. There was at Leyden an English Presbyterian Kirk for the use of the English students, and any other persons who might chuse to frequent it. Daniel felt the want there of that Liturgy in the use of which he had been trained up: and finding nothing which could attract him to that place of worship except the use of his own language,—which moreover was not used by the preacher in any way to his edification,— he listened willingly to the advice of the good man with whom he boarded, and this was that, as soon as he had acquired a slight knowledge of the Dutch tongue, he should, as a means of improving himself in it, accompany the family to their parish church. Now this happened to be the very church which the Burgemeester and his family attended: and if the allotment of pews in that church had been laid out by Cupid himself, with the fore-purpose of catching Daniel as in a pitfall, his position there in relation to the Burgemeester's Daughter could not have been more exactly fixed.
“God forgive me!” said he; “for every Sunday while she was worshipping her Maker, I used to worship her.”
But the folly went no farther than this; it led him into no act of absurdity, for he kept it to himself; and he even turned it to some advantage, or rather it shaped for itself a useful direction, in this way: having frequent and unobserved opportunity of observing her lovely face, the countenance became fixed so perfectly in his mind, that even after the lapse of forty years, he was sure, he said, that if he had possessed a painter's art he could have produced her likeness. And having her beauty thus impressed upon his imagination, any other appeared to him only as a foil to it, during that part of his life when he was so circumstanced that it would have been an act of imprudence for him to run in love.
I smile to think how many of my readers when they are reading this chapter aloud in a domestic circle will bring up at the expression of running in love;—like a stage-coachman who driving at the smooth and steady pace of nine miles an hour on a macadamized road, comes upon some accidental obstruction only just in time to check the horses.
Amorosa who flies into love; and Amatura who flutters as if she were about to do the same; and Amoretta who dances into it, (poor creatures, God help them all three!) and Amanda,—Heaven bless her!—who will be led to it gently and leisurely along the path of discretion, they all make a sudden stop at the words.
OF THE VARIOUS WAYS OF GETTING IN LOVE. A CHAPTER CONTAINING SOME USEFUL OBSERVATIONS, AND SOME BEAUTIFUL POETRY.
Let cavillers know, that as the Lord John answered the Queen in that Italian Guazzo, an old, a grave discreet man is fittest to discourse of love-matters; because he hath likely more experience, observed more, hath a more staid judgement, can better discern, resolve, discuss, advise, give better cautions and more solid precepts, better inform his auditors in such a subject, and by reason of his riper years, sooner divert.
Slips of the tongue are sometimes found very inconvenient by those persons who, owing to some unlucky want of correspondence between their wits and their utterance, say one thing when they mean to say another, or bolt out something which the slightest degree of forethought would have kept unsaid. But more serious mischief arises from that misuse of words which occurs in all inaccurate writers. Many are the men, who merely for want of understanding what they say, have blundered into heresies and erroneous assertions of every kind, which they have afterwards passionately and pertinaciously defended, till they have established themselves in the profession, if not in the belief, of some pernicious doctrine or opinion, to their own great injury and that of their deluded followers, and of the commonwealth.
There may be an opposite fault; for indeed upon the agathokakological globe there are opposite qualities always to be found in parallel degrees, north and south of the equator.
A man may dwell upon words till he becomes at length a mere precisian in speech. He may think of their meaning till he loses sight of all meaning, and they appear as dark and mysterious to him as chaos and outer night. “Death! Grave!” exclaims Goethe's suicide, “I understand not the words!” and so he who looks for its quintessence might exclaim of every word in the dictionary.
They who cannot swim should be contented with wading in the shallows: they who can may take to the deep water, no matter how deep so it be clear. But let no one dive in the mud.
I said that Daniel fell in love with the Burgemeester's Daughter, and I made use of the usual expression because there it was the most appropriate: for the thing was accidental. He himself could not have been more surprized if, missing his way in a fog, and supposing himself to be in the Breedestraat of Leyden where there is no canal, he had fallen into the water;—nor would he have been more completely over head and ears at once.
A man falls in love, just as he falls down stairs. It is an accident,— perhaps, and very probably a misfortune; something which he neither intended, nor foresaw, nor apprehended. But when he runs in love it is as when he runs in debt; it is done knowingly and intentionally; and very often rashly, and foolishly, even if not ridiculously, miserably and ruinously.
Marriages that are made up at watering-places are mostly of this running sort; and there may be reason to think that they are even less likely to lead to—I will not say happiness, but to a very humble degree of contentment,—than those which are a plain business of bargain and sale; for into these latter a certain degree of prudence enters on both sides. But there is a distinction to be made here: the man who is married for mere worldly motives, without a spark of affection on the woman's part, may nevertheless get, in every worldly sense of the word, a good wife; and while English women continue to be what, thank Heaven they are, he is likely to do so: but when a woman is married for the sake of her fortune, the case is altered, and the chances are five hundred to one that she marries a villain, or at best a scoundrel.
Falling in love, and running in love are both, as every body knows, common enough; and yet less so than what I shall call catching love. Where the love itself is imprudent, that is to say where there is some just prudential cause or impediment why the two parties should not be joined together in holy matrimony, there is generally some degree of culpable imprudence in catching it, because the danger is always to be apprehended, and may in most cases be avoided. But sometimes the circumstances may be such as leave no room for censure, even when there may be most cause for compassion; and under such circumstances our friend, though the remembrance of the Burgemeester's daughter was too vivid in his imagination for him ever to run in love, or at that time deliberately to walk into it, as he afterwards did,—under such circumstances I say, he took a severe affection of this kind. The story is a melancholy one, and I shall relate not it in this place.
The rarest, and surely the happiest marriages are between those who have grown in love. Take the description of such a love in its rise and progress, ye thousands and tens of thousands who have what is called a taste for poetry,—take it in the sweet words of one of the sweetest and tenderest of English Poets; and if ye doubt upon the strength of my opinion whether Daniel deserves such praise, ask Leigh Hunt, or the Laureate, or Wordsworth, or Charles Lamb.
Take also the passage that presently follows this; it alludes to a game which has long been obsolete,—but some fair reader I doubt not will remember the lines when she dances next.
1 HYMEN'S TRIUMPH.
Whether chance or choice have most to do in the weighty concerns of love and matrimony, is as difficult a question, as whether chance or skill have most influence upon a game at backgammon. Both enter into the constitution of the game; and choice will always have some little to do with love, though so many other operating motives may be combined with it, that it sometimes bears a very insignificant part: but from marriage it is too frequently precluded on the one side, unwilling consent, and submission to painful circumstances supplying its place; and there is one sect of Christians, (the Moravians,) who where they hold to the rigour of their institute, preclude it on both sides. They marry by lot; and if divorces ever take place among them, the scandal has not been divulged to the profaner world.
Choice however is exercised among all other Christians; or where not exercised, it is presumed by a fiction of law or of divinity, call it which you will. The husband even insists upon it in China where the pig is bought in a poke; for when pigsnie arrives and the purchaser opens the close sedan chair in which she has been conveyed to his house, if he does not like her looks at first sight, he shuts her up again and sends her back.
But when a batchelor who has no particular attachment, makes up his mind to take unto himself a wife, for those reasons to which Uncle Toby referred the Widow Wadman as being to be found in the Book of Common Prayer, how then to choose is a matter of much more difficulty, than one who has never considered it could suppose. It would not be paradoxical to assert that in the sort of choice which such a person makes, chance has a much greater part than either affection or judgement. To set about seeking a wife is like seeking ones fortune, and the probability of finding a good one in such a quest is less, though poor enough Heaven knows, in both cases.
So sings Maria del Occidente, the most empassioned and most imaginative of all poetesses.
1 ZOPHIEL.
According to the new revelation of the Saint Simonians, every individual human being has had a fitting mate created, the one and only woman for every individual man, and the one and only man for every individual woman; and unless the persons so made, fitted and intended for each other, meet and are joined together in matrimonial bonds, there can be no perfect marriage for either, that harmonious union for which they were designed being frustrated for both. Read the words of the Chief of the New Hierarchy himself, Father Bazard: Il n'y a sur la terre pour chaque homme qu'une seule femme, et pour chaque femme qu'un seul homme, qui soient destinés à former dans le mariage l'union harmonique du couple.—Grâce aux lumieres de cette revelation, les individus les plus avancés peuvent aussi dès aujourd'hui sentir et former le lien qui doit les unir dans le mariage.
But if Sinner Simon and his disciples,—(most assuredly they ought to be unsainted!) were right in this doctrine, happy marriages would be far more uncommon than they are; the man might with better likelihood of finding it look for a needle in a bottle of hay, than seek for his other half in this wide world; and the woman's chance would be so immeasurably less, that no intelligible form of figures could express her fraction of it.
The man who gets in love because he has determined to marry, instead of marrying because he is in love, goes about to private parties and to public places in search of a wife; and there he is attracted by a woman's appearance, and the figure which she makes in public, not by her amiable deportment, her domestic qualities and her good report. Watering places might with equal propriety be called fishing places, because they are frequented by female anglers, who are in quest of such prey, the elder for their daughters, the younger for themselves. But it is a dangerous sport, for the fair Piscatrix is not more likely to catch a bonito, or a dorado, than she is to be caught by a shark.
Thomas Day, not old Thomas Day of the old glee, nor the young Thomas Day either,—a father and son whose names are married to immortal music,—but the Thomas Day who wrote Sandford and Merton, and who had a heart which generally led him right, and a head which as generally led him wrong; that Thomas Day thought that the best way of obtaining a wife to his mind, was to breed one up for himself. So he selected two little orphan girls from a charity school, with the intention of marrying in due time the one whom he should like best. Of course such proper securities as could alone justify the managers of the charity in consenting to so uncommon a transaction, were required and given. The experiment succeeded in every thing—except its specific object; for he found at last that love was not a thing thus to be bespoken on either side; and his Lucretia and Sabrina, as he named them, grew up to be good wives for other men. I do not know whether the life of Thomas Day has yet found its appropriate place in the Wonderful Magazine, or in the collection entitled Eccentric Biography,—but the Reader may find it livelily related in Miss Seward's Life of Darwin.
The experiment of breeding a wife is not likely to be repeated. None but a most determined theorist would attempt it; and to carry it into effect would require considerable means of fortune, not to mention a more than ordinary share of patience: after which there must needs be a greater disparity of years than can be approved in theory upon any due consideration of human nature, and any reasonable estimate of the chances of human life.
I have more to say, dear Ladies, upon that which to you is, and ought to be, the most interesting of all worldly subjects, matrimony, and the various ways by which it is brought about; but this is not the place for saying it. The Doctor is not at this time thinking of a wife: his heart can no more be taken so long as it retains the lively image of the Burgemeester's Daughter, than Troy-town while the Palladium was safe.
Imagine him, therefore, in the year of our Lord 1747, and in the twenty-sixth year of his age, returned to Doncaster, with the Burgemeester's Daughter, seated like the Lady in the Lobster, in his inmost breast; with physic in his head and at his fingers' ends; and with an appetite for knowledge which had long been feeding voraciously, digesting well, and increasing in its growth by what it fed on. Imagine him returned to Doncaster, and welcomed once more as a son by the worthy old Peter Hopkins and his good wife, in that comfortable habitation which I have heretofore described, and of which (as was at the same time stated) you may see a faithful representation in Miller's History of that good town; a faithful representation, I say, of what it was in 1804; the drawing was by Frederic Nash; and Edward Shirt made a shift to engrave it; the house had then undergone some alterations since the days when I frequented it; and now!—
Of all things in this our mortal pilgrimage one of the most joyful is the returning home after an absence which has been long enough to make the heart yearn with hope, and not sicken with it, and then to find when you arrive there that all is well. But the most purely painful of all painful things is to visit after a long long interval of time the place which was once our home;—the most purely painful, because it is unmixed with fear, anxiety, disappointment, or any other emotion but what belongs to the sense of time and change, then pressing upon us with its whole unalleviated weight.
It was my fortune to leave Doncaster early in life, and, having passed per varios casus, and through as large a proportion of good and evil in my humble sphere, as the pious Æneas, though not exactly per tot discrimina rerum, not to see it again till after an absence of more than forty years, when my way happened to lie through that town. I should never have had heart purposely to visit it, for that would have been seeking sorrow; but to have made a circuit for the sake of avoiding the place would have been an act of weakness; and no man who has a proper degree of self-respect will do any thing of which he might justly feel ashamed. It was evening, and late in autumn when I entered Doncaster, and alighted at the Old Angel Inn. “The Old Angel!” said I to my fellow-traveller; “you see that even Angels on earth grow old!”
My companion knew how deeply I had been indebted to Dr. Dove, and with what affection I cherished his memory. We presently sallied forth to look at his former habitation. Totally unknown as I now am in Doncaster, (where there is probably not one living soul who remembers either me, or my very name,) I had determined to knock at the door, at a suitable hour on the morrow, and ask permission to enter the house in which I had passed so many happy and memorable hours, long ago. My age and appearance I thought might justify this liberty; and I intended also to go into the garden and see if any of the fruit trees were remaining, which my venerable friend had planted, and from which I had so often plucked and ate.
When we came there, there was nothing by which I could have recognized the spot, had it not been for the Mansion House that immediately adjoined it. Half of its site had been levelled to make room for a street or road which had been recently opened. Not a vestige remained of the garden behind. The remaining part of the house had been re-built; and when I read the name of R. DENNISON on the door, it was something consolatory to see that the door itself was not the same which had so often opened to admit me.
Upon returning to the spot on the following morning I perceived that the part which had been re-built is employed as some sort of official appendage to the Mansion House; and on the naked side-wall now open to the new street, or road, I observed most distinctly where the old tall chimney had stood, and the outline of the old pointed roof. These were the only vestiges that remained; they could have no possible interest in any eyes but mine, which were likely never to behold them again; and indeed it was evident that they would soon be effaced as a deformity, and the naked side-wall smoothed over with plaster. But they will not be effaced from my memory, for they were the last traces of that dwelling which is the Kebla of my retrospective day-dreams, the Sanctum Sanctorum of my dearest recollections; and like an apparition from the dead, once seen, they were never to be forgotten.
A TRUCE WITH MELANCHOLY. GENTLEMEN SUCH AS THEY WERE IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1747. A HINT TO YOUNG LADIES CONCERNING THEIR GREAT GRANDMOTHERS.
Well might Ben Jonson call bell-ringing “the poetry of steeples!” It is a poetry which in some heart or other is always sure to move an accordant key; and there is not much of the poetry, so called by courtesy because it bears the appearance of verse, of which this can be said with equal truth. Doncaster since I was one of its inhabitants had been so greatly changed,—(improved I ought to say, for its outward changes had really been improvements,—) that there was nothing but my own recollections to carry me back into the past, till the clock of St. George's struck nine, on the evening of our arrival, and its chimes began to measure out the same time in the same tones, which I used to hear as regularly as the hours came round, forty long years ago.
Enough of this! My visit to Doncaster was incidentally introduced by the comparison which I could not chuse but make between such a return, and that of the Student from Leyden. We must now revert to the point from whence I strayed and go farther back than the forty years over which the chimes as if with magic had transported me. We must go back to the year 1747, when gentlemen wore sky-blue coats, with silver button holes and huge cuffs extending more than half way from the middle of the hand to the elbow, short breeches just reaching to the silver garters at the knee, and embroidered waistcoats with long flaps which came almost as low. Were I to describe Daniel Dove in the wig which he then wore, and which observed a modest mean between the bush of the Apothecary and the consequential foretop of the Physician with its depending knots, fore and aft; were I to describe him in a sober suit of brown or snuff-coloured dittos such as beseemed his profession, but with cuffs of the dimensions, waistcoat-flaps of the length, and breeches of the brevity before mentioned; Amorosa and Amatura and Amoretta would exclaim that love ought never to be named in connection with such a figure,—Amabilis, sweet girl in the very bloom of innocence and opening youth, would declare she never could love such a creature, and Amanda herself would smile, not contemptuously, nor at her idea of the man, but at the mutability of fashion. Smile if you will, young Ladies! your great grandmothers wore large hoops, peaked stomachers, and modesty-bits; their riding-habits and waistcoats were trimmed with silver, and they had very gentleman-like perukes for riding in, as well as gentleman-like cocked hats. Yet, young Ladies, they were as gay and giddy in their time as you are now, they were as attractive and as lovely; they were not less ready than you are to laugh at the fashions of those who had gone before them; they were wooed and won by gentlemen in short breeches, long flapped waistcoats, large cuffs and tie wigs; and the wooing and winning proceeded much in the same manner as it had done in the generations before them, as the same agreeable part of this world's business proceeds among yourselves, and as it will proceed when you will be as little thought of by your great-grand-daughters as your great-grand-mothers are at this time by you. What care you for your great-grand-mothers!
The law of entails sufficiently proves that our care for our posterity is carried far, sometimes indeed beyond what is reasonable and just. On the other hand it is certain that the sense of relationship in the ascending line produces in general little other feeling than that of pride in the haughty and high-born. That it should be so to a certain degree, is in the order of nature and for the general good: but that in our selfish state of society this indifference for our ancestors is greater than the order of nature would of itself produce, may be concluded from the very different feeling which prevailed among some of the ancients, and still prevails in other parts of the world.
He who said that he did not see why he should be expected to do any thing for Posterity, when Posterity had done nothing for him, might be deemed to have shown as much worthlessness as wit in this saying, if it were any thing more than the sportive sally of a light-hearted man. Yet one who “keeps his heart with all diligence,” knowing that “out of it are the issues of life,” will take heed never lightly to entertain a thought that seems to make light of a duty,—still less will he give it utterance. We owe much to Posterity, nothing less than all that we have received from our Forefathers. And for myself I should be unwilling to believe that nothing is due from us to our ancestors. If I did not acquire this feeling from the person who is the subject of these volumes, it was at least confirmed by him. He used to say that one of the gratifications which he promised himself after death, was that of becoming acquainted with all his progenitors, in order, degree above degree, up to Noah, and from him up to our first parents. “But,” said he, “though I mean to proceed regularly step by step, curiosity will make me in one instance trespass upon this proper arrangement, and I shall take the earliest opportunity of paying my respects to Adam and Eve.”
AN ATTEMPT IS MADE TO REMOVE THE UNPLEASANT IMPRESSION PRODUCED UPON THE LADIES BY THE DOCTOR'S TYE-WIG AND HIS SUIT OF SNUFF-COLOURED DITTOS.
I must not allow the feminine part of my readers to suppose that the Doctor when in his prime of life, was not a very likeable person in appearance, as well as in every thing else, although he wore what in the middle of the last century, was the costume of a respectable country practitioner in medicine. Though at Leyden he could only look at a Burgemeester's daughter as a cat may look at a King, there was not a Mayor or Alderman's daughter in Doncaster who would have thought herself disparaged if he had fixed his eyes upon her, and made her a proffer of his hand.
Yet as in the opinion of many dress “makes the man,” and any thing which departs widely from the standard of dress, “the fellow,” I must endeavour to give those young Ladies who are influenced more than they ought to be, and perhaps more than they are aware, by such an opinion, a more favourable notion of the Doctor's appearance, than they are likely to have if they bring him before their eyes in the fashion of his times. It will not assist this intention on my part, if I request you to look at him as you would look at a friend who was dressed in such a costume for a masquerade or a fancy ball; for your friend would expect and wish to be laughed at, having assumed the dress for that benevolent purpose. Well then, let us take off the aforesaid sad snuff-colour coat with broad deep cuffs; still the waistcoat with its long flaps, and the breeches that barely reach to the knee will provoke your merriment. We must not proceed farther in undressing him; and if I conceal these under a loose morning gown of green damask, the insuperable perriwig would still remain.
Let me then present him to your imagination, setting forth on horseback in that sort of weather which no man encounters voluntarily, but which men of his profession who practise in the Country are called upon to face at all seasons and all hours. Look at him in a great coat of the closest texture that the looms of Leeds could furnish,—one of those dreadnoughts the utility of which sets fashion at defiance. You will not observe his boot-stockings coming high above the knees; the coat covers them; and if it did not, you would be far from despising them now. His tie-wig is all but hidden under a hat, the brim of which is broad enough to answer in some degree the use of an umbrella. Look at him now, about to set off on some case of emergency; with haste in his expressive eyes, and a cast of thoughtful anxiety over one of the most benignant countenances that Nature ever impressed with the characters of good humour and good sense!
Was he then so handsome? you say. Nay, Ladies, I know not whether you would have called him so: for among the things which were too wonderful for him, yea, which he knew not, I suspect that Solomon might have included a woman's notion of handsomeness in man.
There is no portrait of Dr. Daniel Dove.
And there Horrebow, the Natural Historian of Iceland,—if Horrebow had been his biographer—would have ended this chapter.
“Here perchance,”—(observe, Reader, I am speaking now in the words of the Lord Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon,)—“here perchance a question would be asked,—(and yet I do marvel to hear a question made of so plain a matter,)—what should be the cause of this? If it were asked,” (still the Lord Keeper speaketh) “thus I mean to answer: That I think no man so blind but seeeth it, no man so deaf but heareth it, nor no man so ignorant but understandeth it.” “Il y a des demandes si sottes qu'on ne les sçauroit resoudre par autre moyen que par la moquerie et les absurdities; afin qu'une sottise pousse l'autre.”1
1 GARASSE.
But some reader may ask what have I answered here, or rather what have I brought forward the great authority of the Lord Keeper Sir Nicholas Bacon and the arch-vituperator P. Garasse, to answer for me? Do I take it for granted that the cause wherefore there is no portrait of Dr. Daniel Dove, should be thus apparent? or the reason why, there being no such portrait, Horrebow should simply have said so, and having so said, end therewith the chapter which he had commenced upon the subject.
O gentle reader you who ask this pertinent question,—I entirely agree with you! there is nothing more desirable in composition than perspicuity; and in perspicuity precision is implied. Of the Author who has attained it in his style, it may indeed be said, omne tulit punctum, so far as relates to style; for all other graces, those only excepted which only genius can impart, will necessarily follow. Nothing is so desirable, and yet it should seem that nothing is so difficult. He who thinks least about it when he is engaged in composition will be most likely to attain it, for no man ever attained it by labouring for it. Read all the treatises upon composition that ever were composed, and you will find nothing which conveys so much useful instruction as the account given by John Wesley of his own way of writing. “I never think of my style,” says he; “but just set down the words that come first. Only when I transcribe any thing for the press, then I think it my duty to see that every phrase be clear, pure and proper: conciseness which is now as it were natural to me, brings quantum sufficit of strength. If after all I observe any stiff expression, I throw it out neck and shoulders.” Let your words take their course freely; they will then dispose themselves in their natural order, and make your meaning plain;—that is, Mr. Author, supposing you have a meaning; and that it is not an insidious, and for that reason, a covert one. With all the head-work that there is in these volumes, and all the heart-work too, I have not bitten my nails over a single sentence which they contain. I do not say that my hand has not sometimes been passed across my brow; nor that the fingers of my left hand have not played with the hair upon my forehead,—like Thalaba's with the grass that grew beside Oneiza's tomb.
No people have pretended to so much precision in their language as the Turks. They have not only verbs active, passive, transitive, and reciprocal, but also verbs co-operative, verbs meditative, verbs frequentative, verbs negative, and verbs impossible; and moreover they have what are called verbs of opinion, and verbs of knowledge. The latter are used when the speaker means it to be understood that he speaks of his own sure knowledge, and is absolutely certain of what he asserts; the former when he advances it only as what he thinks likely, or believes upon the testimony of others.
Now in the Turkish language the word whereon both the meaning and the construction of the sentence depend, is placed at the end of a sentence which extends not unfrequently to ten, fifteen or twenty lines. What therefore they might gain in accuracy by this nice distinction of verbs must be more than counterbalanced by the ambiguity consequent upon long-windedness. And notwithstanding their conscientious moods, they are not more remarkable for veracity than their neighbours who in ancient times made so much use of the indefinite tenses, and were said to be always liars.
We have a sect in our own country who profess to use a strict and sincere plainness of speech; they call their dialect the plain language, and yet they are notorious for making a studied precision in their words, answer all the purposes of equivocation.
Chacun a son stile; le mien, comme vouz voyez, n'est pas laconique.
In reporting progress upon the subject of the preceding chapter, it appears that the question asked concerning the question that was answered, was not itself answered in that chapter; so that it still remains to be explained what it was that was so obvious as to require no other answer than the answer that was there given; whether it was the reason why there is no portrait of Dr. Daniel Dove? or the reason why Horrebow, if he had been the author of this book, would simply have said that there was none, and have said nothing more about it?
The question which was answered related to Horrebow. He would have said nothing more about the matter, because he would have thought there was nothing more to say; or because he agreed with Britain's old rhyming Remembrancer, that although
But if there be readers who admire a style of such barren brevity, I must tell them in the words of Estienne Pasquier that je fais grande conscience d'alambiquer mon esprit en telle espece d'escrite pour leur complaire. Do they take me for a Bottle-Conjurer that I am to compress myself into a quart, wine-merchants' measure, and be corked down? I must have “ample room and verge enough,”—a large canvas such as Haydon requires, and as Rubens required before him. When I pour out nectar for my guests it must be into
It is true I might have contented myself with merely saying there is no portrait of my venerable friend; and the benevolent reader would have been satisfied with the information, while at the same time he wished there had been one, and perhaps involuntarily sighed at thinking there was not. But I have duties to perform; first to the memory of my most dear philosopher and friend; secondly, to myself; thirdly, to posterity, which in this matter I cannot conscientiously prefer either to myself or my friend; fourthly, to the benevolent reader who delighteth in this book, and consequently loveth me therefore, and whom therefore I love, though, notwithstanding here is love for love between us, we know not each other now, and never shall! fourthly, I say to the benevolent reader, or rather readers, utriusque generis, and fifthly to the Public for the time being. “England expects every man to do his duty;” and England's expectation would not be disappointed if every Englishman were to perform his as faithfully and fully as I will do mine. Mark me, Reader, it is only of my duties to England, and to the parties above-mentioned that I speak; other duties I am accountable for elsewhere. God forbid that I should ever speak of them in this strain, or ever think of them otherwise than in humility and fear!
“What, more buffoonery!” says the Honorable Fastidious Feeble-wit who condescends to act occasionally as Small Critic to the Court Journal:— “what, still more of this buffoonery!”
“Yes, Sir,—vous ne recevrez de moy, sur le commencement et milieu de celuy-cy mien chapitre que bouffonnerie; et toutesfois bouffonnerie qui porte quant à soy une philosophie et contemplation generale de la vanité de ce monde.”1
1 PASQUIER.
“More absurdities still!” says Lord Make-motion Ganderman, “more and more absurdities!”
“Aye, my Lord!” as the Gracioso says in one of Calderon's Plays,
“Aye, my Lord!” as the old Spaniard says in his national poesy, “mas, y mas, y mas, y mas,” more and more and more and more. You may live to learn what vaunted maxims of your political philosophy are nothing else than absurdities in masquerade; what old and exploded follies there are, which with a little vamping and varnishing pass for new and wonderful discoveries;
This you may live to learn. As for my absurdities, they may seem very much beneath your sapience; but when I say hæ nugæ seria ducunt, (for a trite quotation when well-set is as good as one that will be new to every body) let me add, my Lord, that it will be well both for you and your country, if your practical absurdities do not draw after them consequences of a very different dye!
2 BEAUMONT and FLETCHER.
No, my Lord, as well as Aye, my Lord!
3 PEELE.
“More fooling,” exclaims Dr. Dense: he takes off his spectacles, lays them on the table beside him, with a look of despair, and applies to the snuff-box for consolation. It is a capacious box, and the Doctor's servant takes care that his master shall never find in it a deficiency of the best rappee. “More fooling!” says that worthy Doctor.
Fooling, say you, my learned Dr. Dense? Chiabrera will tell you
my erudite and good Doctor;
4 BEAUMONT and FLETCHER.
It is easy to talk of fooling and of folly, mais d'en savoir les ordres, les rangs, les distinctions; de connoître ces differences delicates qu'il y a de Folie à Folie; les affinités et les alliances qui se trouvent entrè la Sagesse et cette meme Folie, as Saint Evremond says; to know this is not under every one's nightcap; and perhaps my learned Doctor, may not be under your wig, orthodox and in full buckle as it is.
The Doctor is all astonishment, and almost begins to doubt whether I am fooling in earnest. Aye, Doctor! you meet in this world with false mirth as often as with false gravity; the grinning hypocrite is not a more uncommon character than the groaning one. As much light discourse comes from a heavy heart, as from a hollow one; and from a full mind as from an empty head. “Levity,” says Mr. Danby, “is sometimes a refuge from the gloom of seriousness. A man may whistle ‘for want of thought,’ or from having too much of it.”
“Poor creature!” says the Reverend Philocalvin Frybabe. “Poor creature! little does he think what an account he must one day render for every idle word!”
And what account, odious man, if thou art a hypocrite, and hardly less odious if thou art sincere in thine abominable creed,—what account wilt thou render for thine extempore prayers and thy set discourses! My words, idle as thou mayest deem them, will never stupify the intellect, nor harden the heart, nor besot the conscience like an opiate drug!
“Such facetiousness,” saith Barrow, “is not unreasonable or unlawful which ministereth harmless divertisement and delight to conversation; harmless, I say, that is, not entrenching upon piety, not infringing charity or justice, not disturbing peace. For Christianity is not so tetrical, so harsh, so envious as to bar us continually from innocent, much less from wholesome and useful pleasure, such as human life doth need or require. And if jocular discourse may serve to good purposes of this kind; if it may be apt to raise our drooping spirits, to allay our irksome cares, to whet our blunted industry, to recreate our minds, being tired and cloyed with graver occupations; if it may breed alacrity, or maintain good humour among us; if it may conduce to sweeten conversation and endear society, then is it not inconvenient, or unprofitable. If for those ends we may use other recreations, employing on them our ears and eyes, our hands and feet, our other instruments of sense and motion; why may we not as well to them accommodate our organs of speech and interior sense? Why should those games which excite our wit and fancies be less reasonable than those whereby our grosser parts and faculties are exercised? yea, why are not those more reasonable, since they are performed in a manly way, and have in them a smack of reason; seeing also they may be so managed, as not only to divert and please, but to improve and profit the mind, rousing and quickening it, yea, sometimes enlightening and instructing it, by good sense conveyed in jocular expression.”
But think not that in thus producing the authority of one of the wisest and best of men, I offer any apology for my levities to your Gravityships! they need it not and you deserve it not.
5 ORLANDO INNAMORATO.
Gentlemen, you have made me break the word of promise both to the eye and ear. I began this chapter with the intention of showing to the reader's entire satisfaction, why the question which was not asked, ought to be answered; and now another chapter must be appropriated to that matter! Many things happen between the cup and the lip, and between the beginning of a chapter and the conclusion thereof.
Wherefore there is no portrait of my excellent friend, is a question which ought to be answered, because the solution will exhibit something of what in the words of the old drinking song he used to call his “poor way of thinking.” And it is a question which may well be asked, seeing that in the circle wherein he moved, there were some persons of liberal habits and feelings as well as liberal fortune, who enjoyed his peculiarities, placed the fullest reliance upon his professional skill, appreciated most highly his moral and intellectual character, and were indeed personally attached to him in no ordinary degree.
For another reason also ought this question to be resolved; a reason which whatever the reader may think, has the more weight with me, because it nearly concerns myself. “There is indeed,” says the Philosopher of Bemerton, “a near relation between seriousness and wisdom, and one is a most excellent friend to the other. A man of a serious, sedate and considerate temper, as he is always in a ready disposition for meditation, (the best improvement both of knowledge and manners,) so he thinks without disturbance, enters not upon another notion till he is master of the first, and so makes clean work with it:—whereas a man of a loose, volatile and shattered humour, thinks only by fits and starts, now and then in a morning interval, when the serious mood comes upon him; and even then too, let but the least trifle cross his way, and his desultorious fancy presently takes the scent, leaves the unfinished and half-mangled notion, and skips away in pursuit of the new game.” Reader, it must be my care not to come under this condemnation; and therefore I must follow to the end the subject which is before me: quare autem nobis—dicendum videtur, ne temere secuti putemur; et breviter dicendum, ne in hujusmodi rebus diutius, quam ratio præcipiendi postulet commoremur.1
1 CICERO.
Mr. Copley of Netherhall was particularly desirous of possessing this so-much-by-us-now-desiderated likeness, and would have invited an Artist from London, if the Doctor could have been prevailed upon to sit for it; but to this no persuasions could induce him. He never assigned a reason for this determination, and indeed always evaded the subject when it was introduced, letting it at the same time plainly be perceived that he was averse to it, and wished not to be so pressed as to draw from him a direct refusal. But once when the desire had been urged with some seriousness, he replied that he was the last of his race, and if he were to be the first who had his portrait taken, well might they who looked at it, exclaim with Solomon, “Vanity of vanities!”
In that thought indeed it was that the root of his objection lay. “Pauli in domo, præter se nemo superest,” is one of the most melancholy reflections to which Paulus Æmilius gave utterance in that speech of his which is recorded by Livy. The speedy extinction of his family in his own person was often in the Doctor's mind; and he would sometimes touch upon it when, in his moods of autumnal feeling, he was conversing with those persons whom he had received into his heart of hearts. Unworthy as I was, it was my privilege and happiness to be one of them; and at such times his deepest feelings could not have been expressed more unreservedly, if he had given them utterance in poetry or in prayer.
Blest as he had been in all other things to the extent of his wishes, it would be unreasonable in him, he said, to look upon this as a misfortune; so to repine would indicate little sense of gratitude to that bountiful Providence which had so eminently favored him; little also of religious acquiescence in its will. It was not by any sore calamity nor series of afflictions that the extinction of his family had been brought on; the diminution had been gradual, as if to show that their uses upon earth were done. His grandfather had only had two children; his parents but one, and that one was now ultimus suorum. They had ever been a family in good repute, walking inoffensively towards all men, uprightly with their neighbours, and humbly with their God; and perhaps this extinction was their reward. For what Solon said of individuals, that no one could truly be called happy till his life had terminated in a happy death, holds equally true of families.
Perhaps too this timely extinction was ordained in mercy, to avert consequences which might else so probably have arisen from his forsaking the station in which he was born; a lowly, but safe station, exposed to fewer dangers, trials or temptations, than any other in this age or country, with which he was enabled to compare it. The sentiment with which Sanazzaro concludes his Arcadia was often in his mind, not as derived from that famous author, but self-originated: per cosa vera ed indubitata tener ti puoi, che chi più di nascoso e più lontano dalla moltitudine vive, miglior vive; e colui trà mortali si può con più verità chiamar beato, che senza invidia delle altrui grandezze, con modesto animo della sua fortuna si contenta. His father had removed him from that station; he would not say unwisely, for his father was a wise and good man, if ever man deserved to be so called; and he could not say unhappily; for assuredly he knew that all the blessings which had earnestly been prayed for, had attended the determination. Through that blessing he had obtained the whole benefit which his father desired for him, and had escaped evils which perhaps had not been fully apprehended. His intellectual part had received all the improvement of which it was capable, and his moral nature had sustained no injury in the process; nor had his faith been shaken, but stood firm, resting upon a sure foundation. But the entail of humble safety had been, as it were, cut off; the birth-right—so to speak—had been renounced. His children, if God had given him children, must have mingled in the world, there to shape for themselves their lot of good or evil; and he knew enough of the world to know how manifold and how insidious are the dangers, which, in all its paths, beset us. He never could have been to them what his father had been to him;—that was impossible. They could have had none of those hallowing influences both of society and solitude to act upon them, which had imbued his heart betimes, and impressed upon his youthful mind a character that no after circumstances could corrupt. They must inevitably have been exposed to more danger, and could not have been so well armed against it. That consideration reconciled him to being childless. God, who knew what was best for him, had ordained that it should be so; and he did not, and ought not to regret, that having been the most cultivated of his race, and so far the happiest, it was decreed that he should be the last. God's will is best.
Ὣς ἔφατ ἔυχὸμενος; for with some aspiration of piety he usually concluded his more serious discourse, either giving it utterance, or with a silent motion of the lips, which the expression of his countenance, as well as the tenour of what had gone before, rendered intelligible to those who knew him as I did.
Here I must relate a circumstance which occurred during the few hours of my last, and by me ever-to-be-remembered visit to Doncaster. As we were on the way from the Old Angel Inn to the Mansion House, adjoining which stood, or to speak more accurately had stood, the Kebla to which the steps of my pilgrimage were bent, we were attracted by a small but picturesque groupe in a shaving-shop, exhibited in strong relief by the light of a blazing fire, and of some glaring lamps. It was late in autumn and on a Saturday evening, at which time those persons in humble life, who cannot shave themselves, and whose sense of religion leads them to think that what may be done on the Saturday night ought not to be put off till the Sunday morning, settle their weekly account with their beards. There was not story enough in the scene to have supplied Wilkie with a subject for his admirable genius to work upon, but he would certainly have sketched the groupe if he had seen it as we did. Stopping for a minute, at civil distance from the door, we observed a picture over the fire-place, and it seemed so remarkable that we asked permission to go in and look at it more nearly. It was an unfinished portrait, evidently of no common person, and by no common hand; and as evidently it had been painted many years ago. The head was so nearly finished that nothing seemed wanting to complete the likeness; the breast and shoulders were faintly sketched in a sort of whitewash which gave them the appearance of being covered with a cloth. Upon asking the master of the shop if he could tell us whose portrait it was, Mambrino, who seemed to be a good-natured fellow, and was pleased at our making the enquiry, replied that it had been in his possession many years, before he knew himself. A friend of his had made him a present of it, because, he said, the gentleman looked by his dress as if he was just ready to be shaved, and had an apron under his chin; and therefore his shop was the properest place for it. One day however the picture attracted the notice of a passing stranger, as it had done ours, and he recognized it for a portrait of Garrick. It certainly was so; and any one who knows Garrick's face may satisfy himself of this when he happens to be in Doncaster. Mambrino's shop is not far from the Old Angel, and on the same side of the street.
My companion told me that when we entered the shop he had begun to hope it might prove to be a portrait of my old friend: he seemed even to be disappointed that we had not fallen upon such a discovery, supposing that it would have gratified me beyond measure. But upon considering in my own mind if this would have been the case, two questions presented themselves. The first was, whether knowing as I did that the Doctor never sate for his portrait, and knowing also confidentially the reason why he never could be persuaded to do so, or rather the feeling which possessed him on that subject,—knowing these things, I say, the first question was, whether if a stolen likeness had been discovered, I ought to have rejoiced in the discovery. For as I certainly should have endeavoured to purchase the picture, I should then have had to decide whether or not it was my duty to destroy it; for which,—or on the other hand for preserving it,—so many strong reasons and so many refined ones, might have been produced, pro and con, that I could not have done either one or the other, without distrusting the justice of my own determination; if I preserved it, I should continually be self-accused for doing wrong; if I destroyed it, self-reproaches would pursue me for having done what was irretrievable; so that while I lived I should never have been out of my own Court of Conscience. And let me tell you, Reader, that to be impleaded in that Court is even worse than being brought into the Court of Chancery.
Secondly, the more curious question occurred, whether if there had been a portrait of Dr. Dove, it would have been like him.
“That” says Mr. Everydayman, “is as it might happen.”
“Pardon me, Sir; my question does not regard happening. Chance has nothing to do with the matter. The thing queried is whether it could, or could not have been.”
And before I proceed to consider that question, I shall take the counsel which Catwg the Wise, gave to his pupil Taliesin; and which by these presents I recommend to every reader who may be disposed to consider himself for the time being as mine:
“Think before thou speakest;
First, what thou shalt speak;
Secondly, why thou shouldest speak;
Thirdly, to whom thou mayest have to speak;
Fourthly, about whom (or what) thou art to speak;
Fifthly, what will come from what thou mayest speak;
Sixthly, what may be the benefit from what thou shalt speak;
Seventhly, who may be listening to what thou shalt speak.
“Put thy word on thy fingers' ends before thou speakest it, and turn it these seven ways before thou speakest it; and there will never come any harm from what thou shalt say!
“Catwg the Wise delivered this counsel to Taliesin, Chief of Bards, in giving him his blessing.”
Good and satisfactory likenesses may, beyond all doubt, be taken of Mr. Everydayman himself, and indeed of most persons: and were it otherwise, portrait-painting would be a worse profession than it is, though too many an unfortunate artist has reason bitterly to regret that he possessed the talents which tempted him to engage in it. There are few faces of which even a mediocre painter cannot produce what is called a staring likeness, and Sir Thomas Lawrence a handsome one; Sir Thomas is the painter who pleases every body!
But there are some few faces with which no artist can succeed so as to please himself, (if he has a true feeling for his own art,) or to content those persons who are best acquainted with the living countenance. This is the case where the character predominates over the features, and that character itself is one in which many and seemingly opposite qualities are compounded. Garrick in Abel Drugger, Garrick in Sir John Brute and Garrick in King Lear presented three faces as different as were the parts which he personated; yet the portraits which have been published of him in those parts, may be identified by the same marked features, which flexible as they were rendered by his histrionic power, still under all changes retained their strength and their peculiarity. But where the same flexibility exists and the features are not so peculiar or prominent, the character is then given by what is fleeting, not by what is fixed; and it is more difficult to hit a likeness of this kind than to paint a rainbow.
Now I cannot but think that the Doctor's countenance was of this kind. I can call it to mind as vividly as it appears to me in dreams; but I could impart no notion of it by description. Words cannot delineate a single feature of his face,—such words at least as my knowledge enables me to use. A sculptor, if he had measured it, might have given you technically the relative proportions of his face in all its parts: a painter might describe the facial angle, and how the eyes were set, and if they were well-slit, and how the lips were formed, and whether the chin was in the just mean between rueful length and spectatorial brevity; and whether he could have passed over Strasburgh Bridge without hearing any observations made upon his nose. My own opinion is that the centinel would have had something to say upon that subject; and if he had been a Protestant Soldier (which if an Alsacian, he was likely to be) and accustomed to read the Bible, he might have been reminded by it of the Tower of Lebanon, looking toward Damascus; for as an Italian Poet says,
I might venture also to apply to the Doctor's nose that safe generality by which Alcina's is described in the Orlando Furioso.
But farther than this, which amounts to no more than a doubtful opinion and a faint adumbration, I can say nothing that would assist any reader to form an idea at once definite and just of any part of the Doctor's face. I cannot even positively say what was the colour of his eyes. I only know that mirth sparkled in them, scorn flashed from them, thought beamed in them, benevolence glistened in them; that they were easily moved to smiles, easily to tears. No barometer ever indicated more faithfully the changes of the atmosphere than his countenance corresponded to the emotions of his mind; but with a mind which might truly be said to have been
thus various not in its principles or passions or pursuits, but in its enquiries and fancies and speculations, and so alert that nothing seemed to escape its ever watchful and active apprehension,—with such a mind the countenance that was its faithful index, was perpetually varying: its likeness therefore at any one moment could but represent a fraction of the character which identified it, and which left upon you an indescribable and inimitable impression resulting from its totality, though in its totality, it never was and never could be seen.
1 MATTIO FRANZESI.
Have I made myself understood?
I mean to say that the ideal face of any one to whom we are strongly and tenderly attached,—that face which is enshrined in our heart of hearts and which comes to us in dreams long after it has mouldered in the grave,—that face is not the exact mechanical countenance of the beloved person, not the countenance that we ever actually behold, but its abstract, its idealization, or rather its realization; the spirit of the countenance, its essence and its life. And the finer the character, and the more various its intellectual powers, the more must this true εἴδωλον differ from the most faithful likeness that a painter or a sculptor can produce.
Therefore I conclude that if there had been a portrait of Dr. Daniel Dove, it could not have been like him, for it was as impossible to paint the character which constituted the identity of his countenance, as to paint the flavour of an apple, or the fragrance of a rose.
DEFENCE OF PORTRAIT-PAINTING. A SYSTEM OF MORAL COSMETICS RECOMMENDED TO THE LADIES. GWILLIM. SIR T. LAWRENCE. GEORGE WITHER. APPLICATION TO THE SUBJECT OF THIS WORK.
The reader will mistake me greatly if he supposes that in showing why it was impossible there should be a good portrait of Dr. Daniel Dove, I meant to depreciate the art of portrait painting. I have a very high respect for that art, and no person can be more sincerely persuaded of its moral uses. The great number of portraits in the annual exhibitions of our Royal Academy is so far from displeasing me that I have always regarded it as a symptom of wholesome feeling in the nation,—an unequivocal proof that the domestic and social affections are still existing among us in their proper strength, and cherished as they ought to be. And when I have heard at any time observations of the would-be-witty kind upon the vanity of those who allow their portraits thus to be hung up for public view, I have generally perceived that the remark implied a much greater degree of conceit in the speaker. As for allowing the portrait to be exhibited, that is no more than an act of justice to the artist, who has no other means of making his abilities known so well, and of forwarding himself in his profession. If we look round the rooms at Somerset House, and observe how large a proportion of the portraits represent children, the old, and persons in middle life, we shall see that very few indeed are those which can have been painted, or exhibited for the gratification of personal vanity.
Sir Thomas Lawrence ministers largely to self-admiration: and yet a few years ripen even the most flattering of his portraits into moral pictures;
1 RICCIARDETTO.
Helen in her old age, looking at herself in a mirror, is a subject which old sonneteers were fond of borrowing from the Greek Anthology. Young Ladies! you who have sate to Sir Thomas, or any artist of his school, I will tell you how your portraits may be rendered more useful monitors to you in your progress through life than the mirror was to Helen, and how you may derive more satisfaction from them when you are grown old. Without supposing that you actually “called up a look,” for the painter's use, I may be certain that none of you during the times of sitting permitted any feeling of ill humour to cast a shade over your countenance; and that if you were not conscious of endeavouring to put on your best looks for the occasion, the painter was desirous of catching them, and would catch the best he could. The most thoughtless of you need not be told that you cannot retain the charms of youthful beauty; but you may retain the charm of an amiable expression through life: Never allow yourselves to be seen with a worse than you wore for the painter! Whenever you feel ill-tempered, remember that you look ugly; and be assured that every emotion of fretfulness, of ill-humour, of anger, of irritability, of impatience, of pride, haughtiness, envy, or malice, any unkind, any uncharitable, any ungenerous feeling, lessens the likeness to your picture, and not only deforms you while it lasts, but leaves its trace behind; for the effect of the passions upon the face is more rapid and more certain than that of time.
“His counsel,” says Gwillim the Pursuivant, “was very behoveful, who advised all gentlewomen often to look on glasses, that so, if they saw themselves beautiful, they might be stirred up to make their minds as fair by virtue as their faces were by nature; but if deformed, they might make amends for their outward deformity, with their intern pulchritude and gracious qualities. And those that are proud of their beauty should consider that their own hue is as brittle as the glass wherein they see it; and that they carry on their shoulders nothing but a skull wrapt in skin which one day will be loathsome to be looked on.”
The conclusion of this passage accorded not with the Doctor's feelings. He thought that whatever tended to connect frightful and loathsome associations with the solemn and wholesome contemplation of mortality, ought to be avoided as injudicious and injurious. So too with regard to age: if it is dark and unlovely “the fault,” he used to say, “is generally our own; Nature may indeed make it an object of compassion, but not of dislike, unless we ourselves render it so. It is not of necessity that we grow ugly as well as old.” Donne says
he was probably speaking of his wife, for Donne was happy in his marriage, as he deserved to be. There is a beauty which, as the Duchess of Newcastle said of her mother's, is “beyond the reach of time;” that beauty depends upon the mind, upon the temper,—Young Ladies, upon yourselves!
George Wither wrote under the best of his portraits,
He commenced also a Meditation upon that portrait in these impressive lines;
In the same poem he says,
Like most men, George Wither, as he grew more selfish, was tolerably successful in deceiving himself as to his own motives and state of mind. If ever there was an honest enthusiast, he had been one; afterwards he feathered his nest with the spoils of the Loyalists and of the Bishops; and during this prosperous part of his turbulent life there must have been times when the remembrance of his former self brought with it more melancholy and more awful thoughts than the sight of his own youthful portrait, in its fantastic garb, or of that more sober resemblance upon which his meditation was composed.
Such a portraiture of the inner or real being as Wither in his better mind wished to leave in his works, for those who knew and loved him, such a portraiture am I endeavouring to compose of Dr. Dove, wherein the world may see what he was, and so become acquainted with his intellectual lineaments, and with those peculiarities, which forming as it were the idiosyncrasy of his moral constitution, contributed in no small degree to those ever-varying lights and shades of character, and feeling in his living countenance which, I believe, would have baffled the best painter's art.
2 BERNI.
SOCIETY OF A COUNTRY TOWN. SUCH A TOWN A MORE FAVOURABLE HABITAT FOR SUCH A PERSON AS DR. DOVE THAN LONDON WOULD HAVE BEEN.
Such then as Daniel Dove was in the twenty-sixth year of his age we are now to consider him, settled at Doncaster, and with his way of life chosen, for better for worse, in all respects; except, as my female readers will remember, that he was neither married, nor engaged, nor likely to be so.
One of the things for which he used to thank God was that the world had not been all before him where to chuse, either as to calling or place, but that both had been well chosen for him. To chuse upon such just motives as can leave no rational cause for after repentance requires riper judgement than ought to be expected at the age when the choice is to be made; it is best for us therefore at a time of life when though perhaps we might chuse well, it is impossible that we could chuse wisely, to acquiesce in the determination of others, who have knowledge and experience to direct them. Far happier are they who always know what they are to do, than they who have to determine what they will do.
Thus he was accustomed to think upon this subject.
1 PANANTI.
But was he well placed at Doncaster?
It matters not where those men are placed, who, as South says, “have souls so dull and stupid as to serve for little else but to keep their bodies from putrefaction.” Ordinary people whether their lot be cast in town or country, in the metropolis or in a village, will go on in the ordinary way, conforming their habits to those of the place. It matters nothing more to those who live less in the little world about them, than in a world of their own, with the whole powers of the head and of the heart too (if they have one) intently fixed upon some favourite pursuit:—if they have a heart I say, for it sometimes happens that where there is an excellent head, the heart is nothing more than a piece of hard flesh. In this respect, the highest and the meanest intellects are, in a certain sense, alike self-sufficient; that is they are so far independent of adventitious aid, that they derive little advantage from society and suffer nothing from the want of it. But there are others for whose mental improvement, or at least mental enjoyment, collision and sympathy and external excitement seem almost indispensable. Just as large towns are the only places in which first-rate workmen in any handycraft business can find employment, so men of letters and of science generally appear to think that no where but in a metropolis can they find the opportunities which they desire of improvement or of display. These persons are wise in their generation, but they are not children of light.
Among such persons it may perhaps be thought that our friend should be classed; and it cannot be doubted that in a more conspicuous field of action, he might have distinguished himself, and obtained a splendid fortune. But for distinction he never entertained the slightest desire, and with the goods of fortune which had fallen to his share he was perfectly contented. But was he favourably situated for his intellectual advancement?—which if such an enquiry had come before him concerning any other person, is what he would have considered to be the question-issimus. I answer without the slightest hesitation, that he was.
In London he might have mounted a Physician's wig, have ridden in his carriage, have attained the honours of the College, and added F. R. S. to his professional initials. He might, if Fortune opening her eyes had chosen to favour desert, have become Sir Daniel Dove, Bart. Physician to his Majesty. But he would then have been a very different person from the Dr. Dove of Doncaster, whose memory will be transmitted to posterity in these volumes, and he would have been much less worthy of being remembered. The course of such a life would have left him no leisure for himself; and metropolitan society in rubbing off the singularities of his character, would just in the same degree have taken from its strength.
It is a pretty general opinion that no society can be so bad as that of a small country town; and certain it is that such towns offer little or no choice. You must take what they have and make the best of it. But there are not many persons to whom circumstances allow much latitude of choice any where except in those public places, as they are called, where the idle and the dissipated, like birds of a feather, flock together. In any settled place of residence men are circumscribed by station and opportunities, and just as much in the capital, as in a provincial town. No one will be disposed to regret this, if he observes where men have most power of chusing their society, how little benefit is derived from it, or in other words with how little wisdom it is used.
After all, the common varieties of human character will be found distributed in much the same proportion everywhere, and in most places there will be a sprinkling of the uncommon ones. Everywhere you may find the selfish and the sensual, the carking and the careful, the cunning and the credulous, the worldling and the reckless. But kind hearts are also every where to be found, right intentions, sober minds, and private virtues,—for the sake of which let us hope that God may continue to spare this hitherto highly-favoured nation, notwithstanding the fearful amount of our public and manifold offences.
The society then of Doncaster, in the middle of the last century, was like that of any other country town which was neither the seat of manufactures, nor of a Bishop's see; in either of which more information of a peculiar kind would have been found,—more active minds, or more cultivated ones. There was enough of those eccentricities for which the English above all other people are remarkable, those aberrations of intellect which just fail to constitute legal insanity, and which, according to their degree, excite amusement, or compassion. Nor was the town without its full share of talents; these there was little to foster and encourage, but happily there was nothing to pervert and stimulate them to a premature and mischievous activity.
In one respect it more resembled an episcopal than a trading city. The four kings and their respective suits of red and black were not upon more frequent service in the precincts of a cathedral, than in the good town of Doncaster. A stranger who had been invited to spend the evening with a family there, to which he had been introduced, was asked by the master of the house to take a card as a matter of course; upon his replying that he did not play at cards, the company looked at him with astonishment, and his host exclaimed—“What, Sir! not play at cards? the Lord help you!”
I will not say the Lord helped Daniel Dove, because there would be an air of irreverence in the expression, the case being one in which he, or any one, might help himself. He knew enough of all the games which were then in vogue to have played at them, if he had so thought good; and he would have been as willing, sometimes, in certain moods of mind, to have taken his seat at a card-table, in houses where card-playing did not form part of the regular business of life, as to have listened to a tune on the old-fashioned spinnet, or the then new-fashioned harpsichord. But that which as an occasional pastime he might have thought harmless and even wholesome, seemed to him something worse than folly when it was made a kill-time,—the serious occupation for which people were brought together,—the only one at which some of them ever appeared to give themselves the trouble of thinking. And seeing its effects upon the temper, and how nearly this habit was connected with a spirit of gambling, he thought that cards had not without reason been called the Devil's Books.
I shall not therefore introduce the reader to a Doncaster card-party, by way of shewing him the society of the place. The Mrs. Shuffles, Mrs. Cuts and Miss Dealems, the Mr. Tittles and Mrs. Tattles, the Humdrums and the Prateapaces, the Fribbles and the Feebles, the Perts and the Prims, the Littlewits and the Longtongues, the Heavyheads and the Broadbelows, are to be found everywhere.
“It is quite right,” says one of the Guessers at Truth, “that there should be a heavy duty on cards: not only on moral grounds; not only because they act on a social party like a torpedo, silencing the merry voice and numbing the play of the features; not only to still the hunger of the public purse, which reversing the qualities of Fortunatus's, is always empty, however much you may put into it; but also because every pack of cards is a malicious libel on courts, and on the world, seeing that the trumpery with number one at the head, is the best part of them; and that it gives kings and queens no other companions than knaves.”
MR. COPLEY OF NETHERHALL. SOCIETY AT HIS HOUSE. DRUMMOND. BURGH. GRAY. MASON. MILLER THE ORGANIST AND HISTORIAN OF DONCASTER. HERSCHEL.
There was one house in Doncaster in which cards were never introduced; this house was Netherhall the seat of Mr. Copley; and there Dr. Dove had the advantage of such society as was at that time very rarely, and is still not often, to be enjoyed anywhere.
The Copleys are one of the most ancient families in Doncaster: Robert Grosseteste, one of the most eminent of our English churchmen before the Reformation was a branch from their stock. Robert Copley who in the middle of the last century represented the family, was brought up at Westminster School, and while there took, what is very unusual for boys at Westminster or any other school to take, lessons in music. Dr. Crofts was his master, and made him, as has been said by a very competent judge, a very good performer in thorough-bass on the harpsichord. He attempted painting also, but not with equal success; the age of painting in this country had not then arrived.
Mr. Copley's income never exceeded twelve hundred a-year; but this which is still a liberal income, was then a large one, in the hands of a wise and prudent man. Netherhall was the resort of intellectual men, in whose company he delighted; and the poor were fed daily from his table. Drummond, afterwards Archbishop of York, was his frequent guest; so was Mason; so was Mason's friend Dr. Burgh; and Gray has sometimes been entertained there. One of the “strong names” of the King of Dahomey means, when interpreted, “wherever I rub, I leave my scent.” In a better sense than belongs to this metaphorical boast of the power and the disposition to be terrible, it may be said of such men as Gray and Mason that wherever they have resided, or have been entertained as abiding guests, an odour of their memory remains. Who passes by the house at Streatham that was once Mrs. Thrale's without thinking of Dr. Johnson?
During many years Mr. Copley entertained himself and his friends with a weekly concert at Netherhall, he himself, Sir Brian Cooke and some of his family, and Dr. Miller the organist, and afterwards Historian of Doncaster, being performers. Miller, who was himself a remarkable person, had the fortune to introduce a more remarkable one to these concerts; it is an interesting anecdote in the history of that person, of Miller, and of Doncaster.
About the year 1760 as Miller was dining at Pontefract with the officers of the Durham militia, one of them, knowing his love of music, told him they had a young German in their band as a performer on the hautboy, who had only been a few months in England, and yet spoke English almost as well as a native, and who was also an excellent performer on the violin; the officer added, that if Miller would come into another room this German should entertain him with a solo. The invitation was gladly accepted, and Miller heard a solo of Giardini's executed in a manner that surprized him. He afterwards took an opportunity of having some private conversation with the young musician, and asked him whether he had engaged himself for any long period to the Durham militia? The answer was, “only from month to month.” “Leave them then,” said the organist, “and come and live with me. I am a single man, and think we shall be happy together; and doubtless your merit will soon entitle you to a more eligible situation.” The offer was accepted as frankly as it was made: and the reader may imagine with what satisfaction Dr. Miller must have remembered this act of generous feeling, when he hears that this young German was Herschel the Astronomer.
“My humble mansion,” says Miller, “consisted at that time, but of two rooms. However, poor as I was, my cottage contained a small library of well chosen books; and it must appear singular that a foreigner who had been so short a time in England should understand even the peculiarities of the language so well, as to fix upon Swift for his favourite author.” He took an early opportunity of introducing his new friend at Mr. Copley's concerts; the first violin was resigned to him: and never, says the organist, had I heard the concertos of Corelli, Geminiani and Avison, or the overtures of Handel, performed more chastely, or more according to the original intention of the composers than by Mr. Herschel. I soon lost my companion: his fame was presently spread abroad; he had the offer of pupils, and was solicited to lead the public concerts both at Wakefield and Halifax. A new organ for the parish church of Halifax was built about this time, and Herschel was one of the seven candidates for the organist's place. They drew lots how they were to perform in succession. Herschel drew the third, the second fell to Mr., afterwards Dr. Wainwright of Manchester, whose finger was so rapid that old Snetzler, the organ-builder, ran about the church, exclaiming, Te Tevel, te Tevel! he run over te keys like one cat; he will not give my piphes room for to shpeak. “During Mr. Wainwright's performance,” says Miller, “I was standing in the middle isle with Herschel; what chance have you, said I, to follow this man?” He replied, “I don't know; I am sure fingers will not do.” On which he ascended the organ loft, and produced from the organ so uncommon a fulness,—such a volume of slow solemn harmony, that I could by no means account for the effect. After this short extempore effusion, he finished with the old hundredth-psalm-tune, which he played better than his opponent. Aye, aye, cried old Snetzler, tish is very goot, very goot indeet; I vil luf tish man, for he gives my piphes room for to shpeak. Having afterwards asked Mr. Herschel by what means in the beginning of his performance, he produced so uncommon an effect, he replied, “I told you fingers would not do!” and producing two pieces of lead from his waistcoat pocket, “one of these,” said he, “I placed on the lowest key of the organ, and the other upon the octave above; thus by accommodating the harmony, I produced the effect of four hands instead of two.”
Il faut mettre les fables en presse pour en tirer quelque suc de verité.
It is related of the great mythological personage Baly, that Veeshnoo, when he dispossessed him of his impious power, allowed him in mitigation of his lot, to make his choice, whether he would go to the Swerga, and take five ignorant persons with him who were to be his everlasting companions there, or to Padalon and have five Pundits in his company. Baly preferred the good company with the bad quarters.
That that which is called good company has led many a man to a place which it is not considered decorous to mention before “ears polite,” is a common and, therefore, the more an awful truth. The Swerga and Padalon are the Hindoo Heaven and Hell; and if the Hindoo fable were not obviously intended to extol the merits of their Pundits, or learned men, as the missionary Ward explains the title, it might with much seeming likelihood bear this moral interpretation; that Baly retained the pride of knowledge even when convinced by the deprivation of his power that the pride of power was vanity, and in consequence drew upon himself a further punishment by his choice.
For although Baly, because of the righteousness with which he had used his power, was so far favoured by the Divinity whom he had offended, that he was not condemned to undergo any of those torments of which there was as rich an assortment and as choice a variety in Padalon, as ever monkish imagination revelled in devising, it was at the best a dreadful place of abode: and so it would appear if Turner were to paint a picture of its Diamond City from Southey's description. I say Turner, because though the subject might seem more adapted to Martin's cast of mind, Turner's colouring would well represent the fiery streams and the sulphureous atmosphere; and that colouring being transferred from earthly landscapes to its proper place his rich genius would have full scope for its appropriate display. Baly no doubt, as a state prisoner who was to be treated with the highest consideration as well as with the utmost indulgence, would have all the accommodations that Yamen could afford him. There he and the Pundits might
They might argue there of good and evil,
and such discourses possibly
But it would only be for awhile that they could be thus beguiled by it, for it is
it would be only for a while, and they were there for a time which in prospect must appear all but endless. The Pundits would not thank him for bringing them there; Baly himself must continually wish he were breathing the heavenly air of the Swerga in the company of ignorant but happy associates, and he would regret his unwise choice even more bitterly than he remembered the glorious city wherein he had reigned in his magnificence.
He made a great mistake. If he had gone with the ignorant to Heaven he would have seen them happy there, and partaken their happiness, though they might not have been able to derive any gratification from his wisdom;—which said wisdom, peradventure, he himself when he was there might have discovered to be but foolishness. It is only in the company of the good that real enjoyment is to be found; any other society is hollow and heartless. You may be excited by the play of wit, by the collision of ambitious spirits, and by the brilliant exhibition of self-confident power; but the satisfaction ends with the scene. Far unlike this is the quiet confiding intercourse of sincere minds and friendly hearts, knowing and loving and esteeming each other; and such intercourse our philosopher enjoyed in Doncaster.
Edward Miller the Organist was a person very much after Daniel Dove's own heart. He was a warm-hearted, simple-hearted, right-hearted man; an enthusiast in his profession, yet not undervaluing, much less despising, other pursuits. The one Doctor knew as little of music as the other did of medicine; but Dr. Dove listened to Miller's performance with great pleasure, and Dr. Miller when he was indisposed took Dove's physic with perfect faith.
This musician was brother to William Miller, the bookseller, well known in the early part of the present century as a publisher of splendid works, to whose flourishing business in Albemarle Street the more flourishing John Murray succeeded. In the worldly sense of the word the musician was far less fortunate than the bibliopole, a doctorate in his own science, being the height of the honours to which he attained, and the place of organist at Doncaster the height of the preferment. A higher station was once presented to his hopes. The Marquis of Rockingham applied in his behalf for the place of Master of his Majesty's band of musicians, then vacated by the death of Dr. Boyce; and the Duke of Manchester, who was at that time Lord Chamberlain, would have given it him if the King had not particularly desired him to bestow it on Mr. Stanley, the celebrated blind performer on the organ. Dr. Miller was more gratified by this proof of the Marquis's good will towards him than disappointed at its failure. Had the application succeeded he would not have written the History of Doncaster; nor would he have borne a part in a well-intended and judicious attempt at reforming our church psalmody, in which part of our church service reformation is greatly needed. This meritorious attempt was made when George Hay Drummond, whose father had been Archbishop of York, was Vicar of Doncaster, having been presented to that vicarage in 1785, on the demise of Mr. Hatfield.
At that time the Parish Clerk used there as in all other parish churches to chuse what psalm should be sung “to the praise and glory of God,” and what portions of it; and considering himself as a much more important person in this department of his office than the organist, the only communication upon the subject which he held with Dr. Miller, was to let him know what tune he must play, and how often he was to repeat it. “Strange absurdity!” says Miller. “How could the organist placed in this degrading situation, properly perform his part of the church service? Not knowing the words, it was impossible for him to accommodate his music to the various sentiments contained in different stanzas; consequently his must be a mere random performance, and frequently producing improper effects.” This however is what only a musician would feel; but it happened one Sunday that the clerk gave out some verses which were either ridiculously inapplicable to the day, or bore some accidental and ludicrous application, so that many of the congregation did not refrain from laughter. Mr. Drummond upon this, for he was zealously attentive to all the duties of his calling, said to Miller, “that in order to prevent any such occurrence in future he would make a selection of the best verses in each psalm, from the authorized version of Tate and Brady, and arrange them for every Sunday and festival throughout the year, provided he, the organist, who was perfectly qualified for such a task, would adapt them to proper music.” To such a man as Miller this was the greatest gratification that could have been afforded; and it proved also to be the greatest service that was ever rendered to him in the course of his life; for through Mr. Drummond's interest, the King and the Bishop patronized the work, and nearly five thousand copies were subscribed for, the list of subscribers being, it is believed, longer than had ever been obtained for any musical publication in this kingdom.
Strange to say, nothing of this kind had been attempted before; for the use of psalmody in our churches was originally no part of the service; but having as it were, crept in, and been at first rather suffered than encouraged, and afterwards allowed and permitted only, not enjoined, no provision seems ever to have been made for its proper, or even decent performance. And when an arrangement like this of Mr. Drummond's had been prepared, and Dr. Miller, with sound judgement, had adapted it where that could be done, to the most popular of the old and venerable melodies which had been so long in possession, it may seem more strange that it should not have been brought into general use. This I say might be thought strange, if any instance of that supine and sinful negligence which permits the continuance of old and acknowledged defects in the church establishment, and church service, could be thought so.
Mr. Drummond had probably been led to think upon this subject by Mason's conversation, and by his Essays, historical and critical, on English Church Music. Mason who had a poet's ear and eye was ambitious of becoming both a musician and a painter. According to Miller he succeeded better in his musical than in his pictorial attempts, for he performed decently on the harpsichord; but in painting he never arrived even at a degree of mediocrity, and in music it was not possible to teach him the principles of composition, Miller and others having at his own desire attempted in vain to instruct him. Nevertheless, such a man, however superficial his knowledge of the art, could not but feel and reason justly upon its use and abuse in our Church Service; and he was for restricting the organist much in the same way that Drummond and Miller were for restraining the clerk. For after observing that what is called the voluntary requires an innate inventive faculty, which is certainly not the lot of many; and that the happy few who possess it will not at all times be able to restrain it within the bounds which reason and, in this case, religion would prescribe, he said, “it was to be wished therefore that in our established church extempore playing were as much discountenanced as extempore praying; and that the organist were as closely obliged in this solo and separate part of his office to keep to set forms, as the officiating minister; or as he himself is when accompanying the choir in an anthem, or a parochial congregation in a psalm.” He would have indulged him however with a considerable quantity of these set forms, and have allowed him, if he approached in some degree to Rousseau's high character of a Preluder, “to descant on certain single grave texts which Tartini, Geminiani, Corelli or Handel would abundantly furnish, and which may be found at least of equal elegance and propriety in the Largo and Adagio movements of Haydn or Pleyel.”
Whatever Miller may have thought of this proposal, there was a passage in Mason's Essay in favour of voluntaries which was in perfect accord with Dr. Dove's notions. “Prompt and as it were casual strains,” says the Poet, “which do not fix the attention of the hearer, provided they are the produce of an original fancy, which scorns to debase itself by imitating common and trivial melodies, are of all others the best adapted to induce mental serenity. We in some sort listen to such music as we do to the pleasing murmur of a neighbouring brook, the whisper of the passing breeze, or the distant warblings of the lark and nightingale; and if agreeable natural voices have the power of soothing the contemplative mind, without interrupting its contemplations, simple musical effusions must assuredly have that power in a superior degree. All that is to be attended to by the organist is to preserve such pleasing simplicity; and this musical measures will ever have, if they are neither strongly accented, nor too regularly rhythmical. But when this is the case, they cease to soothe us, because they begin to affect us. Add to this that an air replete with short cadences and similar passages is apt to fix itself too strongly on the memory; whereas a merely melodious or harmonical movement glides, as it were, through the ear, awakens a transient pleasing sensation, but leaves behind it no lasting impression. Its effect ceases, when its impulse on the auditory nerve ceases;—an impulse strong enough to dispel from the mind all eating care (to use our great Poet's own expression) but in no sort to rouze or ruffle any of its faculties, save those only which attend truly devotional duty.”
This passage agreed with some of the Doctor's peculiar notions. He felt the power of devotional music both in such preparatory strains as Mason has here described, and in the more exciting emotions of congregational psalmody. And being thus sensible of the religious uses which may be drawn from music, he was the more easily led to entertain certain speculations concerning its application in the treatment of diseases, as will be related hereafter.
ECCENTRIC PERSONS, WHY APPARENTLY MORE COMMON IN ENGLAND THAN IN OTHER COUNTRIES. HARRY BINGLEY.
There is a reason why eccentricity of character seems to be much more frequent in England than in other countries.—
Here some reflective reader, methinks, interrupts me with—“seems, good Author?”
“Aye, and it is!”
Have patience good reader, and hear me to the end! There is a reason why it seems so; and the reason is, because all such eccentricities are recorded here in newspapers and magazines, so that none of them are lost; anti the most remarkable are brought forward from time to time, in popular compilations. A collection of what is called Eccentric Biography is to form a portion of Mr. Murray's Family Library.
But eccentric characters probably are more frequent among us than among most other nations; and for this there are two causes. The first is to be found in that spirit of independence upon which the English pride themselves, and which produces a sort of Drawcansir-like bravery in men who are eccentrically inclined. It becomes a perverse sort of pleasure in them to act preposterously, for the sake of showing that they have a right to do as they please, and the courage to exercise that right, let the rest of the world think what it will of their conduct.
The other reason is that mad-houses very insufficiently supply the place of convents, and very ill also. It might almost be questioned whether convents do not well nigh make amends to humanity for their manifold mischiefs and abominations, by the relief which they afford as asylums for insanity, in so many of its forms and gradations. They afford a cure also in many of its stages, and precisely upon the same principle on which the treatment in mad-houses is founded: but oh! how differently is that principle applied! That passive obedience to anothers will which in the one case is exacted by authority acting through fear, and oftentimes enforced by no scrupulous or tender means, is in the other required as a religious duty—an act of virtue,— a voluntary and accepted sacrifice,—a good work which will be carried to the patient's account in the world to come. They who enter a convent are to have no will of their own there; they renounce it solemnly upon their admission; and when this abnegation is sincerely made, the chief mental cause of insanity is removed. For assuredly in most cases madness is more frequently a disease of the will than of the intellect. When Diabolus appeared before the town of Mansoul, and made his oration to the citizens at Ear-Gate, Lord Will-be-will was one of the first that was for consenting to his words, and letting him into the town.
We have no such asylums in which madness and fatuity receive every possible alleviation, while they are at the same time subjected to the continual restraint which their condition requires. They are wanted also for repentant sinners, who when they are awakened to a sense of their folly and their guilt, and their danger, would fain find a place of religious retirement, wherein they might pass the remainder of their days in preparing for death. Lord Goring, the most profligate man of his age, who by his profligacy, as much as by his frequent misconduct, rendered irreparable injury to the cause which he intended to serve, retired to Spain after the ruin of that cause, and there ended his days as a Dominican Friar. If there be any record of him in the Chronicles of the Order, the account ought to be curious at least, if not edifying. But it is rather (for his own sake) to be hoped than supposed that he did not hate and despise the follies and the frauds of the fraternity into which he had entered more heartily than the pomps and vanities of the world which he had left.
On the other hand wherever convents are among the institutions of the land, not to speak of those poor creatures who are thrust into them against their will, or with only a mockery of freedom in the choice,— it must often happen that persons enter them in some fit of disappointment, or resentment, or grief, and find themselves when the first bitterness of passion is past, imprisoned for life by their own rash but irremediable act and deed. The woman, who when untoward circumstances have prevented her from marrying the man she loves, marries one for whom she has no affection, is more likely (poor as her chance is) to find contentment and perhaps happiness, than if for the same cause she had thrown herself into a nunnery. Yet this latter is the course to which if she were a Roman Catholic, her thoughts would perhaps preferably at first have turned, and to which they would probably be directed by her confessor.
Men who are weary of the ways of the world, or disgusted with them, have more licence, as well as more resources than women. If they do not enter upon some dangerous path of duty, or commence wanderers, they may chuse for themselves an eccentric path, in which if their habits are not such as expose them to insult, or if their means are sufficient to secure them against it, they are not likely to be molested,—provided they have no relations whose interest it may be to apply for a statute of lunacy against them.
A gentleman of this description, well known in London towards the close of George the Second's reign by the name of Harry Bingley, came in the days of Dr. Dove to reside upon his estate in the parish of Bolton upon Derne, near Doncaster. He had figured as an orator and politician in coffee houses at the west end of the town, and enjoyed the sort of notoriety which it was then his ambition to obtain; but discovering with the Preacher that this was vanity and vexation of spirit, when it was either too late for him to enter upon domestic life, or his habits had unfitted him for it, he retired to his estate which with the house upon it he had let to a farmer; in that house he occupied two rooms, and there indulged his humour as he had done in London, though it had now taken a very different direction.
“Cousin-german to Idleness,” says Burton, is “nimia solitudo, too much solitariness. Divers are cast upon this rock for want of means; or out of a strong apprehension of some infirmity, disgrace, or through bashfulness, rudeness, simplicity, they cannot apply themselves to others company. Nullum solum infelici gratius solitudine, ubi nullus sit qui miseriam exprobret. This enforced solitariness takes place and produceth his effect soonest in such as have spent their time, jovially peradventure, in all honest recreations, in good company, in some great family, or populous city; and are upon a sudden confined to a desert country cottage far off, restrained of their liberty and barred from their ordinary associates. Solitariness is very irksome to such, most tedious, and a sudden cause of great inconvenience.”
The change in Bingley's life was as great and sudden as that which the Anatomist of Melancholy has here described; but it led to no bodily disease nor to any tangible malady. His property was worth about fourteen hundred a year. He kept no servant, and no company; and he lived upon water-gruel and celery, except at harvest time, when he regaled himself with sparrow pies, made of the young birds just fledged, for which he paid the poor inhabitants who caught them two pence a head. Probably he supposed that it was rendering the neighbourhood a service thus to rid it of what he considered both a nuisance and a delicacy. This was his only luxury; and his only business was to collect about a dozen boys and girls on Sundays, and hear them say their Catechism, and read a chapter in the New Testament, for which they received remuneration in the intelligible form of two pence each, but at the feasts and statutes, “most sweet guerdon, better than remuneration,” in the shape of sixpence. He stood godfather for several poor people's children, they were baptized by his surname; when they were of proper age he used to put them out as apprentices, and in his will he left each of them an hundred guineas to be paid when they reached the age of twenty-five if they were married, but not till they married; and if they reached the age of fifty without marrying, the legacy was then forfeited. There were two children for whom he stood godfather, but whose parents did not chuse that they should be named after him; he never took any notice of these children, nor did he bequeath them any thing; but to one of the others he left the greater part of his property.
This man used every week day to lock himself in the church and pace the aisles for two hours, from ten till twelve o'clock. An author who in his own peculiar and admirable way, is one of the most affecting writers of any age or country, has described with characteristic feeling the different effects produced upon certain minds by entering an empty or a crowded church. “In the latter,” he says, “it is chance but some present human frailty,—an act of inattention on the part of some of the auditory,—or a trait of affectation, or worse vain-glory on that of the preacher,—puts us by our best thoughts, disharmonizing the place and the occasion. But wouldst thou know the beauty of holiness?—go alone on some week day, borrowing the keys of good master Sexton; traverse the cool aisles of some country church; think of the piety that has kneeled there,—-the congregations old and young that have found consolation there,—the meek pastor,—the docile parishioners,—with no disturbing emotions, no cross conflicting comparisons, drink in the tranquillity of the place, till thou thyself become as fixed and motionless as the marble effigies that kneel and weep around thee!”1
1 The Last Essays of Elia.
Harry Bingley died in lodgings at Rotherham, whither he had removed when he felt himself ill, that he might save expence by being nearer a physician. According to his own directions his body was brought back from thence to the village, and interred in the churchyard; and he strictly enjoined that no breast-plate, handles or any ornaments whatever should be affixed to his coffin, nor any gravestone placed to mark the spot where his remains were deposited.
Would or would not this godfather-general have been happier in a convent or a hermitage, than he was in thus following his own humour? It was Dr. Dove's opinion that upon the whole he would; not that a conventual, and still less an eremital way of life would have been more rational, but because there would have been a worthier motive for chusing it; and if not a more reasonable hope, at least a firmer persuasion that it was the sure way to salvation.
That Harry Bingley's mind had taken a religious turn, appeared by his chusing the church for his daily place of promenade. Meditation must have been as much his object as exercise, and of a kind which the place invited. It appeared also by the sort of Sunday-schooling which he gave the children, long before Sunday Schools,—whether for good or evil,—were instituted, or as the phrase is, invented by Robert Raikes of eccentric memory. (Patrons and Patronesses of Sunday Schools, be not offended if a doubt concerning their utility be here implied! The Doctor entertained such a doubt; and the why and the wherefore shall in due time be fairly stated.) But Bingley certainly came under the description of a humourist, rather than of a devotee or religious enthusiast; in fact he bore that character. And the Doctor's knowledge of human nature led him to conclude that solitary humourists are far from being happy. You see them, as you see the blind, at their happiest times, when they have something to divert their thoughts. But in the humourist's course of life, there is a sort of defiance of the world and the world's law; indeed any man who departs widely from its usages, avows this; and it is, as it ought to be, an uneasy and uncomfortable feeling, wherever it is not sustained by a high state of excitement; and that state, if it be lasting, becomes madness. Such persons when left to themselves and to their own reflections, as they necessarily are for the greater part of their time, must often stand not only self-arraigned for folly, but self-condemned for it.
Some proverb maker, I forget who, says, “God hath given to some men wisdom and understanding, and to others the art of playing on the fiddle.”
The Doctor always spoke of Bingley as a melancholy example of strength of character misapplied. But he used to say that strength of character was far from implying strength of mind; and that strength of mind itself was no more a proof of sanity of mind, than strength of body was of bodily health. Both may coexist with mortal maladies, and both when existing in any remarkable degree may oftentimes be the cause of them.
1 RODERICK.
There was another person within his circuit who had taken umbrage at the world, and withdrawn from it to enjoy, or rather solace himself according to his own humour in retirement; not in solitude, for he had a sister, who with true sisterly affection accommodated herself to his inclinations, and partook of his taste. This gentleman, whose name was Jonathan Staniforth, had taken out a patent for a ploughing machine, and had been deprived, unjustly as he deemed, of the profits which he had expected from it, by a lawsuit. Upon this real disappointment, aggravated by the sense, whether well or ill founded of injustice, he retired to his mansion in the village of Firbeck, about ten miles south of Doncaster, and there discarding all thoughts of mechanics, which had been his favourite pursuit, he devoted himself to the practice of music;—devoted is not too strong an expression. He had passed the middle of his life before the Doctor knew him; and it was not till some twenty years later that Miller became acquainted with him.
“I was introduced,” says the Organist, “into a room where was sitting a thin old Gentleman, upwards of seventy years of age, playing on the violin. He had a long time lived sequestered from the world, and dedicated not less than eight hours a day to the practice of music. His shrunk shanks were twisted in a peculiar form, by the constant posture in which he sate; and so indifferent was he about the goodness of his instrument, that to my astonishment, he always played on a common Dutch fiddle, the original price of which could not be more than half a guinea; the strings were bad, and the whole instrument dirty and covered with resin. With this humble companion, he used to work hard every morning on the old solos of Vivaldi, Tessarini, Corelli, and other ancient composers. The evening was reserved for mere amusement, in accompanying an ancient sister, who sung most of the favourite songs from Handel's old Italian Operas, which he composed soon after his arrival in England. These Operas she had heard on their first representation in London; consequently her performance was to me an uncommon treat. I had an opportunity of comparing the different manner of singing in the beginning of the century, to that which I had been accustomed to hear. And indeed the style was so different, that musically considered, it might truly be called a different language. None of the present embellishments or graces in music were used,—no appoggiatura,—no unadorned sustaining, or swelling long notes; they were warbled by a continual tremulous accent from beginning to end; and when she arrived at the period of an air, the brother's violin became mute, and she, raising her eyes to the top of the room, and stretching out her throat, executed her extempore cadence in a succession of notes perfectly original, and concluded with a long shake something like the bleating of a lamb.”
Miller's feelings during this visit were so wholly professional, that in describing this brother and sister forty years afterwards, he appears not to have been sensible in how affecting a situation they were placed. Crabbe would have treated these characters finely had they fallen in his way. And so Chancey Hare Townsend could treat them, who has imitated Crabbe with such singular skill, and who has moreover music in his soul and could give the picture the soft touches which it requires.
I must not omit to say that Mr. Staniforth and his sister were benevolent, hospitable, sensible, worthy persons. Thinkest thou, reader, that they gave no proof of good sense in thus passing their lives? Look round the circle of thine acquaintance, and ask thyself how many of those whose time is at their own disposal, dispose of it more wisely,—that is to say more beneficially to others, or more satisfactorily to themselves? The sister fulfilled her proper duties in her proper place, and the brother in contributing to her comfort performed his; to each other they were as their circumstances required them to be, all in all; they were kind to their poor neighbours, and they were perfectly inoffensive toward the rest of the world.—They who are wise unto salvation, know feelingly when they have done best, that their best works are worth nothing; but they who are conscious that they have lived inoffensively may have in that consciousness, a reasonable ground of comfort.
The Apostle enjoins us to “eschew evil and do good.” To do good is not in every one's power; and many who think they are doing it, may be grievously deceived for lack of judgement, and be doing evil the while instead, with the best intentions, but with sad consequences to others, and eventual sorrow for themselves. But it is in every one's power to eschew evil, so far as never to do wilful harm; and if we were all careful never unnecessarily to distress or disquiet those who are committed to our charge, or who must be affected by our conduct,— if we made it a point of conscience never to disturb the peace, or diminish the happiness of others,—the mass of moral evil by which we are surrounded would speedily be diminished, and with it no inconsiderable portion of those physical ones would be removed, which are the natural consequence and righteous punishment of our misdeeds.
SHEWING THAT ANY HONEST OCCUPATION IS BETTER THAN NONE, BUT THAT OCCUPATIONS WHICH ARE DEEMED HONOURABLE ARE NOT ALWAYS HONEST.
J'ai peine à concevoir pourquoi le plûpart des hommes ont une si forte envie d'être heureux, et une si grande incapacité pour le devenir.
“Happy,” said Dr. Dove, “is the man, who having his whole time thrown upon his hands makes no worse use of it than to practise eight hours a day upon a bad fiddle.” It was a sure evidence, he insisted, that Mr. Staniforth's frame of mind was harmonious; the mental organ was in perfect repair, though the strings of the material instrument jarred; and he enjoyed the scientific delight which Handel's composition gave him abstractedly, in its purity and essence.
“There can now,” says an American preacher,1 “be no doubt of this truth because there have been so many proofs of it; that the man who retires completely from business, who is resolved to do nothing but enjoy himself, never attains the end at which he aims. If it is not mixed with other ingredients, no cup is so insipid, and at the same time so unhealthful, as the cup of pleasure. When the whole enjoyment of the day is to eat and drink and sleep, and talk and visit, life becomes a burden too heavy to be supported by a feeble old man, and he soon sinks into the arms of spleen, or falls into the jaws of death.”
1 FREEMAN'S Eighteen Sermons.
Alas! it is neither so easy a thing, nor so agreeable a one as men commonly expect, to dispose of leisure, when they retire from the business of the world. Their old occupations cling to them, even when they hope that they have emancipated themselves.
Go to any sea-port town and you will see that the Sea-Captain who has retired upon his well-earned savings, sets up a weathercock in full view from his windows, and watches the variations of the wind as duly as when he was at sea, though no longer with the same anxiety.
Every one knows the story of the Tallow Chandler who having amassed a fortune, disposed of his business, and taken a house in the country, not far from London, that he might enjoy himself, after a few months trial of a holiday life requested permission of his successor to come into town, and assist him on melting days. I have heard of one who kept a retail spirit-shop, and having in like manner retired from trade, used to employ himself by having one puncheon filled with water, and measuring it off by pints into another. I have heard also of a butcher in a small country town, who some little time after he had left off business, informed his old customers that he meant to kill a lamb once a week, just for his amusement.
There is no way of life to which the generality of men cannot conform themselves; and it seems as if the more repugnance they may at first have had to overcome, the better at last they like the occupation. They grow insensible to the loudest and most discordant sounds, or remain only so far sensible of them, that the cessation will awaken them from sleep. The most offensive smells become pleasurable to them in time, even those which are produced by the most offensive substances. The temperature of a glass-house is not only tolerable but agreeable to those who have their fiery occupation there. Wisely and mercifully was this power of adaptation implanted in us for our good; but in our imperfect and diseased society it is grievously perverted. We make the greater part of the evil circumstances in which we are placed; and then we fit ourselves for those circumstances by a process of systematic degradation, the effect of which most people see in the classes below them, though they may not be conscious that it is operating in a different manner but with equal force upon themselves.
For there is but too much cause to conclude that our moral sense is more easily blunted than our physical sensations. Roman Ladies delighted in seeing the gladiators bleed and die in the public theatre. Spanish Ladies at this day clap their hands in exultation at spectacles which make English Soldiers sicken and turn away. The most upright Lawyer acquires a sort of Swiss conscience for professional use; he is soon taught that considerations of right and wrong have nothing to do with his brief, and that his business is to do the best he can for his client however bad the case. If this went no farther than to save a criminal from punishment, it might be defensible on the ground of humanity, and of charitable hope. But to plead with the whole force of an artful mind in furtherance of a vexatious and malicious suit,—and to resist a rightful claim with all the devices of legal subtlety, and all the technicalities of legal craft,—I know not how he who considers this to be his duty toward his client can reconcile it with his duty toward his neighbour; or how he thinks it will appear in the account he must one day render to the Lord for the talents which have been committed to his charge.
There are persons indeed who have so far outgrown their catechism as to believe that their only duty is to themselves; and who in the march of intellect have arrived at the convenient conclusion that there is no account to be rendered after death. But they would resent any imputation upon their honour or their courage as an offence not to be forgiven; and it is difficult therefore to understand how even such persons can undertake to plead the cause of a scoundrel in cases of seduction,—how they can think that the acceptance of a dirty fee is to justify them for cross-examining an injured and unhappy woman with the cruel wantonness of unmanly insult, bruising the broken reed, and treating her as if she were as totally devoid of shame, as they themselves of decency and of humanity. That men should act thus and be perfectly unconscious the while that they are acting a cowardly and rascally part,—and that society should not punish them for it by looking upon them as men who have lost their caste, would be surprizing if we did not too plainly see to what a degree the moral sense, not only of individuals but of a whole community, may be corrupted.
Physiologists have observed that men and dogs are the only creatures whose nature can accommodate itself to every climate, from the burning sands of the desart to the shores and islands of the frozen ocean. And it is not in their physical nature alone that this power of accommodation is found. Dogs who beyond all reasonable question have a sense of duty and fidelity and affection toward their human associates,—a sense altogether distinct from fear and selfishness,—who will rush upon any danger at their master's bidding, and die broken-hearted beside his body, or upon his grave,—dogs, I say, who have this capacity of virtue, have nevertheless been trained to act with robbers against the traveller, and to hunt down human beings and devour them. But depravity sinks deeper than this in man; for the dog when thus deteriorated acts against no law natural or revealed, no moral sense; he has no power of comparing good and evil, and chusing between them, but may be trained to either, and in either is performing his intelligible duty of obedience.
TRANSITION IN OUR NARRATIVE PREPARATORY TO A CHANGE IN THE DOCTOR'S LIFE. A SAD STORY SUPPRESSED. THE AUTHOR PROTESTS AGAINST PLAYING WITH THE FEELINGS OF HIS READERS. ALL ARE NOT MERRY THAT SEEM MIRTHFUL. THE SCAFFOLD A STAGE. DON RODRIGO CALDERON. THISTLEWOOD. THE WORLD A MASQUERADE, BUT THE DOCTOR ALWAYS IN HIS OWN CHARACTER.
The question “Who was the Doctor?” has now methinks been answered, though not fully, yet sufficiently for the present stage of our memorials, while he is still a bachelor, a single man, an imperfect individual, half only of the whole being which by the laws of nature, and of Christian polity it was designed that man should become.
The next question therefore that presents itself for consideration relates to that other, and as he sometimes called it better half, which upon the union of the two moieties made him a whole man.—Who was Mrs. Dove?
The reader has been informed how my friend in his early manhood when about-to-be-a-Doctor, fell in love. Upon that part of his history I have related all that he communicated, which was all that could by me be known, and probably all there was to know. From that time he never fell in love again; nor did he ever run into it; but as was formerly intimated, he once caught the affection. The history of this attachment I heard from others; he had suffered too deeply ever to speak of it himself; and having maturely considered the matter I have determined not to relate the circumstances. Suffice it to say that he might at the same time have caught from the same person an insidious and mortal disease, if his constitution had been as susceptible of the one contagion, as his heart was of the other. The tale is too painful to be told. There are authors enough in the world who delight in drawing tears; there will always be young readers enough who are not unwilling to shed them; and perhaps it may be wholesome for the young and happy upon whose tears there is no other call.
Not that the author is to be admired, or even excused, who draws too largely upon our lacrymal glands. The pathetic is a string which may be touched by an unskilful hand, and which has often been played upon by an unfeeling one.
For my own part, I wish neither to make my readers laugh or weep. It is enough for me, if I may sometimes bring a gleam of sunshine upon thy brow, Pensoso; and a watery one over thy sight, Buonallegro; a smile upon Penserosa's lips, a dimple in Amanda's cheek, and some quiet tears, Sophronia, into those mild eyes, which have shed so many scalding ones! When my subject leads me to distressful scenes, it will as Southey says, not be
1 Tale of PARAGUAY.
The maxim that an author who desires to make us weep must be affected himself by what he writes, is too trite to be repeated in its original language. Both authors and actors however can produce this effect without eliciting a spark of feeling from their own hearts; and what perhaps may be deemed more remarkable, they can with the same success excite merriment in others, without partaking of it in the slightest degree themselves. No man ever made his contemporaries laugh more heartily than Scarron, whose bodily sufferings were such that he wished for himself
And who describes himself in his epistle to Sarazin, as
It may be said perhaps that Scarron's disposition was eminently cheerful, and that by indulging in buffoonery he produced in himself a pleasurable excitement not unlike that which others seek from strong liquors, or from opium; and therefore that his example tends to invalidate the assertion in support of which it was adduced. This is a plausible objection; and I am far from undervaluing the philosophy of Pantagruelism, and from denying that its effects may, and are likely to be as salutary, as any that were ever produced by the proud doctrines of the Porch. But I question Scarron's right to the appellation of a Pantagruelist; his humour had neither the heighth nor the depth of that philosophy.
There is a well-known anecdote of a physician, who being called in to an unknown patient, found him suffering under the deepest depression of mind, without any discoverable disease, or other assignable cause. The physician advised him to seek for cheerful objects, and recommended him especially to go to the theatre and see a famous actor then in the meridian of his powers, whose comic talents were unrivalled. Alas! the comedian who kept crowded theatres in a roar was this poor hypochondriac himself!
The state of mind in which such men play their part, whether as authors or actors, was confessed in a letter written from Yarmouth Gaol to the Doctor's friend Miller, by a then well-known performer in this line, George Alexander Stevens. He wrote to describe his distress in prison, and to request that Miller would endeavour to make a small collection for him, some night at a concert; and he told his sad tale sportively. But breaking off that strain he said; “You may think I can have no sense, that while I am thus wretched I should offer at ridicule! But, Sir, people constituted like me, with a disproportionate levity of spirits, are always most merry when they are most miserable; and quicken like the eyes of the consumptive, which are always brightest the nearer a patient approaches to dissolution.”
It is one thing to jest, it is another to be mirthful. Sir Thomas More jested as he ascended the scaffold. In cases of violent death, and especially upon an unjust sentence, this is not surprizing; because the sufferer has not been weakened by a wasting malady, and is in a state of high mental excitement and exertion. But even when dissolution comes in the course of nature, there are instances of men who have died with a jest upon their lips. Garci Sanchez de Badajoz when he was at the point of death desired that he might be dressed in the habit of St. Francis; this was accordingly done, and over the Franciscan frock they put on his habit of Santiago, for he was a knight of that order. It was a point of devotion with him to wear the one dress, a point of honour to wear the other; but looking at himself in this double attire, he said to those who surrounded his death-bed, “The Lord will say to me presently, my friend Garci Sanchez, you come very well wrapt up! (muy arropado) and I shall reply, Lord, it is no wonder, for it was winter when I set off.”
The author who relates this anecdote, remarks that o morrer com graça he muyto bom, e com graças he muyto māo: the observation is good but untranslateable, because it plays upon the word which means grace as well as wit. The anecdote itself is an example of the ruling humour “strong in death;” perhaps also of that pride or vanity, call it which we will, which so often, when mind and body have not yielded to natural decay, or been broken down by suffering, clings to the last in those whom it has strongly possessed. Don Rodrigo Calderon whose fall and exemplary contrition served as a favourite topic for the poets of his day, wore a Franciscan habit at his execution, as an outward and visible sign of penitence and humiliation; as he ascended the scaffold, he lifted the skirts of the habit with such an air that his attendant confessor thought it necessary to reprove him for such an instance of ill-timed regard to his appearance. Don Rodrigo excused himself by saying that he had all his life carried himself gracefully!
The author by whom this is related calls it an instance of illustrious hypocrisy. In my judgement the Father Confessor who gave occasion for it deserves a censure far more than the penitent sufferer. The movement beyond all doubt was purely habitual, as much so as the act of lifting his feet to ascend the steps of the scaffold; but the undeserved reproof made him feel how curiously whatever he did was remarked; and that consciousness reminded him that he had a part to support, when his whole thoughts would otherwise have been far differently directed.
A personage in one of Webster's Plays says,
Probably the dramatist alluded to some well known fact which was at that time of recent occurrence. When the desperate and atrocious traitor Thistlewood was on the scaffold, his demeanour was that of a man who was resolved boldly to meet the fate he had deserved; in the few words which were exchanged between him and his fellow criminals he observed, that the grand question whether or not the soul was immortal would soon be solved for them. No expression of hope escaped him, no breathing of repentance; no spark of grace appeared. Yet (it is a fact, which whether it be more consolatory or awful, ought to be known,) on the night after the sentence, and preceding his execution, while he supposed that the person who was appointed to watch him in his cell, was asleep, this miserable man was seen by that person repeatedly to rise upon his knees, and heard repeatedly calling upon Christ his Saviour, to have mercy upon him, and to forgive him his sins!
All men and women are verily, as Shakespear has said of them, merely players,—when we see them upon the stage of the world; that is when they are seen any where except in the freedom and undressed intimacy of private life. There is a wide difference indeed in the performers, as there is at a masquerade between those who assume a character, and those who wear dominos; some play off the agreeable, or the disagreeable for the sake of attracting notice; others retire as it were into themselves; but you can judge as little of the one as of the other. It is even possible to be acquainted with a man long and familiarly, and as we may suppose intimately, and yet not to know him thoroughly or well. There may be parts of his character with which we have never come in contact,—recesses which have never been opened to us,—springs upon which we have never touched. Many there are who can keep their vices secret; would that all bad men had sense and shame enough to do so, or were compelled to it by the fear of public opinion! Shame of a very different nature,—a moral shamefacedness,— which if not itself an instinctive virtue, is near akin to one, makes those who are endowed with the best and highest feelings, conceal them from all common eyes; and for our performance of religious duties,—our manifestations of piety,—we have been warned that what of this kind is done to be seen of men, will not be rewarded openly before men and angels at the last.
If I knew my venerable friend better than I ever knew any other man, it was because he was in many respects unlike other men, and in few points more unlike them than in this, that he always appeared what he was,—neither better nor worse. With a discursive intellect and a fantastic imagination, he retained his simplicity of heart. He had kept that heart unspotted from the world; his father's blessing was upon him, and he prized it beyond all that the world could have bestowed. Crowe says of us,
It was not so with him: his better mind was not as a garment to be put on and off at pleasure; it was like its plumage to a bird, its beauty and its fragrance to a flower, except that it was not liable to be ruffled, nor to fade, nor to exhale and pass away. His mind was like a peacock always in full attire; it was only at times indeed, (to pursue the similitude,) that he expanded and displayed it; but its richness and variety never could be concealed from those who had eyes to see them.
What he was in boyhood has been seen, and something also of his manlier years; but as yet little of the ripe fruits of his intellectual autumn have been set before the readers. No such banquet was promised them as that with which they are to be regaled. “The booksellers,” says Somner the antiquary, in an unpublished letter to Dugdale, “affect a great deal of title as advantageous for the sale; but judicious men dislike it, as savouring of too much ostentation, and suspecting the wine is not good where so much bush is hung out.” Somebody, I forget who, wrote a book upon the titles of books, regarding the title as a most important part of the composition. The bookseller's fashion of which Somner speaks has long been obsolete; mine is a brief title promising little, but intending much. It specifies only the Doctor; but his gravities and his levities, his opinions of men and things, his speculations moral and political, physical and spiritual, his philosophy and his religion, each blending with each, and all with all, these are comprised in the &c. of my title page,—these and his Pantagruelism to boot. When I meditate upon these I may exclaim with the poet:—
These I shall produce for the entertainment of the idle reader, and for the recreation of the busy one; for the amusement of the young, and the contentment of the old; for the pleasure of the wise, and the approbation of the good; and these when produced will be the monument of Daniel Dove. Of such a man it may indeed be said that he
Some of my contemporaries may remember a story once current at Cambridge, of a luckless undergraduate, who being examined for his degree, and failing in every subject upon which he was tried, complained that he had not been questioned upon the things which he knew. Upon which the examining master, moved less to compassion by the impenetrable dulness of the man than to anger by his unreasonable complaint, tore off about an inch of paper, and pushing it towards him, desired him to write upon that all he knew!
2 PHINEAS FLETCHER, 186.
3 ROBERT GREEN.
4 MIDDLETON.
And yet bulky books are composed, or compiled by men who know as little as this poor empty individual. Tracts and treatises and tomes, may be, and are written by persons, to whom the smallest square sheet of delicate note paper, rose-coloured, or green, or blue, with its embossed border, manufactured expressly for ladies' fingers and crow quills, would afford ample room, and verge enough, for expounding the sum total of their knowledge upon the subject whereon they undertake to enlighten the public.
Were it possible for me to pour out all that I have taken in from him, of whose accumulated stores I, alas! am now the sole living depository, I know not to what extent the precious reminiscences might run.
5 MATTEO FRANZESI.
Sidronius Hosschius has supplied me with a simile for this stream of recollections.
As I shall proceed
But for stores which in this way have been received, the best compacted memory is like a sieve; more of necessity slips through than stops upon the way; and well is it, if that which is of most value be what remains behind. I have pledged myself, therefore, to no more than I can perform; and this the reader shall have within reasonable limits, and in due time, provided the performance be not prevented by any of the evils incident to human life.
At present, my business is to answer the question “Who was Mrs. Dove?”
IN WHICH THE FOURTH OF THE QUESTIONS PROPOSED IN CHAPTER II. P. I. IS BEGUN TO BE ANSWERED; SOME OBSERVATIONS UPON ANCESTRY ARE INTRODUCED, AND THE READER IS INFORMED WHY THE AUTHOR DOES NOT WEAR A CAP AND BELLS.
Who was Mrs. Dove?
A woman of the oldest family in this or any other kingdom, for she was beyond all doubt a legitimate descendant of Adam. Her husband perhaps might have rather said that she was a daughter of Eve. But he would have said it with a smile of playfulness, not of scorn.
To trace her descent somewhat lower, and bring it nearer to the stock of the Courtenays, the Howards, the Manriques, the Bourbons and Thundertentronks, she was a descendant of Noah, and of his eldest son Japhet. She was allied to Ham however in another way, besides this remote niece-ship.
As how I pray you, Sir?
Her maiden name was Bacon.
Grave Sir, be not disconcerted. I hope you have no antipathy to such things: or at least that they do not act upon you, as the notes of a bagpipe are said to act upon certain persons whose unfortunate idiosyncrasy exposes them to very unpleasant effects from the sound.
Mr. Critickin,—for as there is a diminutive for cat, so should there be for critic,—I defy you! Before I can be afraid of your claws, you must leave off biting your nails.
I have something better to say to the Reader, who follows wherever I lead up and down, high and low, to the hill and to the valley, contented with his guide, and enjoying the prospect which I shew him in all its parts, in the detail and in the whole, in the foreground and home scene, as well as in the Pisgah view. I will tell him before the chapter is finished, why I do not wear a cap and bells.
To you my Lady, who may imagine that Miss Bacon was not of a good family, (Lord Verulam's line, as you very properly remark, being extinct,) I beg leave to observe that she was certainly a cousin of your own; somewhere within the tenth and twentieth degrees, if not nearer. And this I proceed to prove.
Every person has two immediate parents, four ancestors in the second degree, eight in the third, and so the pedigree ascends, doubling at every step, till in the twentieth generation, he has no fewer than one million, thirty thousand, eight hundred and ninety-six
grandfathers and grandmothers. Therefore my Lady, I conceive it to be absolutely certain, that under the Plantagenets, if not in the time of the Tudors, some of your ancestors must have been equally ancestors of Miss Deborah Bacon.
“At the conquest,” says Sir Richard Phillips, “the ancestry of every one of the English people was the whole population of England; while on the other hand, every one having children at that time, was the direct progenitor of the whole of the living race.”
The reflecting reader sees at once that it must be so. Plato ait, Neminem regem non ex servis esse oriendum, neminem non servum ex regibus. Omnia ista longa varietas miscuit, et sursum deorsum fortuna versavit. Quis ergo generosus? ad virtutem bene à natura compositus. Hoc unum est intuendum: alioqui, si ad vetera revocas, nemo non inde est, ante quod nihil1 est. And the erudite Ihre in the Proemium to his invaluable Glossary, says, ut aliquoto cognationis gradu, sed per monumentorum defectum hodie inexplicabile, omnes homines inter se connexi sunt.
1 SENECA.
Now then to the gentle reader. The reason why I do not wear a cap and bells is this.
There are male caps of five kinds which are worn at present in this kingdom; to wit, the military cap, the collegiate cap, the jockey cap, the travelling cap, and the night cap. Observe reader, I said kinds, that is to say in scientific language genera,—for the species and varieties are numerous, especially in the former genus.
I am not a soldier; and having long been weaned from Alma Mater, of course have left off my college cap. The gentlemen of the ——— hunt would object to my going out with the bells on, it would be likely to frighten their horses; and were I to attempt it, it might involve me in unpleasant disputes, which might possibly lead to more unpleasant consequences. To my travelling cap the bells would be an inconvenient appendage; nor would they be a whit more comfortable upon my night-cap. Besides, my wife might object to them.
It follows that if I would wear a cap and bells, I must have a cap made on purpose. But this would be rendering myself singular; and of all things a wise man will most avoid any ostentatious appearance of singularity.
Now I am certainly not singular in playing the fool without one.
And indeed if I possessed such a cap, it would not be proper to wear it in this part of my history.
RASH MARRIAGES. AN EARLY WIDOWHOOD. AFFLICTION RENDERED A BLESSING TO THE SUFFERER; AND TWO ORPHANS LEFT, THOUGH NOT DESTITUTE, YET FRIENDLESS.
Mrs. Dove was the only child of a clergyman who held a small vicarage in the West Riding. Leonard Bacon her father had been left an orphan in early youth. He had some wealthy relations by whose contributions he was placed at an endowed grammar school in the country, and having through their influence gained a scholarship to which his own deserts might have entitled him, they continued to assist him—sparingly enough indeed—at the University, till he succeeded to a fellowship. Leonard was made of Nature's finest clay, and Nature had tempered it with the choicest dews of Heaven.
He had a female cousin about three years younger than himself, and in like manner an orphan, equally destitute, but far more forlorn. Man hath a fleece about him which enables him to bear the buffetings of the storm;—but woman when young, and lovely and poor, is as a shorn lamb for which the wind has not been tempered.
Leonard's father and Margaret's had been bosom friends. They were subalterns in the same regiment, and being for a long time stationed at Salisbury had become intimate at the house of Mr. Trewbody, a gentleman of one of the oldest families in Wiltshire. Mr. Trewbody had three daughters. Melicent the eldest was a celebrated beauty, and the knowledge of this had not tended to improve a detestable temper. The two youngest Deborah and Margaret, were lively, good-natured, thoughtless, and attractive. They danced with the two Lieutenants, played to them on the spinnet, sung with them and laughed with them,— till this mirthful intercourse became serious, and knowing that it would be impossible to obtain their father's consent they married the men of their hearts without it. Palmer and Bacon were both without fortune, and without any other means of subsistence than their commissions. For four years they were as happy as love could make them; at the end of that time Palmer was seized with an infectious fever. Deborah was then far advanced in pregnancy, and no solicitations could induce Bacon to keep from his friend's bed-side. The disease proved fatal; it communicated to Bacon and his wife, the former only survived his friend ten days, and he and Margaret were then laid in the same grave. They left an only boy of three years old, and in less than a month the widow Palmer was delivered of a daughter.
In the first impulse of anger at the flight of his daughters and the degradation of his family, (for Bacon was the son of a tradesman, and Palmer was nobody knew who) Mr. Trewbody had made his will, and left the whole sum which he had designed for his three daughters, to the eldest. Whether the situation of Margaret and the two orphans might have touched him is perhaps doubtful,—for the family were either light-hearted, or hard-hearted, and his heart was of the hard sort; but he died suddenly a few months before his sons-in-law. The only son, Trewman Trewbody, Esq. a Wiltshire fox-hunter like his father, succeeded to the estate; and as he and his eldest sister hated each other cordially, Miss Melicent left the manor-house and established herself in the Close at Salisbury, where she lived in that style which a portion of £6000. enabled her in those days to support.
The circumstance which might appear so greatly to have aggravated Mrs. Palmer's distress, if such distress be capable of aggravation, prevented her perhaps from eventually sinking under it. If the birth of her child was no alleviation of her sorrow, it brought with it new feelings, new duties, new cause for exertion, and new strength for it. She wrote to Melicent and to her brother, simply stating her own destitute situation, and that of the orphan Leonard; she believed that their pride would not suffer them either to let her starve or go to the parish for support, and in this she was not disappointed. An answer was returned by Miss Trewbody informing her that she had nobody to thank but herself for her misfortunes; but that notwithstanding the disgrace which she had brought upon the family, she might expect an annual allowance of ten pounds from the writer, and a like sum from her brother; upon this she must retire into some obscure part of the country, and pray God to forgive her for the offence she had committed in marrying beneath her birth and against her father's consent.
Mrs. Palmer had also written to the friends of Lieutenant Bacon,—her own husband had none who could assist her. She expressed her willingness and her anxiety to have the care of her sister's orphan, but represented her forlorn state. They behaved more liberally than her own kin had done, and promised five pounds a year as long as the boy should require it. With this and her pension she took a cottage in a retired village. Grief had acted upon her heart like the rod of Moses upon the rock in the desert; it had opened it, and the well-spring of piety had gushed forth. Affliction made her religious, and religion brought with it consolation and comfort and joy. Leonard became as dear to her as Margaret. The sense of duty educed a pleasure from every privation to which she subjected herself for the sake of economy; and in endeavouring to fulfil her duties in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call her, she was happier than she had ever been in her father's house, and not less so than in her marriage state. Her happiness indeed was different in kind, but it was higher in degree. For the sake of these dear children she was contented to live, and even prayed for life; while if it had respected herself only, Death had become to her rather an object of desire than of dread. In this manner she lived seven years after the loss of her husband, and was then carried off by an acute disease, to the irreparable loss of the orphans, who were thus orphaned indeed.
A LADY DESCRIBED WHOSE SINGLE LIFE WAS NO BLESSEDNESS EITHER TO HERSELF OR OTHERS. A VERACIOUS EPITAPH AND AN APPROPRIATE MONUMENT.
Miss Trewbody behaved with perfect propriety upon the news of her sister's death. She closed her front windows for two days; received no visitors for a week; was much indisposed, but resigned to the will of Providence, in reply to messages of condolence; put her servants in mourning, and sent for Margaret that she might do her duty to her sister's child by breeding her up under her own eye. Poor Margaret was transferred from the stone floor of her mother's cottage to the Turkey carpet of her aunt's parlour. She was too young to comprehend at once the whole evil of the exchange; but she learned to feel and understand it during years of bitter dependence, unalleviated by any hope, except that of one day seeing Leonard, the only creature on earth whom she remembered with affection.
Seven years elapsed, and during all those years Leonard was left to pass his holidays, summer and winter, at the grammar school where he had been placed at Mrs. Palmer's death: for although the master regularly transmitted with his half-yearly bill the most favourable accounts of his disposition and general conduct, as well as of his progress in learning, no wish to see the boy had ever arisen in the hearts of his nearest relations; and no feeling of kindness, or sense of decent humanity had ever induced either the foxhunter Trewman or Melicent his sister to invite him for Midsummer or Christmas. At length in the seventh year a letter announced that his school-education had been completed, and that he was elected to a scholarship at —— College, Oxford, which scholarship would entitle him to a fellowship in due course of time; in the intervening years some little assistance from his liberal benefactors would be required; and the liberality of those kind friends would be well bestowed upon a youth who bade so fair to do honour to himself, and to reflect no disgrace upon his honourable connections. The head of the family promised his part with an ungracious expression of satisfaction at thinking that “thank God there would soon be an end of these demands upon him.” Miss Trewbody signified her assent in the same amiable and religious spirit. However much her sister had disgraced her family, she replied, “please God it should never be said that she refused to do her duty.”
The whole sum which these wealthy relations contributed was not very heavy,—an annual ten pounds each: but they contrived to make their nephew feel the weight of every separate portion. The Squire's half came always with a brief note desiring that the receipt of the enclosed sum might be acknowledged without delay,—not a word of kindness or courtesy accompanied it: and Miss Trewbody never failed to administer with her remittance a few edifying remarks upon the folly of his mother in marrying beneath herself; and the improper conduct of his father in connecting himself with a woman of family, against the consent of her relations, the consequence of which was that he had left a child dependant upon those relations for support. Leonard received these pleasant preparations of charity only at distant intervals, when he regularly expected them, with his half-yearly allowance. But Margaret meantime was dieted upon the food of bitterness without one circumstance to relieve the misery of her situation.
At the time, of which I am now speaking, Miss Trewbody was a maiden lady of forty-seven, in the highest state of preservation. The whole business of her life had been to take care of a fine person, and in this she had succeeded admirably. Her library consisted of two books; Nelson's Festivals and Fasts was one, the other was “the Queen's Cabinet unlocked;” and there was not a cosmetic in the latter which she had not faithfully prepared. Thus by means, as she believed, of distilled waters of various kinds, May-dew and butter-milk, her skin retained its beautiful texture still, and much of its smoothness; and she knew at times how to give it the appearance of that brilliancy which it had lost. But that was a profound secret. Miss Trewbody, remembering the example of Jezebel, always felt conscious that she was committing a sin when she took the rouge-box in her hand, and generally ejaculated in a low voice, the Lord forgive me! when she laid it down: but looking in the glass at the same time, she indulged a hope that the nature of the temptation might be considered as an excuse for the transgression. Her other great business was to observe with the utmost precision all the punctilios of her situation in life; and the time which was not devoted to one or other of these worthy occupations, was employed in scolding her servants, and tormenting her niece. This employment, for it was so habitual that it deserved that name, agreed excellently with her constitution. She was troubled with no acrid humours, no fits of bile, no diseases of the spleen, no vapours or hysterics. The morbid matter was all collected in her temper, and found a regular vent at her tongue. This kept the lungs in vigorous health. Nay it even seemed to supply the place of wholesome exercise, and to stimulate the system like a perpetual blister, with this peculiar advantage, that instead of an inconvenience it was a pleasure to herself, and all the annoyance was to her dependants.
Miss Trewbody lies buried in the Cathedral at Salisbury, where a monument was erected to her memory worthy of remembrance itself for its appropriate inscription and accompaniments. The epitaph recorded her as a woman eminently pious, virtuous and charitable, who lived universally respected, and died sincerely lamented by all who had the happiness of knowing her. This inscription was upon a marble shield supported by two Cupids, who bent their heads over the edge, with marble tears larger than grey pease, and something of the same colour, upon their cheeks. These were the only tears which her death occasioned, and the only Cupids with whom she had ever any concern.
A SCENE WHICH WILL PUT SOME OF THOSE READERS WHO HAVE BEEN MOST IMPATIENT WITH THE AUTHOR, IN THE BEST HUMOUR WITH HIM.
There is no argument of more antiquity and elegancy than is the matter of Love; for it seems to be as old as the world, and to bear date from the first time that man and woman was: therefore in this, as in the finest metal, the freshest wits have in all ages shewn their best workmanship.
When Leonard had resided three years at Oxford, one of his college-friends invited him to pass the long vacation at his father's house, which happened to be within an easy ride of Salisbury. One morning therefore he rode to that city, rung at Miss Trewbody's door, and having sent in his name, was admitted into the parlour, where there was no one to receive him, while Miss Trewbody adjusted her head-dress at the toilette, before she made her appearance. Her feelings while she was thus employed were not of the pleasantest kind toward this unexpected guest; and she was prepared to accost him with a reproof for his extravagance in undertaking so long a journey, and with some mortifying questions concerning the business which brought him there. But this amiable intention was put to flight, when Leonard as soon as she entered the room informed her that having accepted an invitation into that neighbourhood from his friend and fellow-collegian, the son of Sir Lambert Bowles, he had taken the earliest opportunity of coming to pay his respects to her, and acknowledging his obligations, as bound alike by duty and inclination. The name of Sir Lambert Bowles acted upon Miss Trewbody like a charm; and its mollifying effect was not a little aided by the tone of her nephew's address, and the sight of a fine youth in the first bloom of manhood, whose appearance and manners were such that she could not be surprized at the introduction he had obtained into one of the first families in the county. The scowl therefore which she brought into the room upon her brow past instantly away, and was succeeded by so gracious an aspect, that Leonard if he had not divined the cause might have mistaken this gleam of sunshine for fair weather.
A cause which Miss Trewbody could not possibly suspect had rendered her nephew's address thus conciliatory. Had he expected to see no other person in that house, the visit would have been performed as an irksome obligation, and his manner would have appeared as cold and formal as the reception which he anticipated. But Leonard had not forgotten the playmate and companion with whom the happy years of his childhood had been passed. Young as he was at their separation his character had taken its stamp during those peaceful years, and the impression which it then received was indelible. Hitherto hope had never been to him so delightful as memory. His thoughts wandered back into the past more frequently than they took flight into the future; and the favourite form which his imagination called up was that of the sweet child, who in winter partook his bench in the chimney corner, and in summer sate with him in the porch, and strung the fallen blossoms of jessamine upon stalks of grass. The snow-drop and the crocus reminded him of their little garden, the primrose of their sunny orchard-bank, and the blue bells and the cowslip of the fields wherein they were allowed to run wild and gather them in the merry month of May. Such as she then was he saw her frequently in sleep, with her blue eyes, and rosy cheeks, and flaxen curls: and in his day dreams he sometimes pictured her to himself such as he supposed she now might be, and dressed up the image with all the magic of ideal beauty. His heart, therefore, was at his lips when he enquired for his cousin. It was not without something like fear, and an apprehension of disappointment that he awaited her appearance; and he was secretly condemning himself for the romantic folly which he had encouraged, when the door opened and a creature came in,—less radiant indeed, but more winning than his fancy had created, for the loveliness of earth and reality was about her.
“Margaret,” said Miss Trewbody, “do you remember your cousin Leonard?”
Before she could answer, Leonard had taken her hand. “'Tis a long while Margaret since we parted!—ten years!—But I have not forgotten the parting,—nor the blessed days of our childhood.”
She stood trembling like an aspen leaf, and looked wistfully in his face for a moment, then hung down her head, without power to utter a word in reply. But he felt her tears fall fast upon his hand, and felt also that she returned its pressure.
Leonard had some difficulty to command himself, so as to bear a part in conversation with his aunt, and keep his eyes and his thoughts from wandering. He accepted however her invitation to stay and dine with her with undissembled satisfaction, and the pleasure was not a little heightened when she left the room to give some necessary orders in consequence. Margaret still sate trembling and in silence. He took her hand, prest it to his lips, and said in a low earnest voice, “dear dear Margaret!” She raised her eyes, and fixing them upon him with one of those looks the perfect remembrance of which can never be effaced from the heart to which they have been addressed, replied in a lower but not less earnest tone, “dear Leonard!” and from that moment their lot was sealed for time and for eternity.
A STORY CONCERNING CUPID WHICH NOT ONE READER IN TEN THOUSAND HAS EVER HEARD BEFORE; A DEFENCE OF LOVE WHICH WILL BE VERY SATISFACTORY TO THE LADIES.
The Stoics who called our good affections eupathies, did not manage those affections as well as they understood them. They kept them under too severe a discipline, and erroneously believed that the best way to strengthen the heart was by hardening it. The Monks carried this error to its utmost extent, falling indeed into the impious absurdity that our eupathies are sinful in themselves. The Monks have been called the Stoics of Christianity; but the philosophy of the Cloister can no more bear comparison with that of the Porch, than Stoicism itself with Christianity pure and undefiled. Van Helmont compares even the Franciscans with the Stoics, “paucis mutatis,” he says, “videbam Capucinum esse Stoicum Christianum.” He might have found a closer parallel for them in the Cynics both for their filth and their extravagance. And here I will relate a Rabbinical tradition.
On a time the chiefs of the Synagogue, being mighty in prayer, obtained of the Lord that the Evil Spirit who had seduced the Jews to commit idolatry, and had brought other nations against them to overthrow their city and destroy the Temple, should be delivered into their hands for punishment; when by advice of Zachariah the prophet they put him in a leaden vessel, and secured him there with a weight of lead upon his face. By this sort of peine forte et dure, they laid him so effectually that he has never appeared since. Pursuing then their supplications while the ear of Heaven was open, they entreated that another Evil Spirit by whom the people had continually been led astray, might in like manner be put into their power. This prayer also was granted; and the Demon with whom Poets, Lovers and Ladies are familiar, by his heathen name of Cupid, was delivered up to them.
The prophet Zachariah warned them not to be too hasty in putting him to death, for fear of the consequences;
But the prophet's counsel was as vain as the wise courtier's in Beaumont and Fletcher's tragedy, who remonstrated against the decree for demolishing Cupid's altars. They disregarded his advice; because they were determined upon destroying the enemy now that they had him in their power; and they bound their prisoner fast in chains, while they deliberated by what death he should die. These deliberations lasted three days; on the third day it happened that a new-laid egg was wanted for a sick person, and behold! no such thing was to be found throughout the kingdom of Israel, for since this Evil Spirit was in durance not an egg had been laid; and it appeared upon enquiry, that the whole course of kind was suspended. The chiefs of the Synagogue perceived then that not without reason Zachariah had warned them; they saw that if they put their prisoner to death, the world must come to an end; and therefore they contented themselves with putting out his eyes, that he might not see to do so much mischief, and let him go.
1 METASTASIO.
Thus it was that Cupid became blind,—a fact unknown to the Greek and Roman Poets and to all the rhymesters who have succeeded them.
The Rabbis are coarse fablers. Take away love, and not physical nature only, but the heart of the moral world would be palsied;
2 BEAUMONT & FLETCHER.
3 METASTASIO.
It is with this passion as with the Amreeta in Southey's Hindoo tale, the most original of his poems; its effects are beneficial or malignant according to the subject on which it acts. In this respect Love may also be likened to the Sun, under whose influence one plant elaborates nutriment for man, and another poison; and which while it draws up pestilence from the marsh and jungle, and sets the simoom in motion over the desert, diffuses light, life, and happiness over the healthy and cultivated regions of the earth.
It acts terribly upon Poets. Poor creatures, nothing in the whole details of the Ten Persecutions, or the history of the Spanish Inquisition, is more shocking than what they have suffered from Love, according to the statements which they have given of their own sufferings. They have endured scorching, frying, roasting, burning, sometimes by a slow fire, sometimes by a quick one; and melting,—and this too from a fire, which while it thus affects the heart and liver, raises not a blister upon the skin; resembling in this respect that penal fire which certain theological writers describe as being more intense because it is invisible,—existing not in form, but in essence, and acting therefore upon spirit as material and visible fire acts upon the body. Sometimes they have undergone from the same cause all the horrors of freezing and petrifaction. Very frequently the brain is affected; and one peculiar symptom of the insanity arising from this cause, is that the patients are sensible of it, and appear to boast of their misfortune.
Hear how it operated upon Lord Brooke, who is called the most thoughtful of poets, by the most bookful of Laureates. The said Lord Brooke in his love, and in his thoughtfulness, confesseth thus;
Hear how the grave—the learned Pasquier describes its terrible effects upon himself!
Hear its worse moral consequences, which Euphues avowed in his wicked days! “He that cannot dissemble in love is not worthy to live. I am of this mind, that both might and malice, deceit and treachery, all perjury and impiety, may lawfully be committed in love, which is lawless.”
Hear too how Ben Jonson makes the Lady Frampul express her feelings!
And hear how Artemidorus, not the oneirologist, but the great philosopher at the Court of the Emperor Sferamond, describes the appearances which he had observed in dissecting some of those unfortunate persons, who had died of love. “Quant à mon regard,” says he, “j'en ay veu faire anatomie de quelques uns qui estoient morts de cette maladie, qui avoient leurs entrailles toutes retirées, leur pauvre cœur tout bruslé, leur foye toute enfumé, leurs poulmons tout rostis, les ventricules de leurs cerveaux tous endommagez; et je croy que leur pauvre ame etoit cuite et arse à petite feu, pour la vehemence et excessif chaleur et ardeur inextinguible qu'ils enduroient lors que la fievre d'amour les avoit surprins.”4
3 AMADIS DE GAULE. Liv. 23.
But the most awful description of its dangerous operation upon persons of his own class is given by the Prince of the French Poets, not undeservedly so called in his own times. Describing the effect of love upon himself when he is in the presence of his mistress, Ronsard says,
Mercy on us! neither Petrarch, nor poor Abel Shufflebottom himself was so far gone as this!
In a diseased heart it loses its nature, and combining with the morbid affection which it finds produces a new disease.
When it gets into an empty heart, it works there like quicksilver in an apple dumpling, while the astonished cook ignorant of the roguery which has been played her, thinks that there is not Death, but the Devil in the pot.
In a full heart, which is tantamount to saying a virtuous one, (for in every other, conscience keeps a void place for itself, and the hollow is always felt;) it is sedative, sanative, and preservative: a drop of the true elixir, no mithridate so effectual against the infection of vice.
How then did this passion act upon Leonard and Margaret? In a manner which you will not find described in any of Mr. Thomas Moore's poems; and which Lord Byron is as incapable of understanding, or even believing in another, as he is of feeling it in himself.
I will not describe the subsequent interviews between Leonard and his cousin, short and broken but precious as they were; nor that parting one in which hands were plighted, with the sure and certain knowledge that hearts had been interchanged. Remembrance will enable some of my readers to pourtray the scene, and then perhaps a sigh may be heaved for the days that are gone: Hope will picture it to others,—and with them the sigh will be for the days that are to come.
There was not that indefinite deferment of hope in this case at which the heart sickens. Leonard had been bred up in poverty from his childhood: a parsimonious allowance, grudgingly bestowed, had contributed to keep him frugal at College, by calling forth a pardonable if not a commendable sense of pride in aid of a worthier principle. He knew that he could rely upon himself for frugality, industry and a cheerful as well as a contented mind. He had seen the miserable state of bondage in which Margaret existed with her Aunt, and his resolution was made to deliver her from that bondage as soon as he could obtain the smallest benefice on which it was possible for them to subsist. They agreed to live rigorously within their means however poor, and put their trust in Providence. They could not be deceived in each other, for they had grown up together; and they knew that they were not deceived in themselves. Their love had the freshness of youth, but prudence and forethought were not wanting; the resolution which they had taken brought with it peace of mind, and no misgiving was felt in either heart when they prayed for a blessing upon their purpose. In reality it had already brought a blessing with it; and this they felt; for love when it deserves that name produces in us what may be called a regeneration of its own,—a second birth,— dimly but yet in some degree resembling that which is effected by Divine Love when its redeeming work is accomplished in the soul.
Leonard returned to Oxford happier than all this world's wealth or this world's honours could have made him. He had now a definite and attainable hope,—an object in life which gave to life itself a value. For Margaret, the world no longer seemed to her like the same earth which she had till then inhabited. Hitherto she had felt herself a forlorn and solitary creature, without a friend; and the sweet sounds and pleasant objects of nature had imparted as little cheerfulness to her as to the debtor who sees green fields in sunshine from his prison, and hears the lark singing at liberty. Her heart was open now to all the exhilarating and all the softening influences, of birds, fields, flowers, vernal suns and melodious streams. She was subject to the same daily and hourly exercise of meekness, patience, and humility; but the trial was no longer painful; with love in her heart, and hope and sunshine in her prospect, she found even a pleasure in contrasting her present condition with that which was in store for her.
In these our days every young lady holds the pen of a ready writer, and words flow from it as fast as it can indent its zigzag lines, according to the reformed system of writing,—which said system improves handwritings by making them all alike and all illegible. At that time women wrote better and spelt worse: but letter writing was not one of their accomplishments. It had not yet become one of the general pleasures and luxuries of life,—perhaps the greatest gratification which the progress of civilization has given us. There was then no mail coach to waft a sigh across the country at the rate of eight miles an hour. Letters came slowly and with long intervals between; but when they came, the happiness which they imparted to Leonard and Margaret lasted during the interval,—however long. To Leonard it was as an exhilarant and a cordial which rejoiced and strengthened him. He trod the earth with a lighter and more elated movement on the day when he received a letter from Margaret, as if he felt himself invested with an importance which he had never possessed till the happiness of another human being was inseparably associated with his own;
1 DRUMMOND.
Happy indeed if there be happiness on earth, as that same sweet poet says, is he,
2 DRUMMOND.
This was Leonard's case; and when he kissed the paper which her hand had pressed it was with a consciousness of the strength and sincerity of his affection, which at once rejoiced and fortified his heart. To Margaret his letters were like summer dew upon the herb that thirsts for such refreshment. Whenever they arrived, a head-ache became the cause or pretext for retiring earlier than usual to her chamber, that she might weep and dream over the precious lines.
3 ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.