.•'-'•' CD ONCE UPON A TIME. BY THE SAME AUTHOR. KNOWLEDGE IS POWER: A View of the Productive Forces of Modern Society, and the Results of Labour, Capital, and Skill. 2nd Edition, with additional Woodcuts. Post 8vo., 7s. 6c?. ii. THE OLD PRINTER & THE MODERN PRESS. Fcap. 8vo., 5s. LONDON : PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET. ONCE UPON A TIME. BY CHARLES KNIGHT. ' The old bees die. the young possess their hive." 'Shakspeke: Luaeu. SECOND EDITION. IIiLUSTKATEB WITH IUIEEOUS WOODCUTS. LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMAELE STKEET. 1859. {The right of Translation is reserved.] VA*7 I %5f TO HENRY, LORD BROUGHAM, THE UNWEARIED ADVOCATE OF PROGRESS, THESE SKETCHES OF SOME OF THE STAGES OF TRANSITION FROM THE PAST TO THE PRESENT ARE RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED. 864 Some of the pieces in this volume have been printed before, chiefly in periodical works. Many are new. The articles in this edition entitled * The Chapel/ and 1 The Beginnings of Popular Literature,' — are portions of my volume entitled * The Old Printer and the Modern Press.' The various papers are here presented, as far as the nature of the subjects will admit, in a chronological succession This arrangement has in- volved many alterations in some of the republished articles. It is scarcely necessary to indicate the several publi- cations in which a portion of these slight things have previously appeared, except to say that some of the shorter pieces have had the advantage of the popularity of Mr. Dickens' * Household Words.' The Title, ■ Once upon a Time,' which, as the com- mencement of ' Old Wives' Tales,' lingers in our childish memories, may suggest something of the un- vm pretending nature of these Sketches. I think they are not untrue representations of other states of society ; but they have no pretensions to the completeness which History, even domestic History, demands. They are Glimpses of the Past. Yet as such they may have some value beyond that of amusing a vacant hour. The Past is a solemn word : — 1 The Past, Big with deep warnings of the proper tenure By which thou hast the earth : the Present for thee Shall have distinct and trembling beauty, seen Beside that Past's own shade.' Browning, Paracelsus. CONTENTS. PAGE The Chapel l The Pastons 10 The Discoverer of Madeira 49 The Silent Highway 60 The Younger Son 84 Hang out your Lights 90 Evil May»Day 103 Country Wayfarers 110 Philip Sidney and Fulke Greville 129 Shakspere's First Ride to London 135 May-Morning: its Poetry and its Prose . * . . . . 142 Amateurs and Actors 147 Ben Jonson's Mother 154 English Poets in Scotland 160 Robert Burton's Poetical Commonwealth ...... 175 Milton, the Londoner 184 Lucy Hutchinson 209 Astrological Almanacs 216 May-fair 223 John Aubrey, and his Eminent Men 234 The Beginnings of Popular Literature — Section I. . . f 250 „ „ „ Section II. . . . 262 „ „ „ Section III. ... 278 The First Newspaper Stamp 293 Trivia .297- Horace Walpole's World of Fashion 322 Horace Walpole's World of Letters 347 X CONTENTS. PAGE Fanny Burney at Court 370 The Farmer's Kitchen 382 Windsor, as it was 388 Crabbe's Modern Antiques 403 The Leading Profession 425 Dear and Cheap 434 Suburban Milestones 455 An Episode of Vathek . 463 The Eton Montem 471 Items of the Obsolete 478 The First Step into the World 508 Saint John's Gate 514 The Tail-Piece 530 ILLUSTKATIONS. PAGE Ancient Press 2 Mark of Wynkyn de Worde 9 Caister Castle 10 Mode t>f Folding and Sealing a Letter 11 Female Costume in the time of Henry VI 13 Male Costume in the time of Henry VI 42 Framlingham Castle 48 Water Quintain 63 John Taylor, the Water-Poet 72 The old Stage and Balcony ' 74 The Watch, with ' cressets' and ' beacons.' — Grouped from Hollar . . 94 Sidney's Tree 134 Shakspere 135 Ben Jonson 154 Milton 184 'Comus' 191 Chancel of St. Giles, Cripplegate 208 Lilly 218 John Gadbury 219 Francis Moore, 1657. — From an anonymous print 222 Old Watering-house, Knightsbridge, as it appeared in 1841 .... 224 Faux, the Conjuror 232 Dunton 267 f Tonson 269 Lackington 283 * The foot grows black that was with dirt embrown'd ' 297 Cheapside 300 Hackney Coachman, 1680 306 Temple Bar.— Hogarth . 308 The Palace Gate, St. James's 309 Xll ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE London Streetlights, 1760 311 The Liveried Torch-bearer 313 Link-boy 315 The Enraged Musician 317 Horn-men. — 'Great News!' 318 Muffin-man, 1841 319 The Library, Strawberry Hill 322 The Gallery, Strawberry Hill 325 Pall Mall, about 1740 328 Garrick as Macbeth 329 Vauxhall in 1751 332 A Fleet Marriage-Party. — From a print of the time ...... 343 Horace Walpole 347 Johnson. — From a portrait by Sir J. Reynolds 350 Darwin 356 Boswell 370 George III 372 Queen Charlotte 374 Sir John Dinely 388 ' Fair Lemons and Oranges !'.... 434 Oranges.— 1841 435 Islington : One mile from the spot where Hicks's Hall formerly stood . 456 Bear-ward. — Hogarth 485 A Ball. — From the Frontispiece to Thompson's Country Dances, 1778 486 St. John's Gate, Clerkenwell, 1841 514 Cave 519 ONCE UPON A TIME. THE CHAPEL. It was evensong time when, after a day of listlessness, the printers in the Almonry at Westminster prepared to close the doors of their workshop. This was a tolerably spacious room, with a carved oaken roof. The setting sun shone brightly into the chamber, and lighted up such furniture as no other room in London could then exhibit. Between the columns which supported the roof stood two presses — ponderous machines. A /om of types lay unread upon the table of one of these presses ; the other was empty. There were cases ranged between the opposite columns; but there was no copy suspended ready for the compositors to proceed with in the morning. No heap of wet paper was piled upon the floor. The balls, removed from the presses, were rotting in a corner. The ink-blocks were dusty, and a thin film had formed over the oily pigment. He who had set these machines in motion, and filled the whole space with the activity of mind, was dead. His daily work was ended. Three grave-looking men, decently clothed in black, ' were girding on their swords. Their caps were in their hands. The door opened, and the chief of the workmen came in. It was Wyhkyn de Worde. With short speech, but with looks of deep significance, he called a chapel — the printer's parliament — a conclave as solemn and as omni- potent as the Saxons' Witenagemot. Wynkyn was the Father of the Chapel. ONCE UPON A TIME. The four drew their high stools round the imposing-stone — those stools on which they had sat through many a day of quiet labour, steadily working to the distant end of some ponderous folio, without hurry or anxiety. Upon the stone Ancient Press. lay two uncorrected folio pages — a portion of the ' Lives of the Fathers.' Tho proof was not returned. He that they had followed a few days before to his grave in St. Margaret's church had lifted it once back to his failing eyes, — and then they closed in night. * Companions,' said Wynkyn — (surely that word ' com- IHin ions' tells of the antiquity of printing, and of the old love and fellowship that subsisted amongst its craft) — upanions, tho good work will not stop.' 4 Wynkyn, 1 said Richard Pynson, ' who is to carry on the work T THE CHAPEL. 3 ' I am ready,' answered Wynkyn. A faint expression of joy rose to the lips of these honest men, but it was damped by the remembrance of him they had lost. ' He died,' said Wynkyn, • as he lived. The Lives of the Holy Fathers is finished, as far as the translator's labour. There is the rest of the copy. Read the words of the last page, which 1 have written : — i Thus endeth the most virtuous history of the devout and right-renowned lives of holy fathers living in desert, worthy of remembrance to all well-disposed persons, which hath been translated out of French into English by William Caxton, of Westminster, late dead, and finished at the last day of his life.'* The tears were in all their eyes ; and • God rest his soul !' was whispered around, ' Companion,' said William Machlinia, * is not this a hazardous enterprise ?' 1 1 have encouragement,' replied Wynkyn ; ' the Lady Margaret, his Highness' mother, gives me aid. So droop not, fear not. We will carry on the work briskly in our good master's house. — So fill the case.'f A shout almost mounted to the roof. 1 But why should we fear ? You, Machlinia, you, Lettou, and you, dear Richard Pynson, if you choose not to abide with your old companion here, there is work for you all in these good towns of Westminster, London, and South- ward You have money ; you know where to buy types. Printing must go forward.' 1 Always full of heart,' said Pynson. ' But you forget the statute of King Richard ; we cannot say " God rest his soul," for our old master scarcely ever forgave him putting Lord Rivers to death. You forget the statute. We ought to know it, for we printed it. I can turn to the file in a * These are the words with which this book closes, f ' Wynkyn de Worde this hath set in print, In William Csixton's house : — so fill the case.' Stanzas to ' Scala Perfectionis,' 1494. B ? 4 ONCE UPON A TIME. moment. It is the Act touching the merchants of Italy, which forbids them selling their wares in this realm. Here it is : — " Provided always that this Act, or any part thereof, in nowise extend or be prejudicial of any let, hurt, or im- pediment to any artificer or merchant stranger, of what nation or country he be or shall be of, for bringing into this realm, or selling by retail or otherwise, of any manner of books written or imprinted." Can we stand up against that, if we have more presses than the old press of the Abbey of Westminster ?' 1 Ay, truly, we can, good friend,' briskly answered Wynkyn. 'Have we any books in our stores? Could we. ever print books fast enough ? Are there not readers rising up on all sides ? Do we depend upon the court ? The mercers and the drapers, the grocers and the spicers of the city, crowd here for our books. The rude uplandish men even take our books ; they that our good master rather vilipended. The tapsters and taverners have our books. The whole country-side cries out for our ballads and our Eobin Hood stories; and, to say the truth, the citizen's wife is as much taken with our King Arthurs and King Blanchardines as the most noble knight that Master Caxton 'ever desired to look upon in his green days of jousts in Burgundy. So fill the case.'* 1 But if foreigners bring books into England/ said cautious William Machlinia, ' there will be more books than readers.' * Books make readers,' rejoined Wynkyn. * Do you re- member how timidly even our bold master went on before he was safe in his sell ? Do you forget how he asked this lord to take a copy, and that knight to give him something in fee ; and how he bargained for his summer venison and his winter venison, as an encouragement in his ventures ? l'ut he found a larger market than he ever counted upon, and so shall we all. Go ye forth, my brave fellows. Stay * To "till tit.- mm" is to pat tVoli types in tli.« cis.', ready to arrange in ni'w pages. 'I'll.' bibliographer! scarcely understood the technical expression of honest Wynkyn, THE CHAPEL. 5 not to work for me, if you can work better for yourselves. I fear no rivals.' 1 Why, Wynkyn,' interposed Pynson, ' you talk as if printing were as necessary as air ; books as food, or cloth- ing, or fire.' * And so they will be some day. What is to stop the want of books ? Will one man have the command of books, and another desire them not ? The time may come when every man shall require books.' 1 Perhaps,' said Lettou, who had an eye to printing the Statutes, ' the time may come when every man shall want to read an Act of Parliament, instead of the few lawyers who buy our Aots now.' 1 Hardly so,' grunted Wynkyn. * Or perchance you think that, when our sovereign liege meets his Peers and Commons in Parliament, it were well to print a book some month or two after, to tell what the said Parliament said, as well as ordained ?' ' Xay, nay, you run me hard,' said Wynkyn, I And if within a month, why not within a day ? Why shouldn't we print the words as fast as they are spoken ? We only want fairy fingers to pick up our types, and presses that Doctor Faustus and his devils may some day make, to tell all London to-morrow morning what is done this morning in the palace at Westminster.' * Prithee, be serious,' ejaculated Wynkyn. ' Why do you talk such gallymaufry? I was speaking of possible things ; and I really think the day may come when one person in a thousand may read books and buy books, and we shall have a trade almost as good as that of armourers and fletchers.' 'The Bible!' exclaimed Pynson; '0 that we might print the Bible ! I know of a copy of Wickliffe's Bible. That were indeed a book to print !' I I have no doubt, Kichard,' replied Wynkyn, ' that the happy time may come when a Bible shall be chained in every church, for every Christian man to look upon. You remember when our brother Hunte showed us the chained C OXCE UPON A TTME. books in the library at Oxford. So a century or two hence a Bible may be found in every parish. Twelve thousand parishes in England ! We should w r ant more paper in that good day, Master Ki chard.' I You had better fancy at once,' said Lettou, ' that every housekeeper will want a Bible ! Heaven save the mark, how some men's imaginations run away with them !' I I cannot see,' interposed Machlinia, ' how we can venture upon more presses in London. Here are two. They have been worked well since the day when they were shipped at Cologne. Here are five good founts of type, as much as a thousand weight — Great Primer, Double Pica, Pica— a large and a small face, and Long Primer. They have well worked ; they are pretty nigh worn out. What man would ri.sk such an adventure, after our good old master? He was a favourite at court and in cloister. He was well patronized. Who is to patronize us ?' ' The people, I tell you,' exclaimed Wynftyn. ■ The babe in the cradle wants an Absey-book ; the maid at her distaff wants a ballad ; the priest wants his Pie ; the young lover wants a romance of chivalry to read to his mistress ; the lawyer wants his Statutes ; the scholar wants his Virgil and Cicero. They will all want more the more they are supplied. How many in England have a book at all, 1li ink you ? Let us make books cheaper by printing more of them at once. The churchwardens of St. Margaret's asked me six-and-eightpence yesterday for the volume that our master left the parish ;* for not a copy can I get, if we should want to print again. Six-and-eightpence ? That was exactly what he charged his customers for the volume. Print five hundred instead of two hundred, and we could sell it for three-and fourpence.' 1 And ruin ourselves,' said Machlinia. ' Master Wynkyn, I shall fear to work for you if you go on so madly. What has turned your head T * There is a record in the parish books of .^t. Margaret's of the chureh- i selling for 6s. Sd. one of the books bequeathed to the church by William Caxton. THE CHAPEL. 7 'Hearken,' said Wynkyn. * The day our good master was buried I had no stomach for my home. I could not eat. I could scarcely look on the sunshine. There was a chill at my heart. I took the key of our office, for you all were absent, and I came here in the deep twilight. I sat down in Master Caxton's chair. I sat till I fancied I saw him moving about, as he was wont to move, in his furred gown, explaining this copy to one of us, and shaking his head at that proof to the other. I fell asleep. Then I dreamed a dream, a wild dream, but one that seems to have given me hope and courage. There I sat, in the old desk at the head of this room, straining my eves at the old proofs. The room gradually expanded. The four frames went on multiplying, till they became innumerable. I saw case piled upon case ; and form side by side with form. All was bustle, and yet quiet, in that room. Readers passed to and fro ; there was a glare of many lights ; all seemed employed in producing one folio, an enormous folio. In an instant the room had changed. I heard a noise as of many wheels. I saw sheets of paper covered with ink as quickly as I pick up this type. Sheet upon sheet, hundreds of sheets, thousands of sheets, came from forth the wheels — flowing in unstained, like corn from the hopper, and coming out printed, like flour to the sack. They flew abroad as if carried over the earth by the winds. Again the scene changed. In a cottage, an artificer's cottage, though it had many things in it which belong to princes' palaces, I saw a man lay down his basket of tools and take up one of these sheets. He read it ; he laughed, he looked angry ; tears rose to his eyes ; and then he read aloud to his wife and children. I asked him to show me the sheet. It was wet; it contained as many types as our " Mirror of the World." But it bore the date of 1844. I looked around, and I saw shelves of books against that cottage wall — large volumes and small volumes ; and a boy opened one of the large volumes and showed me numberless block- cuts ; and the artificer and his wife, and his children gathered round me, all looking with glee towards their 8 ONCE UPON A TIME. books, and the good man pointed to an inscription on his bookshelves, and I read these words, My Library a Dukedom. I woke in haste ; and, whether awake or dreaming I know not, my master stood beside me, and smilingly exclaimed, 4i This is my fruit." I have encouragement in this dream.' • Friend Wynkyn,' said Fynson, ' these are distempered visions. The press may go forward ; I think it will go forward. But I am of the belief that the press will never work but for the great and the learned, to any purpose of profit to the printer. How can we ever, hope to send our wares abroad ? We may hawk our ballads and our merry jests through London ; but the citizens are too busy to heed them, and the apprentices and serving men are too poor to buy them. To the country we cannot send them. Good lack, imagine the poor pedler tramping with a pack of books to Bristol or Winchester ! Before he could reach either city through our wild roads, he would have his throat cut or be starved. .A I aster Wynkyn, we shall always have a narrow market till the king mends his highways, and that will never be.' 4 I am rather for trying, Master Wynkyn,' said Lettou, 1 some good cutting jest against our friends in the Abbey, such as Dan Chaucer expounded touching the friars. That would sell in these precincts.' * Hush !' exclaimed W r ynkyn : • the good fathers are our friends ; and though some murmur against them, we might have worse masters.' 4 1 wish they would let us print the Bible, though,' ejacu- lated Pynson. 4 The time will come, and that right soon,' exclaimed the hopeful Wynkyn, 4 So be it,' said they one and all. • l'.ut what fair sheet of paper is that in your hand, good Wynkyn? 1 said Pynson. * Master Richard, we are all moving onward. This is English-made paper. Is it not better than the brown thick r we have had from over the sea? How he would THE CHAPEL. 9 have rejoiced in this accomplishment of John Tate's long- ing trials ! Ay, Master Richard, this fair sheet was made in the new mill at Hertford ; and well am I minded to use it in our Bartholomasus, which I shall straightly put in hand, when the Formschneider is ready. I have thought anent it ; I have resolved on it ; and I have indited some rude verses touching the matter, simple person as I am : — 1 For in this world to reckon every thing Pleasure to man, there is none comparable As is to read ami understanding In l>ooks of wisdom — they ben so delectable, Which sound to virtue, and ben profitable; And eld that love such virtue ben full glad Books to renew, and cause them to be made. • And also of your charity call to remembrance The soul of Wiliiam Caxton, first printer of this book In Latin tongue at Cologne, himself to advance, That every well-disposed man may thereon look : And John Tate the younger joy mote [may] he brook, Which hath late in England made this paper thin, That now in our English this book is printed in.' 'Fairly rhymed, Wynkyn/ said Lettou. 'But John Tate the younger is a bold fellow. Of a surety England can never support a Paper-mill of its own.' ' Come, to business,' said AVilliam of Mechlin. Mark of Wynkyn de Worde.* * He always in these marks, associated the device of Caxton with his own ; glorying, as he well might, in succeeding to the business of his honoured master, and continuing for so many years the good work which he had be surete", .Malheur done a ct'lui qu'une aniiire impreVue Engage un pen trap tard au detour d'une rue: Bientot quatre bandits, lui serrant les cotes, La bourse ' London was perhaps better off, with its general system of private lights, however imperfect that system might be. In 1694, a licence was granted by the corporation to certain persons * concerned and interested in glass-lights, com- monly called or known by the name of convex-lights,' for the sole supply of the public lights in all public places in the city, for twenty-one years. Here, one would have thought, would have been the prosperous commencement of a system which would really have insured safety to the inhabitants of London. But when the lease was expired, we hear no more of the glass-lights or convex-lights ; and every housekeeper whose house fronts any street or lane, and is of the rent of ten pounds, and every person having the charge of a public building, are each required and obliged, in every dark night, from the twenty-ninth of September until the twenty-fifth day of March, to hang out one or more lanthorn or lanthorns, with sufficient cotton- wick candles lighted therein, and to continue the same burning in every such dark night, from the hour of six until the hour of eleven of the same night. The act of Common Council which makes these provisions, tells us they are ' for securing the houses against robbers and thieves, 102 ONCE UPON A TIME. for the prevention of murder, and the conveniency of passengers.' Glorious provisions, indeed, were they for accomplishing those ends ! When there were clouds over the moon, — and whole streets and portions of streets were without light, because the inhabitants were not rated at ten pounds — and there was no light at all after eleven o'clock, we must admire the sagacity of the civic authorities, who thus proposed to put down robbery and murder. Defoe, who, in many things, was a century before his age, published a pamphlet in 1729, wherein he suggested a plan 'by which our streets will be so strongly guarded, and so gloriously illuminated, that any part of London will be as safe and pleasant at midnight as at noonday, and burglary totally impracticable.' London continued to be strongly guarded by its ' ancient and most quiet watchmen ' for another hundred years ; and the authorities began to think of rendering the streets illuminated ' with a convenient and sufficient number of glass-lamps,' not until they had gone up in terror to George II., to implore 'a speedy, rigorous, and exemplary execution of the laws upon the persons of oifenders.' There was small difference in social arrange- ments between the old days of • Hang out your lights,' and those semi-modern days when society, pretending to be in the most civilised condition, was really going backwards in many of the essential matters that constitute the * salt of life.' ( 103 ) EVIL MAY-DAY. There was fear and trouble in London on the eve of May- day, in the ninth year of King Henry the Eighth. The sun was setting as John Rest, the Mayor, hurried into the Guildhall, where the Aldermen, and the Recorder, and the Sheriffs had been suddenly assembled. He spake to them with a tremulous voice, saying that he had just come from the great Cardinal, at York House, who had told him, of his own sure knowledge, that it was the intention of the young and riotous people to rise and distress the strangers ; and that the Cardinal had bid him go home, and wisely foresee that matter. Then uprose a worshipful man, and said, that the grievances of the citizens were very great, and that the blood of the apprentices might bo stirred to avenge their masters. ■ For,' said he, ' did I not hear Dr. Bell preach, on Easter Tuesday, and set forth how the aliens and strangers eat the bread from the poor fatherless children, and take the living from all the artificers, and the inter- course from all the merchants?' And then another wor- shipful man arose, and declared how he had heard John Lincoln, the broker, hold forth to a great crowd at the Porch of St. Mary, Spital, that the English merchants could have no utterance ; for the merchant strangers bring in all silks, cloth of gold, wine, iron, and such other merchandise that no man, almost, buys of an Englishman ; and carry- outward so much English tin, wool, and lead, that English- men that adventure outward can have no living. And then the worshipful assembly, with one or two exceptions, joined in the outcry against the merchant strangers, and especially against those who dealt in foreign nails, locks, baskets, cupboards, stools, tables, chests, and girdles ; which, 104 ONCE UPON A TIME. if they were wrought here, Englishmen might have some work and living. Thus the guardians of the king's peace began to murmur, and clamour as bitterly as Dr. Bell or John Lincoln ; and some were for doing nothing, and some were for calling out the watch, if the riot should take place, and the aliens should be slain. But amidst these heats stood up the Under-Sheriff Master Thomas More ; and there was instant silence. ' Good, my masters,' said he, ' our business is to pre- vent a riot, not redress a grievance : and, moreover, I think the grievance, such as it be, is not to be redressed either by noise or staff-striking. If the stranger exchanges his wine and oil for our wool and tin, he gives us what we want in return for what he wants ; and God's gifts are not hidden in a corner. If the alien sells baskets, and girdles, and painted cloths, why is it that you can't sell the same work of your own hands? Because your workman- ship is less skilful. We must amend ourselves before we blame the stranger for our poverty. My counsel is, that you all go to your own homes ; lock up your apprentices till to-morrow's matin-bell ; exhort them to peacefulness ; and we will bring in the May with our old jollity, and the shaft of St. Andrew shall be set up to the old song of " Mighty Flora, goddess of fresh flowers." ' The council was broken up : and in all haste each alder- man sent round his ward, that no man should stir out of his house after nine of the clock, and every one should keep his doors shut, and his servants within till seven of the morning. But the command was a fruitless one. There was in Chepe, as was the wont on May Even, a company of young men playing at bucklers — the good old English game which we now call single-stick. The moon was struggling with light clouds ; but the young men went on with their play, for there was a bonfire in the street, and they were heedless or ignorant of the alderman's command. Paul's clock struck nine, and they were still ai play* Then rushed into the midst of them the Worshipful Sir John Mondey, EVIL MAY-DAY. 105 Alderman of Chepe ; and he cried with a mighty voice, 4 Stop!' But the young men did not stop. And louder called the alderman ; and faster and more furious was the play. And then the serjeants of the ward rushed in upon the young men to take them to the Counter. Then uprose the cry which the Blue-cloaks had so often raised to the terror of their masters, and ' Clubs ! Clubs!' was echoed through Chepe and Cornhill ; and in a short space the streets were filled. The buckler-play ceased ; the alderman had fled. The materials of mischief were at hand; The spark burst into a flame when the cry went forth — ' Down with the Lom- bards!' It was long after midnight when the riot had ceased. At a house called Greengate, near Leadenhall, dwelt a calender of worsted, a native of Picardy, whose home was a great resort of foreigners ; and the furious peoplo rifled his house and destroyed his workshops. In Blanchechapelton, in Aldgate, dwelt stranger cordwainers ; the people threw the boots and shoes into the streets, but they could not find the workmen, for they had fled for their lives. In Newgate there were imprisoned some artificers for molesting the strangers; the gaol was broken and the prisoners released. The demon of mischief was at last satisfied. The first beam of the May morning was lighting the cross of the great spire of Paul's, and yet a crowd lingered in the gray dawn. They gathered, as they had gathered under happier auspices, before the church of St. Andrew Undershaft. There, in an open space, near where now stands the India House, lay a mighty shaft, from which the church derived its name. It was ' the Great Shaft of Cornhill,' famous under that name in the days of Chaucer — the wondrous May-pole, which, being set up with all revelry of song and morris-dance on May morning, stood higher than the church-steeple. The wearied and excited crowd rushed to their less dangerous work with renewed strength. The shaft was reared, and then went up a shout, which would have awakened the heaviest sleeper in Aldgate 100 ONCE UPON A TIME. — if any were asleep on that morning, when the rites of May were done with such evil observance. There was not only the shout of riot, but the boom of war. The Lieutenant of the Tower discharged his ordnance against the city, and the civic power had been raised, and men in harness came in great force against the rioters, who had dwindled down to some three hundred apprentices. The great shaft of St. Andrew soon looked down upon Cornhill in solitude and silence ; the apprentices were hurried to the Tower. There stood in the shade of the adjoining shambles two men observing this scene. As the watch stopped and questioned them, one of the two gave a countersign, and the watch passed on. The street was at length perfectly tranquil. 1 Sebastian,' said the man of authority, ' T came in a lucky hour to your rescue.' The other replied in English, but with a foreign accent, * Master More, I am grateful. It is hard that I should be molested in my secret chamber, poring over 1113^ charts at midnight, and planning how I could carry your nation's ships by the shortest cut to the New World. Yes, Master More, it is hard ; you have saved my life, but my papers are destroyed.' * And yet these people,' said the sheriff, * are to be pitied even in their fury. I could have stopped them, if that dull alderman had not come in with his watch and ward. I said to them, " Ye are breaking the laws; some of ye will be hanged, others banished. Silly apprentices, when ye are cast upon a strange land with nothing but your craft to give ye bread, how would ye like the foreigner to maltreat you, as ye would maltreat these aliens ?" An Englishman, Master Sebastian Cabot, is fierce as his country's mastiff; the kind voice may subdue him, when the rough hand is lifted in vain. But come ; this gear is mended, and I must bestow you in my lodgings.' As the two friends quietly walked from Cornhill to the Temple, they discoursed much, in spite of the late fear and fatigue 'Sebastian,' said More, 'methinks it is some twenty EVIL MAY-DAY. 107 years, as you have often told me, since you first saw the American continent from the prow of your father's ship. You saw that continent a year before Columbus.' 1 In the same year of 1497,' replied Cabot, ' Vasco di Gama sailed from the Tagus on his first voyage to India.' 1 Mighty events/ said More, • that will change the face of the world. And here — with the wealth of these countries at the command of enterprise and labour — we are fighting in our streets because a few aliens bear away the poor pay- ments for skill and industry. Master Cabot, I think I see God's hand in these revelations of distant empires, of which the wisest of antiquity never dreamed.' 'lama blunt sailor, Master More,' said Cabot, ' tossed on the rough Adriatic, a boy before the mast — a Bristol mariner when my father adopted England for his country. I love that country, though its people be sometimes rude and jealous. You have let the Spaniard seize upon the empire of the Pacific. Be it yours to command the shores of the Atlantic. It shall go hard if I do not find you the Xorth-AVest passage.' ' Sebastian,' said More, ' a man like you is worth a legion of conquerors. The world will be civilised by commerce, and not by arms.' ' The trinkets,' said Cabot, ' that we exchanged twenty years ago with the savages of Prima Vista,* have given them new desires which are the spurs to new industry.' ' AVill the time ever arrive,' interrupted More, ' when those regions, now the hunting-grounds of a few starving- tribes, shall be peopled by Europeans ? You tell me of a country of forests and lakes. Will there be ships on those waters, and towns in those woods ? Shall our seamen go fearlessly across the ocean which divides us, and give the handiworks of our looms for the native products of the New Land ? That time is a long way off.' 'But it will come,' replied Cabot, 'if Governments do not retard it. Henry the Seventh bargained with my * The name by which the Cabots designated the first spot they saw of the North American continent. c 108 ONCE UPON A TIME. father that, out of the profits of every voyage, he, the kin should receive a fifth in merchandise or money. The practice is not likely to grow rusty.' ' Well, well, my friend,' said More, ' we will talk further of these things. But now the sun is up, so a merry May- morning to you. Come in.' Four days after the Shaft of St. Andrew had been set up, there was a fearful tragedy enacted in London. There came into the city the Duke of Norfolk, with fourteen hundred men in harness ; and they stood in the streets, and spake opprobrious words to the citizens ; and, accord- ing to the chronicler, ' Proclamations were made that no women should come together to babble and talk, but that all men should keep their wives in their houses,' — so re- morseless is military discipline. And the duke kept the * 0} 7 er and determiner.' The buckler-play on May Even cost the lives of fifteen unhappy wretches, of whom the most were apprentices. What was done with the rest, the old chronicler, Hall, shall relate : — ' Thursday, the twenty-second day of May, the king came into Westminster Hall, for whom, at the upper end, was set a cloth of estate, and the place hanged with arras : with him was the Cardinal, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Earls of Shrewsbury, of Essex, of Wiltshire, and of Surrey, with many lords and others of the king's council. The Mayor and Aldermen, and all the chief of the city, were there, in their best livery (according as the Cardinal had them appointed), by nine of the clock. Then the king commanded that all the prisoners should be brought forth. Then came in the poor younglings and old false knaves, bounden in ropes, all along, one after another, in their shirts, and every one a halter about his neck, to the number of four hundred men and eleven women. And when all were come before the king's presence, the Cardinal sore laid to the Mayor and Commonalty their negligence, and to the prisoners ho declared that they had deserved death for their offence. Then all the prisoners together EVIL MAY-DAY. 109 cried, "Mercy, gracious lord— mercy !" Then the lords altogether besought his Grace of mercy ; at whose request the king pardoned them all. And then the Cardinal gave unto them a good exhortation, to the great gladness of the hearers ; and when the general pardon was pronounced, all the prisoners shouted at once, and altogether cast up their halters into the hall-roof, so that the king might perceive they were none of the discreetest sort.' And so the first of May, in the year 1517, was ever after called Evil May-Day. The apprentices' tragedy long threw a gloom over the May-games of London. No king and queen, with lords and ladies, rode a-maying to Greenwich; no company of tall yeomen, clothed all in green, bade welcome to the woods ; no Iiobin Hood and his followers escorted the court to arbours made of boughs, decked with flowers, and furnished with the more substantial attractions of wine and venison ; no citizens in every parish had their several mayings, and fetched in May-poles with pastime all the day long. Honest old Stow almost weeps over this falling off. The punishment of Evil May-day lasted through several generations. The great Shaft of St. Andrew was ignobly laid along under the pentices of Shaft Alley ; and there it rotted on iron hooks for two-and-thirty years. Even that inglorious repose was at last denied to it. The Eeformation came ; and one Sir Stephen, curate of St. Katharine's, preaching from an elm-tree in St. Paul's churchyard, denounced the unhappy shaft as an idol ; and away went his hearers that very Sunday, and 'after they had well dined, to make themselves strong,' as Stow gravely records, raised the shaft from the hooks, sawed it in pieces, and divided the logs amongst them. 110 ONCE UPON A TIME. COTJNTKY WAYFAEEKS. Those who are not tolerably familiar with the Memoir Literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, will have some difficulty to comprehend how our ancestors moved about from place to place, and carried on the business of communication with distant inland parts. The mode of conveyance was so universal, and so established, that it rarely offers itself to any especial notice. Till the begin- ning of the eighteenth century we were almost wholly an equestrian people. Harrison describes ' the excellent paces ' of our saddle-horses as peculiar to those of our soil ; and says, that ' our countrymen, seeking their ease in every corner where it is to be had, delight very much in this quality.' All the records of early pageantry tell us of the magnificence of horsemen. Froissart saw the coronation of Henry IV., and he thus describes the progress of the triumphant Bolingbroke through the city. ■ After dinner the duke departed from the Tower to Westminster, and rode all the way bareheaded ; and about his neck the livery of France. He was accompanied with the prince his son, and six dukes, six earls, and eighteen barons, and in all, knights and squires, nine hundred horse. Then the king had on a short coat of cloth of gold, after the manner of Almayne, and he was mounted on a white courser, and the garter on his left leg. Thus the duke rode through London with a great number of lords, every lord's servant in their master's livery; all the burgesses and Lombard merchants in London, and every craft with their livery and device. Thus he avus conveyed to Westminster. He was in number six thousand horse. 1 The old English chroniclers revel in these descrip- tions. They paint for us, in the most vivid colours, the entry into London of the conqueror of Agincourt ; they are COUNTRY WAYFARERS. Ill most circumstantial in their relations of the welcome of his unhappy son, after the boy had been crowned at Paris, with the king riding amidst flowing conduits, and artificial trees and flowers, and virgins making 'heavenly melody,' and bishops ' in pontificalibus ;' and having made his oblations at the cathedral, ' he took again his steed at the west door of Paul's and so rode forth to Westminster.' By the ancient 1 order of crowning the kings and queens of England,' it is prescribed that, ' the day before the coronation, the king- should come from the Tower of London to his palace at Westminster, through the midst of the city, mounted on a horse, handsomely habited, and bare-headed, in the sight of all the people.' The citizens were familiar with these splendid equestrian processions, from the earliest times to the era of coaches; and they hung their wooden houses with gay tapestry, and their wives and daughters sat in their most costly dresses in the balconies, and shoots rent the air, and they forgot for a short time that there w;is little security for life or property against the despot of the hour. They played at these pageants, as they still play, upon a smaller scale, themselves ; and the Lord Mayor's horse and henchmen were seen on all solemn occasions of marching- watches and Bartholomew fairs. The city digni- taries seldom ride now ; although each new sheriff has a horse-block presented to him at his inauguration, that he may climb into the saddle as beseems his gravity. The courtiers kept to their riding processions, down almost to the days of the great civil war ; perhaps as a sort of faint shadow of the chivalry that was gone. Garrard tells us, in 1635, how the Duke of Northumberland rode to his installation as a knight of the garter at Windsor, with earls, and marquises, and almost all the young nobility, and many barons, and a competent number of the gentry, near a hundred horse in all. The era of coaches and chairs was then arrived; but the Duke of Northumberland did not hold that they belonged to knighthood. Fifty years earlier coaches were shunned as ' effeminate.' Aubrey, in his short memoir of Sir Philip Sidney, describes the feeling about 112 ONCE UPON A TIME. coaches in the days of Elizabeth : * I have heard Dr. Pell say that he has been told by ancient gentlemen of those days of Sir Philip, so famous for men-at-arms, that 'twas then held as great a disgrace for a young gentleman to be seen riding in the streets in a coach, as it would now for such a one to be seen in the streets in a petticoat and waist- coat; so much is the fashion of the times now altered.' Eoger North has left us a curious record of the equestrian ambition of a Lord Chancellor — Shaftesbury — in 1672 : - ' His lordship had an early fancy, or rather freak, the first day of the term (when all the officers of the law, king's counsel, and judges, used to wait upon the great seal to Westminster Hall), to make this procession on horseback, as in old time the way was, when coaches were not so rife. And accordingly, the judges, etc., were spoken to, to get horses, as they and all the rest did, by borrowing and hiring, and so equipped themselves with black foot- cloths in the best manner they could ; and divers of the nobility, as usual, in compliment and honour to a new lord- chancellor, attended also in their equipments. Upon notice in town of this cavalcade, all the show-company took their places at windows and balconies, with the foot-guards in the street, to partake of the fine sight; and being once well settled for the march, it moved, as the design was, statelily along. But, when they came to straights and inter- ruptions, for want of gravity in the beasts, and too much in the riders, there happened some curvetting, which made no small disorder. Judge Twisden, to his great affright, and the consternation of his grave brethren, was laid along in the dirt. But all at length arrived safe, without loss of life or limb in the service. This accident was enough to divert the like frolic for the future, and the very next term after, they fell to their coaches as before.' * Nor was the use of saddle-horses confined to men in the early days. Chaucer thus describes his ' Wife of liath:'— * Examcn, p. 57. COUNTRY WAYFARERS. 113 ' Upon an ambler easily she sat, Ywimpled well, and on her head a hat, As broad as is a buckler or a targe, A foot-mantle about her hippe's large, And on her feet a pair of spurres sharp.' When Katharine of Spain came over in 1501 to marry Prince Arthur, a horse was provided for her conveyance from the Tower to St. Paul's, upon which she was to ride • with the pillion behind a lord to be named by the king ;' but it was also ordered that ' eleven palfreys in one suit be ordained for such ladies attending upon the said princess as shall follow next unto the said pillion.' The great ladies long after this rode on horseback on ordinary occasions. Elizabeth commissioned Sir Thomas Gresham to purchase a horse at Antwerp ; and the merchant-prince writes to Cecil in 1560 : — ' The Queen's Majesty's Turkey horse doth begin to mend in his feet and body; which doubtless is one of the readiest horses that is in all Christendom, and the best.' Of poor Mary of Scotland, the Earl of Shrews- bury, after conveying her to Buxton, writes to Cecil in 1580: — 'She had a hard beginning of her journey; for when she should have taken her horse, he started aside, and therewith she fell, and hurt her back, which she still complains of, notwithstanding she applies the bath once or twice a-day.' The ■ horse-litter ' appears to have formed a connecting link between the saddle and the coach. Luxury had its appliances ready for the almost exclusive mode of equestrian travel. ' A lover of his country,' who, in 1673, saw that coaches would be the ruin of the kingdom, says, ' Before these coaches were set up, travellers rode on horseback ; and men had boots, spurs, saddles, bridles, saddle-cloths, and good riding suits Most gentle- men, before they travelled in their coaches, used to ride with swords, belts, pistols, holsters, portmanteaus, and hat-cases : for when they rode on horseback the} 7, rode in one suit, and carried another to wear when they came to their journey's end, or lay by the way. . . . And if they were women that travelled, they needed to have safeguards i 114 OXCE UPON A TOIE. and hoods, side-saddles, and pillions, with strappings, saddle or pillion-cloths, which, for the most part, were either laced or embroidered.' The saving of much of this expenditure, by travelling in coaches, the writer holds, is the ruin of trade. 'For, formerly, every man that had occasion to travel many journeys yearly, or to ride up and down, kept horses for himself and his servants, and seldom rid without one or two men.' In 1526, the Earl of Cumber- land rode from Skipton to London, with thirty-three ser- vants.* In 1582, the Earl of Shrewsbury writes to a de- pendant : ' I think my company will be twenty gentlemen and twenty yeomen, besides their men and my horse- keepers. I think to set forwards about the 11th of Sep- tember, from Wingfield to Leicester, to my bed, and to ,make but four days' journey to London. 'f In 1640, the wife of the last Earl of Cumberland rode from London to Londesborough, having thirty-two horses in her train ; and the journey occupied eleven days. These slow progresses were the relics of the old times of sumpter-horses, when princes and nobles travelled with vast cavalcades, like an oriental caravan. We must not imagine that all equestrian travelling was at this slow rate. ' Eide for your life — haste, haste, post-haste !' — were the commands of ambitious peers and crafty ministers in the days of Elizabeth, to the unhappy courier who was to post from London to Edin- burgh. Onward he went, through miry ways and over trackless commons, — sometimes dashing up to his saddle- bows through a ford swollen by mountain rains — some- times bewildered in the mists of the trackless moorlands. As he approaches the borders new terrors await him. He rides in the dim morning twilight, with his ears alive to every sound. He fancies that the tread of horses and of cattle is at hand. He dares not hide himself, for he would be mistaken for a spy. He rides boldly on into the troop of marchers who are returning from their foray ; and, to his surprise, is permitted to escape, after he has been * Whitnker's Craven. f Lodge's Illustrations. COUNTRY WAYFARERS. 1 1 5 saluted with a few words of opprobrium, and a snatch, of the ballad of Johnnie Armstrong. At last he reaches * Edina, Scotia's darling seat,' after a perilous journey of five days. His despatches are brought forth from their hiding-place ; — the great men meet and deliberate ; — and after a tarrying of a day or two, the express has to face again the same rough road. James I. of England was nearly five weeks on his padded saddle, in his royal progress from Edinburgh to London ; but Sir Robert Carey, determining to be the first to tell James that he was King of England, stole out of Eichmond Palace, at three o'clock of the morning of Thursday, the 24th of March, and reached Edinburgh on the night of Saturday, the 26th, the king having gone to bed by the time he had knocked at the gate. This ride of four hundred miles, in seventy hours, gives one an elevated notion of the travelling accommodations of two centuries and a half ago. But it must be borne in mind that such instances were the exceptions to the rule of slow travelling. Al- though the Post was not established by law, there were postmasters, at the end of the sixteenth century, on all the great lines of roads ; and, for a sufficient consideration, they would furnish such a traveller as Sir Robert Carey with abundant horses, that he might ride till they dropped, — as, indeed, he records one of his horses to have done. Then, again, although the roads were bad, the equestrian had many a mile of the smooth turf of an unenclosed country to gallop over. Let it not be forgotten, that if Sir Kobert Carey rode from London to Edinburgh at the rate of six miles an hour, keeping on night and day, with relays of horses, the general communication of the country was so slow, that although Elizabeth died at two o'clock of the morning of Thursday, the 24th of, March, and James was proclaimed king, at London, on the same morning, ' yet the news of it reached not the city of York until Sunday, March the 27th.'* * Continuation of Stow's Annals. i2 116 ONCE UPON" A TIME. The days before the Post were days when those who left their houses, for distant parts of England, were more separated from their friends than the North- American emigrant of our own times. The transmission of in- telligence across the Atlantic is now an easier thing than the old conveyance of a letter two hundred miles, upon a cross-road. The historian of Craven, speaking of 1609, says, ' At this time the communication between the North of England and the universities was kept up by carriers, who pursued their tedious but uniform route with whole trains of pack-horses. To their care were consigned not only the packages, but frequently the persons, of young scholars. It was through their medium, also, that epis- tolary correspondence was managed ; and as they always visited London, a letter could scarcely be exchanged be- tween Yorkshire and Oxford in less time than a month.' Charles I. seems, in 1635, to have resolved to remedy this jevil by the establishment of the home post-office. In his proclamation of that year, he says that there had been no certain intercourse between England and Scotland ; and he therefore commands a running post to be established be- tween London and Edinburgh, to go thither and come back again in six days ; and for other roads there are promised the same advantages. In 1660 the General Post- office was established by Act of Parliament ; and all letters were to be sent through this office, ' except such letters as shall be sent by coaches, common known carriers of goods by carts, waggons, and pack-horses, and shall be carried along with their carts, waggons, and pack-horses respectively.' The rostmaster-general and his deputies, under this statute, and no other person or persons, ' shall provide and prepare horses and furniture to let to hire unto all thorough posts and persons riding in post, by - commission or without, to and from all and every the places of England, Scotland, and Ireland, where any post-roads are.' AVe find, by various clauses of this Act, that the postmaster was also to furnish a guide with a horn to such as ride post,— that ho was to furnish horses within half an hour after demand, COUNTRY WAYFARERS. 117 — and that if he could not accomplish this, persons might hire a horse where they could, and sue the postmaster for a penalty. The country postmaster was an ancient func- tionary, who had long been in the habit of attending to the wants of those who bore letters inscribed, ' Haste, haste, post haste.' He was generally an innkeeper. Taylor, the Water-Poet, in his ' Penniless Pilgrimage ' from London to Scotland, in 1618, has described one that might rival any Boniface on record; ' From Stamford, the next day, we rode to Huntingdon, where we lodged at the postmaster's house, at the sign of the Crown ; his name is Riggs. He was informed who I was, and wherefore I undertook this my penniless progress ; wherefore he came up to our chamber, and supped with us, and very bountifully called for three quarts of wine and sugar, and four jugs of beer. He did drink and begin healths like a horse-leech, and swallowed down his cups without feeling, as if he had had the dropsy, or nine pound of spunge in his maw. In a word, as he is a post, he drank post, striving and calling by all means to make the reckoning great, or to make us men of great reckoning. But in his payment he was tired like a jade, leaving the gentleman that was with me to discharge the terrible shot, or else one of my horses must have lain in pawn for his superfluous calling and unmannerly intrusion.' The carriers of England have always been a progressive body, in more than one sense of the word. They were amongst the first in our days to see what railways would accomplish for the transit of goods and passengers. They were the first, more than two centuries ago, to change the mode of passenger-conveyance from the riding-horse to the waggon. They brought the Oxford scholars, as we have seen, out.of the North with their pack-horses. The most famous of all the old carriers was he of Cambridge, of whom Milton wrote, ' Here lies okl Hobson ; death hath broke his girt, And here, alas ! hath laid him in the dirt.' He it was that gave rise to the saying of ' Hobson's choice ;' 118 ONCE UPON A TIME. for he obliged his customers for hackney-horses to take the one that stood next the stable-door. His trade of horse- letting was a refinement upon the old trade of the post- master : he intrusted a horse to the Cambridge scholar for a pleasure ride, and he sent no guide to feed the horse and bring it back. He was a pack-horse carrier. It was not till after his palmy days that the innovation of waggons came in, in which passengers were carried from city to city. But long did the passenger-waggon and the pack-horse continue to travel in good fellowship. Roderick Random tried both conveyances : ' There is no such convenience as a waggon in this country (Scotland), and my finances were too weak to support the expense of hiring a horse. I de- termined, therefore, to set out with the carriers, who trans- port goods from one place to another on horseback ; and this scheme I accordingly put in execution on the 1st day of November, 1739, sitting upon a pack-saddle between two baskets, one of which contained my goods in a knap- sack. But by the time we arrived at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, I was so fatigued with the tediousness of the carriage, and benumbed with the coldness of the weather, that I resolved to travel the rest of my journey on foot, rather than pro- ceed in such a disagreeable manner.' We of this age com- plain that the penny-a-miie passengers in covered railway- carriages, which only go some fifteen miles an hour, are hardly used. Let us contrast this case with that of the pack-horse traveller. Seated in the throne which Roderick Random occupied, he sallied forth at ' four by the day,' when the horses were * packed ;' forgetting, for a .little while, the uneasiness of his seat, by the remembrance how he had been * stung like a tench.' He is stuck in the midst of a file of fifty horses, a large companionship for safety. For a little while he is on the king's highway, and the bells go cheerily as he crosses some pleasant common. Perchance, as he ascends the wide moorlands, the clouds darken around him, the mist falls heavily, the carriers can see no track ; but by an unerring instinct the cautiously-stepping horses keep their file, and ask no better COUNTRY WAYFARERS. 119 guide than the sound of their sagacious leader's bells. He will not lead them into boggy places ; he will keep steady, even when man has ceased to direct him. If the way is unusually rough, the old and feeble horses lag behind ; but they never break the order of their march, and they ultimately push on, even if they should die in their perse- verance. In Bewick's ' History of Quadrupeds ' is an interesting anecdote of a pack-horse, thus exerting himself to maintain his place, dropping down dead when he reached the inn-yard. The inexperienced passenger must have needed some courage in these passages across the semi-deserts of uncultivated England. But soon he is in a lane some four feet wide, — sometimes floundering in the mud — at other times slipping upon a paved causeway, with a thick sludge on either side of the narrow track. In the hills of Derbyshire have we ridden the sure-footed pony of the country down these winding roads, shut out. from the wide prospect around us by overhanging hedges— a priva- tion which the pack-horse traveller little cared for. But not only in Derbyshire, in the days before men sought the picturesque, were such roads travelled over, but in the very thickest of our metropolitan suburb. Hagbush- lane, which was described by William Hone about thirty years ago, but which has now vanished, was the ancient bridle or pack-horse road from London to the North, and extended by the Hollo way back road, as far as the City- road, near Old-street. * Some parts of Hagbush-lane,' says Hone, ' are much lower than the meadows on either side.' At one time a terraced ridge, at another a deep rut, the pack-horse road must have been to the unaccustomed traveller a somewhat perilous pass. Happy would he be when the house which promised ' good entertainment for man and horse,' and which, in the early days of English art, hung out a representation of the animal he bestrode, which might be mistaken for a dromedary, — happy would he . be when the * watering-time ' arrived. Well-earned would be the rest. Again would the cavalcade be in move- ment ' till dewy eve,' — again would come the rasher and 120 ONCE UPON A TIME. eggs for supper, with the black jack of home-brewed ale ; again the sound sleep, in spite of night plagues ; and again the early morning journey. A fortnight between York and London would be a quick passage. Well, there might be worse arrangements for a contemplative traveller ; but for ourselves, being somewhat fearless of innovations, we must avow a preference for the Express-train. Our antiquarian annalist, Stow, records that, in 1605, long waggons for passengers and commodities travelled to London from Canterbury and other large towns. Accord- ing to this authority, they were known as early as 1564. ' The lover of his country,' whom*we have already quoted, has no violent objection to these ' long waggon-coaches,' as he calls them. They plead some antiquity; 'they were first set up.' Moreover, they are not guilty of the sin of expedition. Compared with the objects of his hatred, the stage-coaches, they are innocent things : ' They 'travel not such long journeys, go not out so early in the morning, neither come in so late at night ; but stay by the way, travel easily, without jolting men's bodies, or hurrying them along, as the running coaches do.' These convenient creeping things had a safe existence for a century or two, and bore up bravely against the sneers of the 'flying- coaches,' that went four miles an hour. • Roderick .Random, as we have said, tried both the pack-horse and the waggon. This waggon was • the long waggon ' of Stow ; the ' long waggon-coach ' of ' the lover of his country.' Not much more than a hundred years ago, there was a vehicle moving on the Great North Road, in which passengers, who assumed to be gentlefolks, were travelling from York to London, at the fare of a shilling a-day, — not being more than a fort- night in the transit. The description which Smollett gives of his ride to London is known to have been derived from his own experience. He and his faithful friend, Strap, haying observed the waggon a quarter of a mile before them, speedily overtook it; and ascending the convenience by a ladder, tumbled into the straw, under the darkness of the tilt, amidst four passengers, two gentlemen, and two COUNTRY WAYFARERS. 121 very genteel specimens of the fair sex. "When they arrived at the inn where they were to lodge for the night, Captain Weazel and his lady desired a room for themselves, and a separate supper ; but the impartial innkeeper replied, that ' he had prepared victuals for the passengers in the waggon, without respect of persons.' Roderick agrees to give ten shillings for his passage to London, provided Strap, who was to trudge by the side, should change places with him when he was disposed to walk. The mistakes, the quarrels, and the mirth of the passengers, are told by the novelist with a vivacity which would be admirable without its coarseness. They got tolerably reconciled to each other after the first five days' rumbling in the straw. ' Nothing remarkable happened during the remaining part of our journey, which continued six or seven days longer. At length we entered the great city, and lodged all night at the inn where the waggon put up.' Let not the ' long stage-waggon,' which thus kept alive a monthly communication between Yorkshire and London, and carried, according to Smollett, no less dignified persons than a medical student, an ensign in a marching regiment, and a City money-lender, be confounded with the broad- wheeled waggon that, after being half drowned by the waters of the canal, has now been swept from the surface of the earth by the fire of the railroad. Have we not our- selves heard the merry bells of the team, breasting their way right in the centre of the broad Bath road, unyielding to coach or curricle ? Have we not seen the bright eye glancing from the opening of the tilt "behind, t as the pon- derous wain is moving beside the village-green, and the stalwart driver tells the anxious maiden that it is only one more mile to the turnpike where she is to meet ' the young man ?' Have we not sat beneath the branching elm which fronts some little inn where waggons congregate, and heard much goodly talk about the dearness of horses, and the craft of Lunnun? They are gone, — these once-familiar scenes : • They live no longer in the faith of reason ; ' 122 OXCE UPON A TIME. but they will live for ever in such pictures as that our friend Creswick has painted of * The London Road a hundred years ago.' We have abundant evidence that stage-coaches were in use soon after the middle of the seventeenth century. In 1663, Mr. Edward Parker, writing to his father, who lived near Preston, says : ' I got to London on Saturday last. My journey was noways pleasant, being forced to ride in the boot all the way. The company that came up with me were persons of great quality, as knights and ladies. My journey's expense was thirty shillings. This travel hath so indisposed me, that I am resolved never to ride up again in the coach.'* Let us turn aside for a moment, to explain what ' the boot ' was. There were two boots to these old coaches — uncovered projections from each side of the carriage. Taylor, the Water-Poet, thus describes them : 1 It [the coach] wears two boots, and no spurs, sometimes having two pair of legs in one boot ; and oftentimes, against nature, most preposterously, it makes fair ladies wear the boot. Moreover, it makes people imitate sea-crabs, in being drawn sideways, as they are when they sit in the boot of the coach.' In this boot, then, travelled unhappy Edward Parker. He does not tell us the rate at which he travelled. We will supply that information from other sources. From the Diaiy of Sir William Dugdale, it appears that in 1659 he set forward to London in the Coventry coach, on the 2nd of May, and arrived on the 4th of May — three days. The Diary of a Yorkshire clergyman f shows that in the winter^ of 1682, a journey from Nottingham to London in a stage-coach occupied four whole days. In Antony a Wood's Diary, we are told, that in 1667 he travelled from Oxford to London in the coach, and was two days in accomplishing the passage. A few years after, the feat was performed in thirteen hours; but in 1692 it was again found necessary to give two days to the journey, from Michaelmas to Lady-day. ■ The lover of his country,' how- * Archseologia, vol. xx. t Quoted in Archeology vol. xx. COUNTRY WAYFARERS. 123 ever, has furnished us the most complete picture of coach travelling, in 1673. The long journeys were from London to Exeter, Chester, or York. On these roads the fare was forty shillings in summer, and forty-five shillings in winter, each way. The coachman was changed four times, and the passenger was expected to give each coachman a shil- ling at the end of the stage, besides a total of three shillings for drink to the coachmen at their halting-places. In summer, the time occupied in riding was four days — in winter, six days. But these were long days. The com- plaining writer says : * What advantage is it to men's health to be called out of their beds into these coaches an hour before day in the morning, to be hurried in them from place to place, till one hour, two, or three, within night ; inso- much that, after sitting all day — in the summer time stifled with heat and choked with dust, or in the winter time starving and freezing with cold or choked with filthy fogs — they are often brought into their inns by torch-light, when it is too late to sit up to get a supper; and next morning they are forced into the coach so early that they can get no breakfast?' Added to these troubles, the fault- finder alleges the grievances of crying children, and crowds of boxes and bundles. He gives us some notion of the roads and the safety of the carriages: 'Is it for a man's health to travel with tired jades, to be laid fast in the foul ways, and forced to wade up to the knees in mire ; after- wards sit in the cold till teams of horses can be sent to pull the coach out ? Is it for their health to travel in rotten coaches, and to have their tackle, or perch, or axletree broken, and then to wait three or four hours, sometimes half a day, to have them mended, and then to travel all night to make good their stage ?' This is a queer state of things, a little exaggerated, perhaps, but in the main true. It is remarkable how long the roads and the coaches con- tinued to be execrable. The express train of the Great Western Railway goes to Exeter, a hundred and ninety-three miles, in four hours and a half. In 1725, the stage-coach journey from London 1 24 ONCE UPON A TIME. to Exeter occupied four summer days. The passengers were aroused every morning at two o'clock, left their inn at three, dined at ten o'clock, and finished their day's-labour at three in the afternoon.* In 1739, Mr. Andrew Thomp- son, of Glasgow, with a friend, left Glasgow to ride to London. There was no turnpike-road till they came to Grantham, within a hundred and ten miles of the metro- polis. Up to that point they travelled on a narrow cause- way, with an unmade soft road on each side. As strings of pack-horses met them from time to time, they were obliged to plunge into the side road, and had often difficulty in scrambling again upon the causeway. f As late as 1763, there was only a coach once a month from Edinburgh to London, which was twelve or fourteen days on the road. In the south of England we made more rapid strides to perfection. We have before us a very curious bill of the 1 Alton and Farnham Machine,' dated 1750, which is headed with an engraving, furnishing the best representation of the coach of a century ago that we have seen. The clumsy vehicle carries no passengers on the roof; but it has a large basket — literally a basket — swung behind, for half- price passengers. The coachman has four horses in hand, and a postillion rides a pair of leaders. This is truly a magnificent equipage, and it accomplished its journey in a marvellously short time, starting at six in the morning, and arriving duly the same night. This journey of forty- seven miles in one day was a feat ; and well might the vehicle which accomplished it be dignified by the name of 1 Machine.' The name became common ; and hence stage- coach horses were called ' Machiners.' Of the travelling by private carriages in those days of the most villainous cross-roads we have abundant evidence. The Duke of Somerset, who died in 1748, was always com- pelled by the badness of the roads to sleep at Guildford, on his way from Petworth to London. A letter of one of the duke's servants to another servant, announces his master's * Mrs. Manlrv's Journey. f Cleland's Glasgow, COUNTRY WAYFARERS. 125 intention to arrive at Pet worth, from London ; and adds directions, that ' the keepers and others who knew the holes and sloughs, must come to meet his Grace, with lanthorns and long poles, to help him on his way.' The grandfather of the present Duke of Buckingham had an inn built for his special accommodation at Window, as the journey from Stowe to London could not be accomplished in one day. Vanbrugh, in the * Provoked Husband' has given us an amusing, and, we have little doubt, faithful account of the progress of a Yorkshire family to town in their own equipage. According to the honest record of John Moody, their serv- ing man, there was ' Nothing but mischief! Some devil's trick or other plagued us, aw th' da}' long ! Crack goes one thing ; Bawnce ! goes another. Woa, says Roger Then souse ! we are all set fast in a slough. Whaw ! cries Miss ! — scream go the maids ! and bawl ! just as thof they were stuck ! And so, mercy on us ! this was the trade from morning to night/ From the days of the first turnpike a whole century appears to have passed before any very great improvements were effected in the roads, or in the vehicles travelling upon them. Mr. M'Culloch says, ' It was not till after the peace of Paris, in 1763, that turnpike-roads began to be extended to all parts of the kingdom ; and that the means of internal communication began, in consequence, to be signally improved/* Mr. Porter, in an article contributed to ' The Companion to the Almanac,' 1837, speaks of the condition of a road only thirty-six miles from London, about the same period : — ' A gentleman now living at Horsham, in Sussex, has stated, on the authority of a person whose father carried on the business of a butcher in that town, that in his time the only means of reaching London was either by going on foot or on horseback, the latter method not being practicable at all periods of the year, nor in every state of the weather; and that the roads were never at that time in such a condition as to admit of sheep * Account of the British Empire. 126 ONCE UPON A TIME. or cattle being driven upon them to the London markets ; for which reason the farmers were prevented sending thither the produce of their lands, the immediate neigh- bourhood being, in fact, their only market. Under these circumstances the quarter of a fat ox was commonly sold for about fifteen shillings, and the price of mutton was one penny farthing per pound.' Mr. Porter, in his ' Progress of the Nation/ also informs us, that ' when it was in con- templation to extend turnpike-roads from the metropolis to more distant points than those to which they had before been carried, the farmers in the metropolitan counties petitioned Parliament against the plan, fearing lest their market being invaded by so many competitors, who would sell their produce more cheaply, they should be ruined.' Two centuries before these wise farmers, William Harrison — in many things a shrewd observer — thought it would be good 'if it were enacted that each one should keep his next market with his grain, and not to run six, eight, ten, fourteen, or twenty miles from home to sell his corn, where he doth find the highest price.' Harrison saw clearly enough that communication equalised prices ; although he would have kept down prices, and therefore kept down all profitable employment, by narrowing the market of the producers. Dr. Johnson appears to have had somewhat similar notions of public advantage. In 1784 he visited Mr. Windham, who made a note of his conversations, amongst which we find the following : ' Opinion about the effect of turnpike-roads. Every place communicating with each other. Before, there were cheap places and dear places. Now, all refuges are destroyed for elegant or genteel poverty. Disunion of families, by furnishing a market to each man's ability, and destroying the depen- dence of one man upon another.' To have ' cheap places and dear places' — to maintain ' the dependence of one man upon another ' — has been the struggle of class interests up to this hour. Roads and railroads and steamboats have annihilated the one remnant of feudality, local cheapness purchased by general dearncss ; and the penny-a-mile COUNTRY WAYFARERS. 127 trains would extinguish all that is unhealthy in ' the de- pendence of one man upon another,' if the other remnant of feudality, the law of parish settlement, were broken up. The extension of turnpike-roads through the country at last brought about the ultimate perfection of coach-travel- ling, — the mail. More than sixty years ago was this great engine of our civilization first set in motion. Before Mr. Palmer suggested his improvements to the Government, letters sent by the post, which left Bath on Monday night, were not delivered in London till Wednesday afternoon. The London post of Monday night did not reach Worcester, Birmingham, or Norwich, till Wednesday morning, and Exeter on the Thursday morning. A letter from London to Glasgow, before 1788, was five days on the road. The letter-bags were carried by boys on horseback ; and the robbery of the mail was, of course, so common an occur- rence, that no safety whatever could be secured in the transmission of money. The highwayman was the great hero of the travelling of that day. But on the 2nd of August, 1784, the first mail-coach left London for Bristol ; and from that evening, till the general establishment of the railway system, the mail was one of the wonders and glories of our country. The stage-coaches followed the mails in the course of improvement. We remember them when they were not very particular about the pace ; and four hours from W r indsorto London was pretty well. To be sure, there was a quarter of an hour for breakfast at Longford, and an- other quarter of an hour for luncheon at Turnham-green ; but it was a pleasant ride in days when men were not in a hurry. The pace of our now surviving stage-coaches is, for the first half-hour after the railway, a sort of imper- tinence. You feel you are crawling when you have mounted the ten-mile-an-hour tortoise that is to take you across the country from the station ; but yet the driver presumes to talk of his cattle. Look at him. He has a load of respon- sibility put upon him which he is little able to bear. He must keep time. He dares not have a snack at the halfway- 128 ONCE UPON A TIME. house ; he has no messages to deliver ; he sticks gloomily upon the box, while the horses are hurriedly changed ; he sleeps not at nights without dreaming of the whistle ; he is dependent upon an absolute will; he has a cadaverous melancholy face, as if Time were beating him prematurely. Contrast him with Washington Irving's English coachman of 1820 : — ' He has commonly a broad full face, curiously mottled with red, as if the blood had been forced by hard feeding into every vessel of the skin ; he is swelled into jolly dimensions by frequent potations of malt liquors, and his bulk is still further increased by a multiplicity of coats, in which he is buried like a cauliflower, the upper one reaching to his heels. He wears a broad-brimmed low- crowned hat ; a huge roll of coloured handkerchief about his neck, knowingly knotted and tucked in at the bosom ; and has in summer-time a large bouquet of flowers in his button-hole,— the present, most probably, of some ena- moured country lass. His waistcoat is commonly of some bright colour, striped ; and his small-clothes extend far below the knees, to meet a pair of jockey-boots which reach about half-way up his legs.' The portrait belongs to the archaeology of England. A sedan, a hackney-coach, and a stuffed stage-coachman of the fat times, should be depo- sited in the rooms of the Antiquarian Society, while a specimen can be preserved in relic, or made out from de- scription. ( 129 ) ' PHILIP SIDNEY AND FULKE GREVILLE. There has been high revelry in Shrewsbury in 1569. Sir Henry Sidney, Lord President of the Council of the Marches, has made his annual visit, during an interval in his govern- ment of Ireland, in which he had returned to his favourite Ludlow Castle. Philip Sidney, his son, is a boy of fifteen, at the Free Grammar School of Shrewsbury. In the same form — of the same age — is his devoted friend, Fulke Greville. The ceremonies are over. Sir Henry has sat in the ancient hall of the Council House, to hear complaints and to dispense justice. He has gone in solemn procession to St. Chad's Church, with bailiffs, and aldermen, and wardens of companies. He has banqueted with the masters of the school in the great library. He has been present at a stage-play in the Guildhall — the Mayor's play. But more welcome than all the pomp of office is a quiet hour with his boy Philip, as they sit in the cool of a May morning on the terrace of the Council House, and look over the bright Severn towards Haughmond Hill, and muse in silence, as they gaze upon one of those unrivalled combinations of natural beauty and careful cultivation, which have been the glory of England during many ages of comparative freedom and security. It is the last of Philip's school years. He is to proceed to Oxford. His friend Greville afterwards wrote of him : — ' I lived with him and knew him from a child, yet I never knew him other than a man, with such staidness of mind, lovely and familiar gravity, as carried grace and reverence above greater years.' Proud is the father of his noble son. He is 'the light of his family.' They talk as friend to friend. The father — a statesman and soldier — is not displeased to see that, beneath the gravity K 130 OXCE UPON A TIMK. of the precocious boy, are fiery glances of feeling almost approaching to rashness. They become one who in after years exclaimed, ' I am a Dudley in blood — the duke's daughter's son.' The Lord President has departed. There is holiday at the school; and Sidney and Greville walk forth to the fields in that spring-time. Shrewsbury is a place in which the young Sidney lives in the memories of the past. Few of the public buildings and private houses of the town are of the more recent Tudor architecture. The Market Square and Pride Hill are rich in the black oaken timbers, and gabled roofs, and panelled carvings of the fifteenth century. The deserted abbey is not yet in ruins. The castle has a character of crumbling strength. The High Cross is per- fect. There, were beheaded the last of the British Princes of Wales; and there, suffered some who had the misfortune not to fall with Hotspur in the battle of Hateley Field. At the Augustine Friars, and the Grey Friars, are still seen the graves of many who had perished in that fight. The Welsh Bridge, with its ' great gate to enter into by the town, and at the other end, towards Wales, a mighty strong tower, to prohibit enemies to enter into the bridge ' (as de- scribed by old Leland), has its associations of border hostilities. Sidney's mind is formed to luxuriate in the poetry of history. The young men take their course into the country by the Castle Foregate. They are in earnest talk. 'What a monster these players make of Pichard the Third,' says Sidney. ' Maugre my loyal reverence for her Highness's grandfather, I have a liking for the venomous little Yorkist. Even the players couldn't show him as a coward.' ' Not when they make him whimper about revenge, suns, moons, and planets ; silly lambs and croaking ravens — all crying for revenge upon him? Heavens! what stuff!' 'Rare stuff! How is it that these play- writers cannot PHILIP SIDNEY AND FULKE GREVILLE. 131 make their people talk like Englishmen and Christians? When the board is up — " Bosworth Field " — and two armies fly in, represented by four swords and bucklers — and the usurper dashes about, despite his wounds, — hear how he wastes his precious time. Do you remember V 4 Yes, yes — 1 ' : Fly, my lord, and save your life." ' ' I have it — ' " Fly, villain ! look I as though I would fly ? No, first shall this dull and senseless ball of earth Receive my body cold and raid otaeam. Von watery heavens scowl on my gloomy day, And darksome rlouds close up my cheerl'ul sound. — Down is thy sun, Richard, never to shine again. — The bird whose feathers should adorn my he; 1 . 1 Hovers aloft and never comes in light." There's a Richard for you.' 4 Bravo. Philip ! You should join a fellowship of players. You would beat the varlet with the hump that mouthed it on Tuesday. But why so hard upon the rhetoric of the vagabonds? Your favourite Gorboduc is full of such trash !' ' Y'es, and faulty even as this True tragedy of Richard the Third, in time and place. In two hours of the Mayor's play, we had Shore's wife in Cheapside, and poor dead Richard about to be drawn through Leicester on a collier's horse.' ' Suppose there were painted scenes, as some of the playhouses have, instead of the door painted in great letters — couldn't the imagination go from Cheapside to Leicester in spite of Aristotle ? and can't it, even with the help of the painted board ? But here we are at Battlefield.' 1 1 never walk over these meadows,' exclaimed Sidney, • without deep emotion. I was reading Hall just before my father came. How graphic these chroniclers are, compared with the ranting players.' 132 OXCE UPOX A TIME. ' What you read, I read, Philip.' ' As we walked through the Eastgate, I could not but think of that day when Henry came with his host into Shrewsbury, and being advertised that the earls were at hand with banners displayed and battles ranged, inarched suddenly out by the Eastgate, and there encamped.' ' An evening of parley and defiance, followed by a bloody morning.' * The next day, in the morning early, which was the vigil of Mary Magdalene, the king set his battle in good order — and so his enemies. There, on that gentle rise, Greville, must the rebel hosts have been arrayed. Then suddenly the trumpets blew. The cry of St. George went up on the King's part — and that cry was answered by Esperance Percy. By Heaven, the tale moves me like the old song of Percy and Douglas !' 1 Here is a theme for the players. Write the tragedy of Hotspur, Philip.' ' Nonsense. What could I do with it, even if I were a maker ? The story begins with the deposition of Richard. It is an epic, and not a tragedy. And yet, Fulke, when I see the effect these acted histories'produce upon the people, I am tempted, in spite of Aristotle, to wish that some real poet would take in hand our country's annals. The teach- ing of our day is taking that form. The Players are the successors of the Bards.' ' What a character is that young Harry of Monmouth — the profligate and the hero ! Something might be made of these contending elements.' • Yes, the players would do it bravely. How they would make him swagger and bully — strike the chief justice and slaughter the Welshmen. Harry of Monmouth was a gentleman, and the players could not touch him.' 1 If the stage is to teach the people, surely right teachers will arise. Look at our preachers. They stir the dull clowns and the sleepy burgesses with passionate eloquence, and yet they preach as scholars. They never lower them- PHILIP SIDNEY AND FULKE GREVILLE. 133 selves to their audiences. And why should the stage be the low thing which we see, when it addresses the same classes ?' 1 There may be a change some day ; but not through any theorick about it. England may have her .Eschylus — when the man comes ; perchance in our age — more likely when all the dust and cobwebs of our semi-barbarism are swept away — for we are barbarians yet, Greville.' ' Come, come — your fine Italian reading has spoiled you for our brave old English. We have poetry in us if we would trust to nature. There is the ancient blind crowder that sits at our school-gate, Avith his ballads of love and war, which you like as much as I do. Has he no poetry to tell of? As good, I think, as the sonnets of Master Francis Petrarch. 1 ' Don't be a heretic, Greville. But see ; the sun is sinking behind that bosky hill, from which Hotspur, looking to the east, saw it rise for the last time. We must be homeward.' ' And here, where the chapel-bell is tolling a few priests to evensong, forty thousand men were lighting, a century and a half ago — for what ?' ' And for the same doubtful cause went on fighting for three-quarters of a century. What a sturdy heart must our England have to bear these things and yet live !' • Times are changed, Philip ! Shall we have any civil strife in our day ?' ' Papist and Puritan would like to be at it. But the rule of the law is too strong for them. Yet my father says that the fighting days will come over again — not for questions of sovereign lineage, but of vulgar opinion. The reforms of religion have produced sturdy thinkers. There is a beast with many heads called the Commonalty, growing stronger every day ; and it is difficult to chain him or pare his claws.' 1 Well, well, Philip, we are young politicians, and need not trouble our heads yet about such matters. You are 134 ONCE UPON A TIME. going to Oxford. What will the good mother make of yon — a statesman, a soldier, or a scholar?' 'Must the characters be separable? Whatever I am, dear Fulke, I will not shame my ancestry.' 1 And I, dear Philip, will never abate my love for you ; and that will keep me honest.' Sidney's Tree. ( 135 ) ( 10' ' SHAKSPERE'S FIRST RIDE TO LONDON. Two young men, Richard Burbage and William Shaksperc, ' both of one county, and, indeed, almost of one town,' may be assumed, without any improbability, to have taken their way together towards London, on the occasion when one of them went forth for the first time from his native home, depressed at parting, but looking hopefully towards the issue of his adventure. There would be little said till long after the friends had crossed the great bridge at Stratford. The eyes of one would be frequently turned back to look upon the old spire. Thoughts which un- questionably have grown out of some such separation as this would involuntarily possess his soul : — ' How heavy do I journey on the way, When what I seek — my weary travel's end — Doth teach that ease and that repose to say, " Thus far the miles are measur'd from thv friend !" 136 OXCE UPON A TIME, The beast that bears me, tired with my woe, Plods dully on to bear that weight in me, As if by some instinct the wretch did know His rider lov'd not speed, being made from thee.'* The first stages of this journey would offer little interest to the travellers. Having passed Long Compton, and climbed the steep range of hills that divide Warwickshire from Oxfordshire, weary stretches of barren downs would present a novel contrast to the fertility of Shakspere's own county. But after a few miles the scene would change : a noble park would stretch out as far as the eye could reach — rich with venerable oaks and beeches, planted in the reign of Henry I. — the famous park of Woodstock. The poet would be familiar with all the interesting associations of this place. Here was Rosamond Clifford secluded from the eyes of the world by her bold and accomplished royal lover. Here dwelt Edward III. Here, more 'interesting than cither fact, Chaucer wrote some of his early poems — ' Within a lodge out of the way, Beside a well in a forest.'f And here, when he retired from active life, he composed his immortal ' Canterbury Tales.' Here was the Lady Elizabeth a prisoner, almost dreading death, only a year or two before she ascended the throne. Here, ' hearing upon a time out of her garden a certain milkmaid singing pleasantly, she wished herself to be a milkmaid as she was ■ saying that her case was better, and life more merrier, khan was hers in that stale as she was.' J The travellers assuredly visited the palace which a few years after Hentzner described as abounding in magnificence ; and near a spring of the brightest water they would have viewed all that was left of the tomb of Rosamond, with her rhyming epitaph, the pro- duction, probably, of a later age : — 1 Hie j;uvf in tnmiia Rosamund] non Rosamund*, Xou redolel ted olst, qua redokre soiei.' * .Sonnet 50. f Chaucer's '. DfCMDi' + Holinshed. SHAKSPERE'S FIRST RIDE TO LONDON. 137 The earliest light of the next morning would see the companions on their way to Oxford ; and an hour's riding would lodge them in the famous hostelry of the Corn- Market, the Crown. Aubrey tells us that ' Mr. William Shakespeare was wont to go into Warwickshire once a year, and did commonly in his journey lie at this house in Oxon, where he was exceedingly respected.'* The poet's first journey may have determined his subsequent habit of resting at this house. It is no longer an inn. But one who possessed a true enthusiasm, Thomas Wart on, described it in the last century, in the belief ' that Shakspeare's old hostelry at Oxford deserves no less respect than Chaucer's Tabard at Southwark.' He says, » As to the Crown Inn, it still remains an inn, and is an old decayed house, but probably was once a principal inn in Oxford. It is directly in the road from Stratford to London. In a large upper room, which seems to have been a sort of hall for enter- taining a large company, or for accommodating (as was the custom) different parties at once, there was a bow window, with three pieces of excellent painted glass.' We have ample materials for ascertaining what aspect Oxford presented for the first time to the eye of Shakspere. The ancient castle, according to Hentzner, was in ruins ; but the elegance of its private buildings, and the magnificence of its public ones, filled this traveller with admiration. So noble a place, raised up entirely for the encouragement of learning, would excite in the young poet feelings that were strange and new. He had wept over the ruins of religious houses ; but here was something left to give the assurance that there was a real barrier against the desolations of force and ignorance. A deep regret might pass through his mind that he had not availed himself of the opening which was presented to the humblest in the land, here to make himself a ripe and good scholar. Oxford was the patrimony of the people ; and he, one of the people, had not claimed his birthright. He was set out upon a doubtful adventure ; * Life of D'Avenant. 138 OXCE UPON A TIME. the persons with whom he was to be associated had no rank in society, — they were to a certain extent despised ; they were the servants of a luxurious court, and, what was some- times worse, of a tasteless public. But, on the other hand, as he paused before Balliol College, he must have recollected what a fearful tragedy was there acted some thirty years before. Was he sure that the day of persecution for opinions was altogether past ? Men were still disputing everywhere around him ; and the slighter the differences between them, the more violent their zeal. They were furious for or against certain ceremonial observances ; so that they appeared to forget that the object of all devotional forms was to make the soul approach nearer to the Foun- tain of wisdom and goodness, and that He could not be approached without love and charity. The spirit of love dwelt in the inmost heart of this young man. It was in after times to diffuse itself over writings which entered the minds of the loftiest and the humblest, as an auxiliary to that higher teaching which is too often forgotten in the turmoil of the world. His intellect would at any rate be free in the course which was before him. Much of the knowledge that he had acquired up to this period was self- taught ; but it was not the less full and accurate. He had ranged at his will over a multitude of books, — idle reading, no doubt, to the systematic and professional student ; but, if weeds, weeds out of which he could extract honey. The subtile disputations of the schools, as they were then con- ducted, were more calculated, as he had heard, to call forth a talent for sophistiy than a love of truth. Falsehood might rest upon logic, for the perfect soundness of the con- clusion might hide the rottenness of the premises. He entered the beautiful Divinity Schools, and there too he found that the understanding was more trained to dispute than the whole intellectual being of man to reverence. He would pursue his own course with aoheerftd spirit, nothing doubting that, whilst he worked out his own happiness, hri might still become an instrument of good to his fellow nun. And vet did the young man reverence Oxford, because he SIIAKSPERE S FIRST RIDE TO LOXDOX. 139 reverenced letters as opposed to illiterac}*. He gave his testimony to the worth of Oxford at a distant day, when he held that the great glory of Wolsey was to have founded Christchurch : — ' He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one : Exceeding wise, {'air spoken, and persuading — Lofty and sour to them that loved him not ; But, to those men that sought him, sweet as summer. And though he were unsatistied in getting. (Which was a sin), yet, in bestowing, madam, He was most princely. Kver witness tor him Those twins of learning that herais'd in you, Jpswich and Oxford; one of which fell with him, I'nwilling to outlive the good he did it ; The other, though untinish'd, yet so famous, So excellent in art. and still so rising, That Christendom shall ever speak his virtue.'* The journey from Oxford to London must have occupied two days, in that age of bad roads and long miles. Harrison, in his 'Chapter on Thoroughfares' (1586), gives us the distances from town to town : Oxford to AVhatleie, 4 miles ; Whatleie to Thetisford, 6 ; Thutisford to Stock - ingchurch, 5; Stockingchurch to East YVickham, 5; East Wickham to Baccansfield, 5 ; Baccansfield to Uxbridge, 7 Uxbridge to London, 15. Total, 47 miles. Our modern admeasurements give 54. Over this road, then, in man} 7 parts a picturesque one, would the two friends from Stratford take their course. They would fare well and cheaply on the road. Harrison tells us, * Each comer is sure to lie in clean sheets, wherein no man hath been lodged since they came from the laundress, or out of the water wherein the} r were last washed. If the traveller have a horse his bed doth cost him nothing, but if he go on foot he is sure to pay a penny for the same. But whether he be horseman or footman, if his chamber be once appointed he may carry the key with him, as of his own house, so long as ho lodgeth there. If he lose aught whilst he * Henry VIII. Act i., Scene 1. 140 ONCE UPON A TIME. abideth in the inn, the host is bound by a general custom to restore the damage, so that there is no greater security anywhere for travellers than in the greatest inns of England.' On the evening of the fourth day after their departure from home would the young wayfarers, accustomed to fatigue, reach London. They would see only fields and hedge-rows, leading to the hills of Hampstead and Highgate on the north of the road, and to Westminster on the south. They would be wholly in the country, with a long line of road before them, without a house, at the spot which now, although bearing the name of a lane — Park Lane — is one ot the chosen seats of fashion. Here Burbage would point out to his companion the distant roofs of the Abbey and the Hall of Westminster ; and nearer would stand St. James's Palace, — a solitary and somewhat gloomy building. They would ride on through fields till they came very near the village of St. Giles's. Here, turning from their easterly direction to the south, they would pass through meadows, with the herd quietly grazing under the evening sun in one enclosure, and the laundress collecting her bleached linen in another. They are now in St. Martin's Lane ; and the hum of population begins to be heard. The inn in the Strand receives their horses, and they take boat at Somerset Place. Then bursts upon the young stranger a full conception of the wealth and greatness of that city of which he has heard so much, and imagined so much more. Hundreds of boats are upon the river. Here and there a stately barge is rowed along, gay with streamers and rich liveries ; and the sound of music is heard from its decks, and the sound is repeated from many a beauteous garden that skills the water's edge. He looks back upon the cluster of noble buildings that form the Palace of Westminster. York Place and the spacious Savoy bring their historical recollections to his mind. He looks eastward, and there is the, famous 'Temple, and the Palace of Bridewell, and Baynard's Castle. Above all these rises up the majestic spiro of Paul's. London Bridge, that SHAKSPERE S FIRST RIDE TO LONDON. 141 wonder of the world, now shows its picturesque turrets and multitudinous arches ; and in the distance is seen the Tower of London, full of grand and solemn associations. The boat rests at the Blackfriars. In a few minutes they are threading the narrow streets of the precinct; and a comfortable house affords the weary youths a cheerful welcome. 142 OXCE UPOX A TIME. MAY-MOENING : ITS POETKY AND ITS PKOSE. Once upon a Time — it is a quarter of a century ago — I used to have raptures about May-day. I translated Buchanan's Ode to May ; I read Herrick under the hawthorn -trees in Windsor Park. On one year, tempted by as bright a sky and as balmy an air as ever inspired the votaries of spring in this variable climate, I silently gave myself up to the fascinations of the beauteous budding-time and its old recollections. I believed in all our ancestors' raptures about May-day, convinced that it was with no effort against blights and chills that they went out, as old Stow tells us, on that memorable morning, ■ into the sweet meadows and green woods, there to rejoice their spirits with the beauty and savour of sweet flowers, and with the harmony of birds praising God in their kind.' I then understood, while the blue vault was scarcely speckled with a cloud, and the foliage of the trees put forth its freshest green, and the hawthorn was budding to prove that the old seasons had not forsaken us, and the thrush was singing over his sitting mate — I then understood the enthusiasm of one of our old rural poets : — 1 Get up, get up, for shame ! the blooming Morn Upon her wingi presents the god unshorn; See how Aurora throws her fair Fresh-quilted colours through the sir. Get up, sweet slu<>a-hed ! and see The dew bespangling herb and tree: Kach (lower lias wept, and b0W*d towards the oast Above an hour since, y.'t jron aoi drest ; Nay, not so much IS out of be I. When all the birds have matins mid. MAY-MORNING: ITS POETRY AND ITS PROSE. 143 And sung their thankful hymns; — 'tis sin, Nay, profanation, to keep in ; When as a thousand virgins on this day Spring sooner than the lark to fetch in May.' It was in that happy season that I rubbed up, for the first time, some of the antiquarianism of May-day. The formal Mr. Bonnie, who coquetted with old customs by diligently recording them with a pious abuse of their heathenish vanities, says— 'On the calends, or the first day of May, commonly called May-day, the juvenile part of both sexes were wont to rise a little after midnight, and walk to some neighbouring wood, accompanied with music and the blowing of horns ; where they break down branches from the trees, and adorn them with nosegays and crowns of flowers. When this is dene they return with their booty homewards, about the rising of the sun, and make their doors and windows to triumph in the flowery spoil. The after-part of the da}' is chiefly spent in dancing round a tall pole, which is called a May-pole ; which, being placed in a convenient part of the village, stands there, as it were, consecrated to the goddess of flowers, without the least violation offered it in the whole circle of the year. And this is not the custom of the British common people only, but it is the custom of the generality of other nations ; particularly of the Italians, where Polvdore Vergil tells us the youth of both sexes were accustomed to go into the fields on the calends of May, and bring thence the branches of trees, singing all the way as they came, and so place them on the doors of their houses. — This is the relic of an ancient custom among the heathen, who observed the four last days of April, and the first of May, in honour of the goddess Flora, who was imagined the deity presiding over the fruit and flowers.' The solemnities of the May-pole are thus described by Browne in his Britannia's Pastorals : — ' As 1 have seen the Lady of the May ►Set in an arbour — Built by the May-pole, where the jocund swains Dance with the maidens to the bagpipe's strains — 1 44 OXCE UPON A TIME. When euvious Night commands them to be gone, Call for the merry youngsters one by one, And for their well performance soon disposes, To this, a garland interwove with roses ; To that, a carved hook, or well-wrought scrip ; Gracing another with a cherry lip : To one her garter ; to another then A handkerchief cast o'er and o'er agen ; And none returneth empty that hath spent His pains to till their rural merriment.' The Puritans waged war with the May-poles, and indeed with all those indications of a full-hearted simplicity which were the echo of the universal harmony of Nature. The May-poles never held up their heads after the civil wars. The ' strait-laced ' exulted in their fall, but we believe the people were neither wiser nor happier for their removal : — ' Happy the age, and harmless were the days, For then true love and amity were found, When every village did a May-pole raise, And Whitsun ales and May-games did abound ; And all the lusty younkers in a rout, With merry lasses danced the rod about ; Then Friendship to the banquet bid the guests, And pom- men fared the better for their feasts. Alas, poor May-poles! what should be the cause That you were almost banish'd from the earth, Who never were rebellious to the laws? Your greatest crime was honest, harmless mirth.' But the sports of May were not confined to the villages. Even the gorgeous pomp of the old Courts did not disdain to borrow a fni grance and refshness from the joys of the people. Hall, the historian, gives us an account of ■ Henry the Eighth *s riding a -Maying from Greenwich to the high ground of Shooter's-hill, with Queen Katharine his wife, accompanied with many lords and ladies.' The good people of London in those days were not ashamed to let in a little of the light of creation upon their mercantile pursuits. Stow tells us, ' In the month of May, the citizens of London (of all estates), lightly in every parish, or sometimes two or three parishes joining together, had their several Mayings, and did fetch MAY-MORNING : ITS POETRY AND ITS PROSE. 145 in May-poles with divers warlike shows, with good archers, morrice-dancers, and other devices for pastime all the day long ; and towards the evening they had stage-plaies, and bone-fires in the streets.' — ' The gratulation of the spring- season ' has no more a place amongst us ; the leaves and the flowers come without a ' Hail !' from the court, the ciiy, or the village. There came another season — a cold wet time— and I was out of humour with May. I wrote disparagingly of the often-echoed tones of that innocent flock who frisk about in the sunshine of our north-east blights, and resolve to be Arcadian with a temperature of 60°. I will do penance for my heresies by showing how inconsistent one may be under ' skyey influences :' — In despite of our friends Shakspere and Fletcher, and of him who did more than all of them to make May poetical, Herrick, I am constrained to assert, that never yet was May-day celebrated in such a pure spirit of pastoral inno- cence as might be advantageously revived in these degene- rate times. I fear that during the last three hundred years it was never the good fortune of any gallant to go a-Maving before daybreak with any young ladies of very scrupulous virtue ; — and I am not quite sure that Jack in the Green was ever enacted by any higher description of persons than the ragged boys of the village, whose enthusiasm for an eleemosynary penny was somewhat greater than their love of ' green fields ' and ' blue skies.' I am afraid there has never been any great deal of practical poetry in England ; — and I grieve to think that May-day was not often dis- tinguished by a more refined spirit than the promiscuous gaiety of Greenwich fair ; and that the homage to nature which the lads and lasses of ancient times got up for the occasion was not quite so amusing to the world at large, and certainly not more edifying, than that of the chimney- sweepers. To carry my prosaic belief no farther back than the romantic days of the Sidneys and Ealeighs, let me picture L 146 ONCE UrOX A TIME. a dance round the May-pole, at which Elizabeth was present. The scene Windsor. Her most gracious Majesty is busily employed in brushing up her Latin and her Castle at the same time — doing Horace's ' Art of Poetry ' into execrable rhymes, and building private staircases for the Earl of Leicester. Her employment and the season make her aspire to be poetical. She resolves to see the May-day sports ; and, sallying forth from the Castle, takes a short cut, with few attendants, through the lawn which lay before the South Gate, to the fields near the entrance of AVindsor town. The May-pole stands close by the spot where now commences the Long Walk. The crowd make obsequious way for their glorious Queen, and the sports, at her com- mand, go uninterruptedly forward. The group is indeed a most motley one. The luxuries of a white cotton gown were then unknown, and even her Majesty's experience of knitted hose was very limited. The girls frisk away, therefore, in their gray kirtles of linsey-woolsey, and their yellow stockings of coarse broadcloth ; the lads are some- what fuddled and rather greasy, and a whole garment is a considerable distinction. The Queen of the Ma)' is com- manded to approach. She has a tolerable garland of violets and primroses, but a most unprepossessing visage, pimpled with exercise or ale. ' And so, my dainty maiden,' says her Majesty, ' you are in love with Zephyr, and hawthorn bushes, and morning dew, and wendest to the fields ere Phoebus gilds the drifted clouds.' ' Please your Majesty,' says the innocent, ■ I'm in love with Tom Larkin, the hand- some fleshmonger, and a pretty dressing my mother will give me for ganging a-Maying in the gray of the morning. There's queer work for lasses amongst these rakehellms. please your Majesty.' Elizabeth suddenly turns with a frown to her lord in waiting, and hurries back as if she bad pricked her finger with a May-hush. ( 147 ) AMATBUBS AND ACTOES. At the close of the year 1587, and the opening, according to our new style, of 1588, ' the Queen ! s Majesty being at Greenwich, there were showed, presented, and enacted before her Highness, betwixt Christmas and Shrovetide, seven plays, besides feats of activity and other shows, by the children of Paul's, her Majesty's own servants, and the gentlemen of Gray's Inn, on whom was employed divers remnants of cloth of gold and other stuff out of the store.' Such is the record of the accounts of the revels at court. Of the seven plays performed by the children of Paul's and the Queen's servants there is no memorial ; but we learn from the title of a book of uncommon rarity of what nature were the ' Certaine Devises and Shewes presented Her Majestie by the Gentlemen of Grayes Inne, at her Highnesse Court in Greenwich, the twenty -eighth day of Februarie, in the thirtieth year of her Majestie's most happy raigne.' * The ' Misfortunes of Arthur, Uther Pendragon's son,' was the theme of these devices and shows. It was ' reduced into tragical notes by Thomas Hughes, one of the society of Gray's Inn.' It was ' set down as it passed from under his hands, and as it was presented, excepting certain words and lines, where some of the actors either helped their memories by brief omissions, or fitted their acting by alteration.' Thomas Hughes also tells us that he has put ' a note at the end of such speeches as were penned by others, in lieu of these hereafter following.' It is pleasant to imagine the gentlemen of Gray's Inn sitting over their sack during the Christmas of 1587, listening to Thomas Hughes reciting * A copy in the Garrick Collection, in the British Museum. L 2 148 ONCE UPON A TIME. his doleful tragedy, cutting out a speech here, adding some- thing wondrously telling there ; the most glib of tongue modestly declining to accept the part of Arthur the king, and expressing his content with Mordred the usurper ; a beardless student cheerfully agreeing to wear the robes of Guenevra the queen, and a gray-headed elder undertaking the ghost of the Duke of Cornwall. A perfect play it is, if every accessory of a play can render it perfect ; for every act has an argument, and every argument a dumb-show, and every dumb-show a chorus. Here is indeed an ample field for ambitious members of the honourable society to contribute their devices; and satisfactory it is that the names of some of his fellow-labourers in this elaborate work have been preserved to us by the honour-giving Thomas Hughes. ' The dumb-shows and additional speeches were partly devised by William Fulbeck, Francis Flower, Christopher Yelverton, Francis Bacon, John Lancaster, and others, who with Master Penroodock and Lancaster directed these proceedings at Court.' Precious is this record. The salt that preserves it is the one name of Francis Bacon. Bacon, in 1588, was Eeader of Gray's Inn. To the devices and shows of Hughes's tragedy — accompaniments that might lessen the tediousness of its harangues, and scatter a little beauty and repose amongst its scenes of crime and murder — Bacon would bring something of that high poetical spirit which gleams out at every page of his Philo- sophy. Nicholas Trotte, gentleman, penned the introduc- tion, ■ which was pronounced in manner following, nan lely, three Muses came upon the stage apparelled accordingly, bringing five gentlemen-students attired in their usual garments, whom one of the Muses presented to her Majesty as captives.' But the dresses, the music, the dancing to song, were probably directed by the tasteful mind who subsequently wrote, 'These things are but toys; but yet, since princes will have such things, it is better thai they should be graced with elegancy than daubed with cost.'* * Of Masques sod Triumphs. — Essay 37. AMATEURS AND ACTORS. 149 Under the roof, then, of the old palace at Greenwich — the palace which Humphrey of Gloucester is said to have built, and where Elizabeth was born — are assembled the gentle- men of Gray's Inn and the Queen's players. The two master-spirits of their time — amongst the very greatest of all time — are there. Francis Bacon, the lawyer, and AVilliam Shakspere, the actor, are unconscious - each of the greatness of the other. The difference of their rank probably prevents that communication which might have told each something of the other's power. Master Penroo- dock and Master Lancaster may perhaps solicit a little of the professional advice of Burbage and his men ; and the other gentlemen who penned the dumb-shows may have assisted at the conference. A flash of wit from William Shakspere may have won a smile from the Reader of Gray's Inn ; and he may have dropped a scrap of that philosophy which is akin to poetry, so as to make the young actor reverence him more highly than as the son of Elizabeth's former honest Lord Keeper. But the signs of that freemasonry by which great minds know each other could scarcely be ex- changed. They would go their several ways, the one to tempt the perils and the degradation of ambition, and to find at last a refuge in philosophy ; the other to be content with a well-earned competence, and gathering amidst petty strifes and jealousies, if such could disturb him, something more than happiness in the culture of that wondrous imagi- nation which had its richest fruits in his own unequalled cheerful wisdom. Elizabeth, the Queen, is now in her fifty- fifth year. She is ten years younger than when Paul Hentzner described her, as he saw her surrounded with her state in this same palace. The wrinkles of her face, oblong and fair, were perhaps not yet very marked. Her small black eyes, ac- cording to the same authority, were pleasant even in her age. The hooked nose, the narrow lips, and the discoloured teeth, were perhaps less noticeable when Shakspere looked upon her in his early days. The red hair was probably not false, as it afterwards was. The small hand and the white 150 ONCE UPON A TIME. fingers were remarkable enough of themselves, but, spark- ling with rings and jewels, the eye rested upon them. The young poet, who has been lately sworn her servant, has stood in the backward ranks of the presence-chamber, to see his dread mistress pass to chapel. The room is thronged with counsellors and courtiers. The inner doors are thrown open, arid the gentlemen -pensioners, bearing their gilt battle-axes, appear in long file. The great officers of the household and ministers of state are marshalled in advance. The procession moves. When the Queen appears, sudden and frequent are the genuflexions : ' Whenever she turned her face as she was going along, every body fell down upon their knees.' But she is gracious, according to the same authority : ' Whoever speaks to her it is kneel- ing ; now and then she raises some with her hand.' As she moves into the ante-chapel loud are the shouts of Long live Queen Elizabeth !' The service is soon ended, and then to dinner. While reverence has been paid to » the only Ruler of Princes,' forms as reverent in their outward appearance have been offered even to the very place where the creature-comforts of our every-day life are to be served up to majesty. Those who cover the table with the cloth kneel three times with the utmost veneration ; so do the bearers of the salt-cellar, of the plate, and of the bread. A countess, dressed in white silk, prostrates herself with the same reverence before the plate, which she rubs with bread and salt. The yeomen of the guard enter, bearing the dishes, and tjie lady in white silk, with her tasting- knife, presents a portion of each dish to the lips of the yeomen, not in courtesy but in suspicion of poison. The bray of trumpets and the clang of kettle-drums ring through the hall. The Queen is in her inner-chamber; and the dishes are borne in by ladies of honour with silent solemnity. When the Queen has eaten the ladies eat. Brief is the meal on this twenty-eighth of February, for the hall must be cleared for the play. The platform in the hall at (Jrcvnwicli, which was to resound with the laments of Arthur, was constructed by a AMATEURS AND ACTORS. 151 cunning workman, so as to be speedily erected and taken down. It was not so substantial an affair as the 'great stage, containing the breadth of the church from the one side to the other,' that was built in the noble chapel of King's College, Cambridge, in 1.5G4, for the representation before the Queen of a play of Plautus. Probably in one particular the same arrangement was pursued at Greenwich as at Cambridge on that occasion: 'A multitude of the guard had every man in his hand a torch-staff; and the guard stood upon {ho ground by the stage-side holding their lights.' But there would be some space between the stage and the courtly audit nee. Kaised above the rushes would the Queen sit upon hex chair of state. Around her would stand her honourable maids. Behind, the eager courtiers with the ready smile when majesty vouchsafed to be pleased* Amongst them is tin- handsome captain of the guard, the tall and bold I'aleigh, — he of the high forehead, long face, and small piercing eye.* His head is ever and anon inclined to the chair of Elizabeth. He is ' as good as a chorus,' and he can tell more of the story than the induc- tion ' penned by Nicholas Trotte, gentleman.' lie has need, however, to tell little as the play proceeds. The plot docs not unravel itself; the incidents arise not clearly and naturally ; but some worthy person amongst the characters every now and then informs the audience, with extreme politeness, and with the most praiseworthy completeness of detail, everything that has happened, and a good deal of what will happen ; and thus the unities of time and place are preserved according to the most approved rules, and Mr, Thomas Hughes eschews the offences which were denounced by the lamented Sir Philip Sidney, of having 'Asia of the one side, and Africa of the other, and so many other king- doms that the player when he comes in must ever begin with telling where he is, or else the tale will not be conceived. 'f The author of the ' Misfortunes of Arthur ' avoids this by * ' Ho had a most remarkable aspect, an exceeding high forehead, long- faced, and sour eye-lidded — a kind of pig-eye.' — Aubrey. f Defence of Poesy. 152 OXCE UPON A TIME. the somewhat drowsy method of substituting the epic nar- rative for the dramatic action. The Queen whispers to Ealeigh that the regular players are more amusing. A day or two passes on, and her Majesty again wants diversion. She bends her mind manfully to public affairs, and it is a high and stirring time ; but, if it only be to show her calmness to her people, she will not forego her ac- customed revels. Her own players are sent for ; and the summons is hasty and peremptory for some fitting novelty. Will the comedy which young Shakspefe has written for the Blackfriars, and which has been already in rehearsal, be suited for the court? The cautious sagacity of old Burbage is willing to confide in it. Without attempting too close an imitation of court manners, its phrases he conceives are refined, its lines are smooth. There are some slight touches of satire, at which it bethinks him the Queen will laugh ; but there is nothing personal, for Don Armado is a Spaniard. The verse, he holds, sounds according to the right stately fashion in the opening of the play : — ' Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives, Live registered upon our brazen tombs.' The young poet is a little licentious, however, in the management of his verse as he proceeds ; he has not Marlowe's lofty cadences, which roll out so nobly from the full mouth. But the lad will mend. Truly he has a comic vein. If Kempe takes care to utter what is put down for him in Costard, her Majesty will forget poor Tarleton. And then the compliments to the ladies : — 1 They are the books, the arts, the academe*, That show, contain, and nourish all the world.' Elizabeth will take the compliments to herself. The young- man's play shall be ' preferred.' It is a bright sparkling morning — ' the first mild day of March 1 — as the Queen's barge waits for Burbage and his fellows at the Blackfriars Stairs. They are soon floating down the tide. Familiar as that scene now is to him, William Sliakspcre cannot look upon it without wonder AMATEURS AND ACTORS. 153 aud elation of heart. The venerable Bridge, with its hundred legends and traditions ; the Tower, where scenes have been acted that haunt his mind, and must be embodied some day fur the people's instruction. And now, verses, some of which he has written in the quiet of his beloved Stratford, characters that he has drawn from the stores of his youthful observation, are to be presented for the amuse- ment of the Queen. But, with a most modest estimate of his own powers, he is sure that he has heard some very in- different poetry, which nevertheless has won the Queen's approbation, with many jokes, at which the Queen has laughed, that scarcely have seemed to him fitting for royal ears. If his own verses are not listened to, perhaps the liveliness of his little Moth may command a smile. At any rate there will be some show in his pageant of the Nine Worthies. He will meet the issue courageously. The Queen's players have now possession of the platform in the hall. Burbage has ample command of tailors, and of stuff out of the store. Pasteboard and buckram are at his service in abundance. The branches are garnished, the arras is hung. The Queen and her court are seated. But the experiment of the new play soon ceases to be a doubtful one. Those who can judge, and the Queen is amongst the number, listen with eagerness to something different to the feebleness of the pastoral and mythological stories to which they have been accustomed. ■ The summer's nightingale '* himself owns that a real poet has arisen, where poetry was scarcely looked for. The Queen commands that rewards, in some eyes more precious than the accustomed gloves, should be bestowed upon her players. Assuredly the delightful comedy of ' Love's Labour's Lost,' containing as it does in every line the evidence of being a youthful work, was very early one of those 1 Flights upon the banks of Thames That so did take Eliza.' * Raleigh is so called by Spenser. 1 54 ONCE UPON A TIME. lieu Jonson. BEN JONSON'S MOTHER In U; nt shorn Lane, near Charing Cross, about the year 1 580, dwells Mr. Thomas Fowler, a master bricklayer. He had married, in 1575, Mrs. Margaret Jonson, a widow ; and had become the protector of her little boy, Benjamin, then about a year and a half old. Benjamin is now in his sixth year. He duly attends the parish school in St. Martin's Church; for his father was ' a grave minister of the gospel,' and his mother is anxious that her only child, poor although he must be, shall lack no advantages of education. We see the sturdy boy daily pacing to school through the rough and miry way of that half-rural district. In his play-hours he is soon in the fields, picking blackberries in Hedge Lane, or flying his kite by the Windmill in Saint Giles's. 1 1 is father-in-law is a plain, industrious, trusty man,— not rich enough to under take any of the large works which the luxurious wants of BEX JOXSON S MOTHER. 155 the town present ; and ofttimes interfered with, in the due course of his labour, by royal proclamations against the increase of houses, which are rigidly enforced when a humble man desires to build a cottage. But young Ben has found friends. To the parish school sometimes comes Master Camden; and he observes the bold boy, always at the head of his class, and not unfrequently having his 'clear and fair skin ' disfigured by combats with his dirty com- panions, who litter about the alleys of Saint Martin's Lane. The boy has won good Master Camden's heart ; and so, in due time, he proposes to remove him to Westminster School. Let us look at the Shadow of his Mother, as she debates this question with her husband, at their frugal supper. ' The boy must earn his living,' says the bricklayer. ■ He is strong enough to be of help to me. ITe can mix the mortar ; he will soon be able to carry the hod. Learning ! stuff ! ho has had learning enow, for all the good it will do him.' — ' Thomas Fowler,' responds the mother, ■ if I wear my fingers to the bone, my boy shall never carry the hod. Master ( Vimden, a good man, and learned, will pay for his schooling. Shall we not give him his poor meals and his pallet-bed ? Master Camden says he will make his way. I owe it to the memory of him who is gone, that Benjamin shall be a scholar and perhaps a minister.' — • Yes ; and be persecuted for his opinions, as his father was. These are ticklish times, Margaret — the lowest are the safest. Ben is passionate, and obstinate, and will quarrel for a straw. Make him a scholar, and he becomes Papist or Puritan — ■ the quiet way is not for the like of him. He shall be ap- prenticed to me, wife, and earn his daily bread safely and honestly.' Night after night is the debate renewed. But the mother triumphs. Ben does go to Westminster School. He has hard fare at home ; he has to endure many a taunt as he sits apart in the Abbey cloisters, intent upon his task. But Camden is his instructor and his friend. The brick- layer's boy fights his way to distinction. Look again at the Shadow of that proud Mother as, after 156 ONCE UPON A TIME. three or four anxious years, she hears of his advancement. He has an exhibition. He is to remove to Cambridge. Her Benjamin must be a bishop. Thomas Fowler is in- credulous—and he is not generous: 'When Benjamin leaves this roof he must shift for himself, wife.' The mother drops one tear when her boy departs ; — the leathern purse which holds her painful savings is in Benjamin's pocket. It is a summer night of 1590, when Benjamin Jonson walks into the poor house of Hartshorn Lane. He is travel- stained and weary. His jerkin is half hidden be- neath a dirty cloak. That jerkin, which looked so smart in a mother's eyes when last they parted, is strangely shrunk — or, rather, has not the spare boy grown into a burly youth, although the boy's jerkin must still do service ? The bricklayer demands his business ; — the wife falls upon his neck. And well may the bricklayer know him not. His face is ' pimpled ;' hard work and irregular living have left their marks upon him. The exhibition B has been in- sufficient for his maintenance. His spirit has been sorely wounded. The scholar of sixteen thinks he should prefer the daily bread which is to be won by the labour of his hands, to the hunger for which pride has no present solace. Benjamin Jonson becomes a bricklayer. And now, for two years, has the mother — her hopes wholly gone, her love only the same — to bear up under the burden of conflicting duties. The young man duly works at the most menial tasks of his business. He has won his way to handle a trowel ; — but he is not comfortable in all things. ' Wife/ says Thomas Fowler, ' that son of yours will never prosper. Cannot he work, — and cannot he eat his meals, — without a Greek book in his vest ? This very noon must ho seat himself, at dinner-hour, in the shade of the wall in Chancery Lane, on which he had been labouring ; and then comes a reverend Bencher and begins discourse with him ; and Ben shows him his book— and they talk as if they were equal Margaret, he is too grand for me ; he 157 is above his trade.' — • Shame on ye, husband ! Does he not work, honestly and deftly ? and will you grudge him" his books ?' — ' He haunts the playhouses ; he sits in the pit — and cracks nuts — and hisses or claps hands, in a way quite unbeseeming a bricklayer's apprentice. Margaret, I fear he will come to no good.' One night there is a fearful quarrel. It is late when Benjamin returns home. In silence and darkness, the son and mother meet. She is resolved. ' Benjamin, iny son, my dear son, we will endure this life no longer. There is a sword ; — it was your grand- father's. A gentleman wore it ; a gentleman shall still wear it. Go to the Low Countries. Volunteers are called for. There is an expedition to Ostend. Take with you these few crowns, and God prosper you.' Another year, and Benjamin's campaign is ended. At the hearth in Hartshorn Lane sits Margaret Fowler — in solitude. There will be no more strife about her son. Death has settled the controversy. Margaret is very poor. Her trade is unprosperous ; for the widow is defrauded by her servants. ' Mother, there is my grandfather's sword — it has done service ; and, now, 1 will work for you.' — ' How, my son ?' — ' I will be a bricklayer again.' We see the Shadow of the Mother, as she strives to make her son content. He has no longer ' the lime and mortar ' hands with which it was his after-fate to be reproached ; but he bestows the master's eye upon his mother's workmen. Yet he has hours of leisure. There is a chamber in the old house now filled with learned books. He reads, and he writes, as his own pleasure dictates. ' Mother,' he one day says, ' I wish to marry.' — ' Do so, my son ; bring your wife home ; we will dwell together.' So a few years roll on. He and his wife weep ' Mary, the daughter of their youth.' But there is an event approaching which sets aside sorrow. ' Daughter,' says the ancient lady, ' we must to the Hose Playhouse to-night. There is a new play to be acted, and 158 ONCE UPON A TIME. that play is Benjamin's.'- — ' Yes, mother, he has had divers moneys already. Not much, I wot, seeing the labour he has given to this " Comedy of Humours " — five'shillings, and ten shillings, and, once, a pound.' — ' No matter, daughter, he will be famous : I always knew he would be famous.' A calamity clouds that fame. The play-writer has quarrels on every side. In the autumn of 1528, Philip Henslowe, the manager of ' The Lord Admiral's men,' writes thus to his son-in-law, Alleyn : — * Since you were with me, I have lost one of my company, which hurteth me greatly — that is, Gabriel ; for he is slain in Hogsden Fields, by the hands of Benjamin Jonson, bricklayer.' Twenty years after, the great dramatist, the laureat, thus relates the story to Drummond : ' Being appealed to the fields, he had killed his adversary, which had him hurt in the arm, and whose sword was ten inches longer than his ; for the' which he was imprisoned, and almost at the gallows.' There is the proud Shadow of a Roman Matron hovering about his cell, in those hours when the gallows loomed darkly in the future. The scholar and the poet has won his fame. Bricklayer no longer, Ben is the companion of the illustrious. Shak- spere hath ' wit-combats ' with him ; Camden and Selden try his metal in learned controversies ; Raleigh, and Beau- mont, and Donne, and Fletcher, exchange with him 'words of subtle flame ' at ' The Mermaid.' But a new trouble arises — James is come to the throne. Hear Jonson's ac- count of a remarkable transaction: — ' He was delated by Sir James Murray to the king, for writing somethiiiL;- against the Scots, in a play, "Eastward Ho," and volun- tarily imprisoned himself, with Chapman and Marston, who had written it amongst them. The report was, that they should then have had their ears cut, and noses.' They are at length released. We see the shadow of a banquet, which the poet gave to his friends in commemoration oi* his deliverance. There is a joyous company of immortals at that feast. There, too, is that loving and faithful Mother. The wine cups are flowing; there are song and jest, elo- BEX JONSON S MOTHER. 159 quence, and the passionate earnestness with which such friends speak when the heart is opened. But there is one, whose Shadow we now see, more passionate and more earnest than any of that company. She rises, with a full goblet in her hand : — ' Son, I drink to thee. Benjamin, my beloved son, thrice I drink to thee. See ye this paper ; one grain of the subtle drug which it holds is death. Even as we now pledge each other in rich canary, would I have pledged thee in lusty strong poison, had thy sentence taken execution. Thy shame would have been my .shame, and neither of us should have lived after it.' ' She was no churl,' says Benjamin. 160 ONCE UPON A TIME. ENGLISH POETS IN SCOTLAND. I have not hesitated to express a belief that Shakspere visited Scotland in 1601, as one of the company of English players who performed at Aberdeen that year, under the management of Lawrence Fletcher. The question cannot be satisfactorily settled ; but in the following paper I have taken a rapid view of the supposed journey, as an illustra- tion of the aspects which Scotland would present to an Englishman a little while before the accession of James.* In the summer of 1618, Ben Jonson undertook the extraordinary task of travelling to Edinburgh on foot. Bacon said to him, with reference to his project, ' He loved not to see poesy go on other foot than poetical Dactylus and Spondaeus.'j* Jonson seems to have been proud of his exploit ; for in his ' News from the New World discovered in the Moon,' a masque, presented at Court in 1620, he makes a printer say, ' One of our greatest poets (I know not how good a one) went to Edinburgh on foot, and came back.' According to Drummond he was ' to write his foot pilgrimage hither, and call it a discovery.' ^Ye have no traces of Jonson in this journey, except what we derive from the ' Conversations with Drummond,' and the notice of honest John Taylor, in his ' Pennilesse Pilgrimage :' — 4 1 went to Leith, where I found my long-approved and assured good friend, Master Benjamin Jonson, at one Master John Stuart's house.' Jonson remained long enough in Scotland to become familiar with its hospitable people and its noble scenery. Ho wrote a poem, in which he called Edinburgh ' The bear! of Scotland, Britain's other eye.' * This, and two preceding papers, p. 135 and p. 147, formed chapters in tho original edition ot ' William Shakspere, a Biography ;' bul were omitted i>y me in the succeeding editions. f Conversation! with Drnmmond. ENGLISH POETS IN SCOTLAND. 161 ' He hath intention,' saith Drummond, ' to write a fisher or pastoral play, and set the stage of it in the Lomond Lake." After his return to London he earnestly solicits Drummond, by letter, to send him ' some things concerning the Loch of Lomond.' We find nothing in Jonson's poetry that gives us an impression that he had caught any inspiration from the country of mountains and lakes. We have no internal evidence at all that he had been in Scotland. We have no token of the impress of its mountain scenery upon his mind approaching to the distinctness of a famous passage in Shakspere — a solitary passage in a poet who rarely indeed describes any scenery, but one which could scarcely have been written without accurate knowledge of the realities to which ' black Vesper's pageants ' have resemblance : — ' Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish ; A vapour, sometime, like a bear or lion, A tower 'd citadel, a pendant rock, A forked mountain, or blue promontory With trees upon 't that nod_unto the world And mock our eyes with air.'* John Taylor, homely as he is, may better enable us to trace Shakspere's probable course, assuming that the journey was undertaken. Taylor, travelling on foot, was a week in reaching Lichfield, passing through Coventry. He was another week, filling up some time with over-much carousing, before he got out of Manchester. Preston detained him three days with its jollity ; and it was another week before, passing over the hills of Westmoreland, he reached Carlisle. Shakspere, setting out on horseback from Stratford, would reach Carlisle by easy stages in six days. Taylor stops not to describe the merry city. It was more to his purpose to enjoy the ' good entertainment ' of which he there ' found store,' than to survey its castle and its cathedral ; or to look from its elevated points upon fertile meadows watered by the Eden or the broad Frith, or the distant summits of Crossfell and Skiddaw. Would * Antony and Cleopatra, one of Shakspere's later plays. 162 OXCE UPON A TIME. he had preserved for ns some of the ballads that he must have heard in his revelries, that told of the wondrous feats of the bold outlaws who lived in the greenwood around ' Carlisle, in the north countree.' Assuredly Shakspere had heard of Adam Bell, the brave archer of Inglewood : ' He that hits me, let him be clapped on the shoulder and called Adam.'* It is pleasant to believe that some snatches of old miustrelsy might have recreated his solitary journey as he rode near the border- land. Sir Walter Scott, in the delightful Introduction to his ' Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,' says, ' The accession of James to the English crown converted the extremity into the centre of his kingdom.' The Scottish poet would seem to have borrowed the idea from a very humble English brother of the craft : — ' For now those crowns are both in one combin'd, Those former borders that each one confin'd Appears to me (as I do understand) To be almost the centre of the land : This was a blessed heaven-expounded riddle To thrust great kingdoms' skirts into the middle.'t John Taylor trudges from Carlisle into Annandale, wading through the Esk, and wondering that he saw so little differ- ence between the two countries, seeing that Scotland had its sun and sky, its sheep, and corn, and good ale. But he tells us that in former times this border-land ' Was the curs'd climate of rebellious crimes.' According to him, and he was not far wrong, pell-mell iury and hurly-burly, spoiling and wasting, sharking, shift ing, cutting throats, and thieving, constituted the practice both of Annandale and Cumberland. When Taylor made his pilgrimage, the existing generation would have a very fivsli recollection of these outrages of former times. If Shakspere * Much Ado About Nothing. f Taylor's ' Pennilesse Pilgrimage.' ENGLISH POETS IX SCOTLAND. 163 travelled over this ground he would be more familiar with the passionate hatreds of the borderers, and would hear many a song which celebrated their deadly feuds, and kept alive the spirit of rapine and vengeance. As recently as 1596, the famous Kaid of Carlisle had taken place, when the Lord of Buccleuch, then Warden of Liddesdale, surprised the Castle of Carlisle, and carried off a daring Scotch free- booter, Kinmont AVillie, who had been illegally seized by the Warden of the West Marches of England, Lord Scrope. The old ballad which, fifty years ago, was preserved by tradition on the western borders of Scotland, was perhaps sung by many a sturdy clansman at the beginning of the seventeenth centuiy : — 1 Wi' coulters, and \vi' t'oivliamni'Ts, We garr'd the liars bang merrilie, Until we came to the inner prison, Where Willie o' Kinmont he did lie. And when we came to the lower prison, Where Willie u' Kinmont he did lie — " sleep ye, wake ye, Kinmont Willie,* Upon the morn that thou 's to die?" 'f But the feuds of the Scotch and English borderers were not the only causes of insecurity on the western frontier. If the great dramatic poet, who has painted so vividty the desolation of civil war in his own country, had passed through Annandale in 1601, he would have seen the traces of a petty civil war which was then raging between the clans of Maxwell and Johnstone, who a few years before had met in deadly conflict on the very ground over which he would pass. The lord of Maxwell, with a vast band of followers, had been slain without quarter. This was something different from the quiet security of England— a state of comparative blessedness that Shakspere subse- * The snatch of melody in Lear, in all likelihood part of an English song, will occur to the reader : — • Sleepest or wakest thou, jolly shepherd ?' t Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, vol. ii. p. 58. M 2 164 ONCE UPON A TIME. quently described in Cranmer's prophecy of the glories of Elizabeth : — ' In her days every man shall eat in safety, Under his own vine, what he plants ; and sing The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours.'* The penniless pilgrim travelled over this ground when the security of England had been extended to Scotland ; and he found no greater dangers than wading through the Esk and the Annan, and no severer evils than sleeping in a poor hut upon the hard ground, with dirty pigeons roosting around hini.f Place the poet safely in Edinburgh, after he has made his solitary journey of three hundred miles, through un- accustomed scenery, partly amongst foreign people and strange manners. A new world has been opened to him. He has left behind him his old fertile midland counties, their woods, their corn-fields now ripe for the harvest, to pass over wild moor-lands with solemn mountains shutting in the distance, now following the course of a brawling stream through a fertile valley cultivated and populous, and then again climbing the summit of some gloomy fell, from which he looks around, and may dream he is in a land where man has never disturbed the wild deer and the eagle. He looks at one time upon ' Turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep, And flat meads thatch 'd with stover ;' and he may say with the Water-Poet, 1 1 thought myself in England still.' He is presently in the gorge of the moun- tains, and there are fancies awakening in him which are to shape themselves not into description, but into the delinea- tions of high passions which are to be created out of lofty moods of the mind. In Edinburgh he meets his fellows. * Henry VIII., Act v. t Taylor tells several portions of his adventures in plain prose; and we know of no better picture of the country and its manners than his simple descriptions furnish. ENGLISH POETS IN SCOTLAND. 165 The probability is that the Court is not there, for it is the hunting season. Holyrood is a winter palace ; and Edin- burgh is not then a city particularly attractive to the Scottish king, who has not forgotten the perils and in- dignities he has endured through the influence of the stem and uncompromising ministers of religion, who would have made the temporal power wholly submissive to the spiritual. The timid man has conquered, but all his actions are there viewed, with jealousy and malevolence ; and the English players may afford him safer pleasures in other places than where their ' unruliness and immodest behaviour' are un- charitably denounced daily from the pulpit. Shakspere may rest at Edinburgh a day or two ; and the impressions of that city will not easily be forgotten : — a town in which the character of the architecture would seem to vie with the bold scenery in which it is placed, full of historical associa- tions, the seat of Scottish learning and authority, built for strength and defence as much as for magnificence and com- fort, whose mansions are fastnesses that would resist an assault from a rival chief or a lawless mob. He looks for a short space upon the halls where she, who fell before the arbitrary power of his own Queen, lived in her days of beauty and youthfulness, surrounded by false friends and desperate enemies, weak and miserable. He sees the pulpits from which Knox thundered, the University which James had founded, and the castle for whose possession Scotch and English had fought with equal bravery, but varying success. He has gained materials for future reflection. The country palaces of the Scottish kings inhabited at that period were Linlithgow, Stirling, and Falkland. The gentle lake, the verdant park of Linlithgow were suited for a summer palace. It was the favourite residence of Mary of Guise, queen of James V. ' Gude Schir David Lindsay,' Lion King at Arms under James V., here pre- sented to the Court and people his ' Satyre of the Three Estaitis ;' and, whatever be his defects* no one can doubt that he possessed a strong vein of humour, and had the 166 ONCE UPON A TIME. courage to speak out boldly of public vice and private im- morality, as a poet ought to speak. The conclusion of the drama offers a pleasant sample of the freedom with which these old writers could address even a courtly audience : — 1 Now, let ilk man his way avance, Let sum ga drink, and sum ga dance : Menstrell, blaw up ane brawll of France, Let se quha hobbils best : For I will rin, incontinent, To the tavern, or ever I stent : And pray to God, omnipotent, To send you nil gude rest.' If the halls of Linlithgow had witnessed the performance of one of Shakspere's comedies by the company of Lawrence Fletcher, no changes in taste during half a century could be more striking than such a contrast of the new drama of England with the old drama of Scotland. But we appre- hend that Lawrence Fletcher went in another direction. The English comedians, servants to James VI., might have contributed to the solace and recreation of the King in the noble castle where he was born. Seven years before, Stirling had been the scene of rare festivities, on the occa- sion of the baptism of Prince Henry. It was a place fit for a monarch's residence. From these walls he could look at once upon the fertility and the grandeur of his dominions — its finest river, its boldest mountains, the vale of the Forth, and the summits of Ben Lomond. He could here cherish the proudest recollections of his country's indepen- dence. Stirling must have been dear to James as the resi- dence of his boyhood, where he learnt to make Latin verses from Buchanan, the most elegant of pedagogues. He woiild, perhaps, be prouder of his school-room in the old castle than of its historical associations, and would look with greater delight upon the little valley where he had once seen a gentle tournament, than upon the battle-fields of Cambuskenneth and I'annocklmni. Stirling was better fitted for the ceremonial displays of the Scottish Court than the quiet residence of a monarch like James VI. ENGLISH TOETS IN SCOTLAND. 167 "We have seen no record of such displays in the autumn of 1601. Dunfermline, called ' The Queen's House,' was in the possession of Anne of Denmark, and her son Charles was here born in November, 1600. It was a quiet occasional retreat from the turmoil of Edinburgh. But the favourite residence of James in the ' latter summer ' and autumn was Falkland. The account published, by authority, of the Gowrie conspiracy, opens with a distinct picture of the King's habits : ■ His Majesty having his residence at Falk- land, and being daily at the buck-hunting (as his use is in that season), upon the fifth day of August, being Tuesday, he rode out to the park, between six and seven of the clock in the morning, the weather being wonderful plea- sant and seasonable.' A record in Melville's Diary,* within three weeks of this period, gives us another picturo of the King and the Court : 'At that time, being in Falkland, I saw a fuscambulus Frenchman play strong and incredible praticks upon stented [stretched] tackle in the palace- close before the King, Queen, and whole Court. This was politicly done to mitigate the Queen and people for Gowrie's slaughter; even then was Henderson tried before us, and Gowrie's pedagogue who had been buted [booted, tortured].' In the great hall of the palace of Falkland, of which enough remains to show its extent and magnifi- cence, we think it probable that Lawrence Fletcher and his fellows exhibited very different performances in the following autumn. They would have abundant novelties to present to the Scottish Court, for all would be new. At the second Christmas after James had ascended the English throne, the early plays of Shakspere were as much in request at the Court as those which belong to a later period. The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost, Henry V., The Merchant of Venice, all being the productions of the previous century, were produced at Court, and the King commanded The * Quoted in Pitcairn's ' Trials,' vol. ii. p. 238; 168 ONCE UPON A TIME. Merchant of Venice a'second time. The constant perform- ance of Shakspere's plays, as shown by the accounts of the Revels, at this early period after James's accession, would seem to indicate something like a previous acquaintance with them; and this acquaintance we may justly assume took place upon the visit of Lawrence Fletcher and his company to Scotland in the autumn of 1601. From Falkland to Aberdeen would be a considerable journey in those days of neglected roads, when rivers had to be forded, and mountains crossed by somewhat perilous paths. It is not improbable that the company halted at Perth, which was within a morning's ride of Falkland. The Presbytery of that town were more favourably disposed some twelve years before to theatrical performances than the ministers of religion at Edinburgh; they tolerated them under wise restrictions. The King, in 1601, was anxious to stand well with the people of Perth, and he became a burgess of the city, and banqueted with the citizens. It ' was politicly done,' as Melville says of the French rope- dancer. He might venture in that city to send his servants the players to amuse the people ; for those who had supported his leanings towards Episcopalian Church government were strong there, and would gladly embrace any occasion to cultivate amusements that were disagreeable to their ascetic opponents. The same feelings would prevail still more strongly at Aberdeen. The young citizens of Bon Accord, as it was called, clung to the amusements of the older times, the Robin Hoods and Queens of May, in spite of the pro- hibitions of their magistrates. The Kirk Session prohibited maskers and dancers, but the people still danced ; and upon the solemn occasion when the popish Earls of Huntley and Errol were received into the bosom of the Kirk, upon renouncing their errors, there was music and masking around the Cross, and universal jollity was mingled with the more solemn ceremonials. The people of Aberdeen were a loyal people, and we are not surprised that they welcomed the King's players with rewards and honours. There is preserved, in the Library of Advocates, a very ENGLISH POETS IN SCOTLAND. 169 curious description of Aberdeen in the middle of the seventeenth century, written originally in Latin by James Gordon, parson of Eothemay, with a contemporary transla- tion. The latter has been printed by the Spalding Club. The changes during half a century would not be very con- siderable ; and the English players would therefore have sojourned in a city which, according to this authority, 1 exceeds not only the rest of the towns in the north of Scotland, but likewise any city whatsoever of that same latitude, for greatness, beauty, and frequency of trading.' Gordon's description is accompanied by a large and well- executed plan, which has also been published ; and certainly the new and old towns of Aberdeen, as they existed in those days, were spacious, and judiciously laid out, with handsome public buildings and well-arranged streets, backed by wooded gardens, — a pleasant place to look upon, with fruitful fields immediately around it, though 'any- where you pass a mile without the town the country is barren-like, the hills scraggy, the plains full of marshes and mosses.' The parson of Eothemay, with a filial love for his native place, says, ■ The air is temperate and healthful about it, and it may be that the citizens owe the acuteness of their wits thereunto, and their civil inclina- tions.' This, indeed, was a community fitted to appreciate the treasures which Lawrence Fletcherand his fellows would display before them ; and it is to the honour of Aberdeen that, in an age of strong prejudices, they welcomed the English players in a way which vindicated their own character for ' wisdom, learning, gallantry, breeding, and civil conversation.' It is not to those who so welcomed them that we must chiefly lay the charge of the witch persecutions of that time. In almost every case these atrocities were committed under the sanction of the Kirk Session; and in the same way, when a stern religious asceticism became the dominant principle in England, the feeling of religious earnestness, lofty as it was in many essentials, too often was allied with superstitious enthusiasm, which blinded the reason and blunted the feelings as 170 ONCE UPON A TIME. fearfully as the worst errors of the ancient Church. The tolerant Shakspere would have listened to the stories of these persecutions with the same feelings with which he regarded the rains of the Dominican convent at Aberdeen, which was razed to the ground in 1560. A right principle was in each case wrongly directed : ' There is some soul of goodness in things evil.' We have thus, there being ample documentary evidence that Shakspere's Company was at Aberdeen in October, 1601, assumed that Shakspere would naturally be of the number. His tragedy of Macbeth exhibits traces of local knowledge which might have been readily collected by him in the exact path of such a journey. AYe have attempted very slightly to sketch the associations with which he might have been surrounded during this progress, putting these matters, of course, hypothetically, as materials for the reader to embody in his own imagination. We may conclude the subject by very briefly tracing his path homeward. Honest John Taylor, who seems to have been ready for every kindness that fortune could bestow upon him, left Edinburgh in better guise than he came thither : ' AYithin the port, or gate, called the Netherbow, I discharged my pockets of all the money I had : and as I came penniless within the walls of that city at my first coming thither, so now, at my departing from thence, I camo moneyless out of it again.' But he soon found a worthy man ready to help him in his straits: 'Master James Acmootye, coming for England, said, that if I would ride with him, that neither I nor my horse should want betwixt that place and London.' If we take Taylor as our guide, we may see how Shakspere journeyed with his fellows, upon the great high road between Edinburgh and the city of their own Blaokfrian. On the first day they would ride to Dunbar ; on the second day they would reach Berwick. They might lodge at an inn, but the exuberance of the ancient Scotch hospitality would probably afford them all welcome in the stronghold of some wealthy laird. Taylor thus describes the hospital ity ENGLISH POETS IX SCOTLAND. 171 of lils hosts at Coberspath [Cockburnspath], between Dunbar and Berwick : ' Suppose ten, fifteen, or twenty men and horses came to lodge at their house, the men shall have flesh, tame and wild fowl, fish, with all variety of good cheer, good lodging, and welcome ; and the horses shall want neither hay nor provender : and at the morning at their departure the reckoning is just nothing. This is this worthy gentleman's use, his chief delight being only to give strangers entertainment gratis.' His description of the hospitality ' in Scotland beyond Edinburgh ' is more remarkable : * I have been at houses like castles for build- ing ; the master of the house his beaver being his blue bonnet, one that will wear no other shirts but of the flax that grows on his own ground, and of his wife's, daughters', or servants' spinning; that hath his stockings, hose, and jerkin of the wool of his own sheep's backs ; that never (by his pride of apparel) caused mercer, draper, silk-man, embroiderer, or haberdasher to break and turn bankrupt : and yet this plain homespun fellow keeps and maintains thirty, forty, fifty servants, or perhaps more, every day relieving three or four score poor people at his gate ; and, besides all this, can give noble entertainment, for four or five days together, to five or six Earls and Lords, besides Knights, Gentlemen, and their followers, if they be three or four hundred men and horse of them, where they shall not only feed but feast, and not feast but banquet ; this is a man that desires to know nothing so much as his duty to God and his King, whose greatest cares are to practise the works of piety, charity, and hospitality : he never studies the consuming art of fashionless fashions, he never tries his strength to bear four or five hundred acres on his back at once; his legs are always at liberty — not being fettered with golden garters, and manacled with artificial roses, whose weight (sometime) is the relics of some decayed lordship. Many of these worthy housekeepers there are in Scotland : amongst some of them I was entertained ; from whence I did truly gather these aforesaid observations.' The AVater-Poet passes through Berwick without a word. 172 OXCE UPON A TIME. The poet of Henry IV. would associate it with vivid re- collections of his own Hotspur : ' He had byn a march-man all hys dayes, And kepte Barwyke-upon-Twede. 1 * He was now in the land of old heroic memories, which had reached the ear of his boyhood in his own peaceful Stratford, through the voice of the wandering harper; and which Froissart had recorded in a narrative as spirited as the fancies of ' the old song of Percy and Douglas.' The dark- blue Cheviots lifted their summits around him, and beneath them were the plains which the Douglas wasted, who ' Boldely bvente Northomberlande, And haryed many a towyn.' He was in the land which had so often been the battle-field of Scotch and English in the chivalrous days, when war appeared to be carried on as much for sport as for policy, and a fight and a hunting were associated in the same song. The great battle of Otterbourne, in 1388, 'was as valiantly foughten as could be devised,' says Froissart, ' for Englishmen on the one party, and Scots on the other party, are good men of war : for when they meet there is a hard fight without sparring; there is no love between them as long as spears, axes, or daggers will endure, but lay on each upon other ; and when they be well beaten, and that the one part hath obtained the victory, they then glorify so in their deeds of arms and are so joyful, that such as be taken they shall be ransomed or they go out of the field, so that shortly each of them is so content with other, that at their departing courteously they will say, God thank you ; but in fighting one with another there is no play nor sparring.' The spirit that moved the Percy and Douglas at Otterbourne animated the Percy and another Douglas at Holmedon in 1402. ' On Holy-rood day, the gallanl Hotspur there, Young Harry Percy, and brave Archibald, * The Battle of Otterbourne. ENGLISH POETS IN SCOTLAND. 173 That ever valiant and approved Scot, At Holmedon met, Where they did spend a sad and bloody hour.'* The scene of this conflict was not many miles from Berwick. A knowledge of these localities was not necessary for Shakspere to produce his magnificent creation of Hotspur. But in a journey through Northumberland the recollections of Hotspur would be all around him. At Alnwick, he would ride by the gate which Hotspur built, and look upon the castle in which the Percies dwelt. Two centuries had passed since Hotspur fell at Shrewsbury ; but his memory lived in the ballads of his land, and the dramatic poet had bestowed upon it a more lasting glory. The play of Henry IV. was written before the union of England and Scotland under one crown, and when the two countries had constant feuds which might easily have broken out into actual war. But Shakspere, at the very time when the angry passions of England were excited by the Raid of Carlisle, thus made his favourite hero teach the English to think honourably of their gallant neighbours : 1 P. Henry. The noble Scot, Lord Douglas, when he saw The fortune of the day quite turn'd from him, The noble Percy slain, and all his men Upon the foot of fear, fled with the rest ; And, falling from a hill, he was so bruis'd That the pursuers took him. At my tent The Douglas is ; and I beseech your grace I may dispose of him. K. Henry. With all my heart, P. Henry. Then, brother John of Lancaster, to you This honourable bounty shall belong : Go to the Douglas, and deliver him Up to his pleasure, ransomless, and free : His valour, shown upon our crests to-day, Hath taught us how to cherish such high deeds, Even in the bosom of our adversaries.'! * Henry IV., Part I. Act i. Scene 1. f Ibid., Act v. Scene 5. 174 OXCE UPON A TIME. John Taylor contrived to be eighteen days on the road riding from Edinburgh to London : he was fifteen days in his progress from Berwick to Islington. Lawrence Fletcher and his fellows would make greater speed, and linger not so recklessly over the good cheer of the inns and mansions that opened their gates to them. ' The way from Berwick to York and so to London ' is laid down very precisely in Harrison's ■ Description of England ;' and the several stages present a total of 260 miles. The route thus given makes a circuit of several miles at Tadcaster ; and yet it is 82 miles shorter than the present distance from Berwick to London. Taylor says, ' The Scots do allow almost as large measure of their miles as they do of their drink.' So it would appear they did also in England in the days of Shakspere. ROBERT BURTON'S POETICAL COMMONWEALTH. 175 ROBERT BURTON'S POETICAL COMMONWEALTH. Tin: only book that took Samuel Johnson out of his bed two hours before he wished to rise, will scarcely do for a busy man to touch before breakfast. There is no leaving it, except by an effort. I have just taken it up to look for a quotation, as many better scholars than myserf have done, and I cannot be satisfied to read on — with ' The Times ' of the da}', borrowed for an hour, lying unread — but I must needs write a paper suggested by this same treasured ' Anatomy of Melancholy.' I might do worse. In the Introduction, • Democritus to the Eeader,' I am forcibly struck with the mode in which a student of Christchurch deals with many of the great social questions that are still under discussion after the lapse of two centuries and a quarter. How he satirizes, and how he would reform. Statesmen might have learned something from this 'severe student, devourer of authors, melancholy and humourous,'* Robert Burton, — as statesmen do contrive, unwilling as they may be, to pick up something of the great general wisdom of humanity from scholars and poets, — if they had looked into a few pages of this ■ Introduction,' and not stopped too readily at this sentence : — ' Boccalinus may cite Commonwealths to come before Apollo, and seek to reform the world itself by Commissioners ; but there is no remedy.' The governors and the governed are opening their eyes ; so some may perhaps hear what ' Democritus Junior ' has to say when he proposes an imaginary con- dition of improvement : — ' T will, to satisfy and please myself, make an Utopia of my own, a new Atlantis, a * Anthony b, Wood. 176 ONCE UPON A TIME. poetical Commonwealth of my own, in which I will freely domineer, build cities, make laws, statutes, as I list myself.' What sort of cities would he build ? He would have them, for the most part, situate ' upon navigable rivers or lakes, creeks or havens.' That is, he would have them situate where there are facilities for communication. How im- perfectly the use of a river as a cheap highway was known in the days when canals and railroads were not, may be seen in a curious tract of our old friend John Taylor.* He tells the people of Salisbury that their city is so much over- charged with poor, as having in three parishes near three thousand ; that their river is not navigable to Christchurch ; that it might be made as passable as the Thames from Brentford to Windsor ; and that by means of such naviga- tion the loiterers might be turned into labourers, and penury into plenty. Burton, writing exactly at the same time, bitterly attacks the ignorance and neglect out of which comes poverty : — ' Amongst our towns, there is only one, London, that bears the face of a city, Epitome Britannia; , a famous Emporium, second to none beyond seas, a noble mart; and yet in my slender judgment defective in many things. The rest, some few excepted (York, Bristow, Norwich, Worcester), are in mean estate, ruinous most part, poor and full of beggars, by reason of their decayed trades, neglected and bad policy, idleness of their inhabitants, riot, which had rather beg or loiter, and be ready to starve, than work.' And so Democritus would build other cities, and encourage other sorts of people. ' I will have fair and broad streets.' How long did we persevere in making our streets ugly and narrow ! ' I will have convenient churches.' Good. ,' I will have convenient churches, and separate places to bury the dead in ; not churchyards.' And so an Oxford scholar, in the year 1621, is telling the people of England what her rulers only found out in the middle of the nine- teenth century, and have at last given us a ' Burial Act.' lie would have, too, 'opportune market-places of all sorts, * A IMmmv.i-v i:y Sea from London to Sahabuiy, 1023. ROBERT BURTON S POETICAL COMMONWEALTH. 177 for corn, meat, cattle. 5 Was Sniithfield, the garden of delight for civic wisdom, ' opportune' — locally convenient? He would send ' trades, noisome or fulsome for bad smells, such as butchers' slaughter-houses, chandlers, curriers, to remote places.' In the city of London, in our time, the slaughter-houses and the book- warehouses were in pleasant allocation. He would have ' commodious Courts of Justice.' He was not thinking of such Courts as Sir John Soane's at Westminster. He would have ' public walks, and spacious fields allotted for all gymnics, sports, and honest recreations.' Parks for the people are an invention of the last twenty years. ' I will have conduits of sweet and good water, aptly disposed in each town.' London has hardly ceased to be poisoned by the filth of Water-companies. 'I will have colleges of mathematicians, musicians and actors, physicians, artists, and philosophers, that all arts and sciences may sooner be perfected and better learned.' What has any English Government done for ails and sciences from that hour to this ? ' I will provide public schools of all kinds, singing, dancing, fencing, and especially of grammar and languages, not to be taught by those tedious precepts ordi- narily used, but by use, example, conversation.' Compared with our population, are we doing much more in the way of Public Schools of all kinds than in the days of Edward VI., when a few grammar-schools were wrung out of the spoils of the Reformation? In the Registrar-General's Report of Marriages, in 1851, it is shown that one man in three, and one woman in two, could not write. Of propeily in land Burton has something to say. He would regulate • what for lords, what for tenants. And because they (the tenants) shall be better encouraged to improve such lands they hold — manure, plant trees, drain, fence — they shall have long leases, a known rent, and known fine, to free them from those intolerable exactions of tyrannyzing landlords.' Are these the rules of landlord and tenant at this day ? But Democritus is no hater of the great — no leveller. ' Plato's community in many things is impious, absurd, and ridiculous; it takes away' N 178 ONCE UPON A TIME. all splendour and magnificence. I will have several orders, degrees of nobility, and those hereditary. But as some dignities shall be hereditary, so some again by elec- tion or by gift, besides free offices, pensions, annuities, which, like the golden apple, shall be given to the worthiest and best deserving, both in war and peace.' Let any man who is not a younger son of a* patrician house — not the relative of one who keeps the Canvassing Book of a cor- ruptible Borough — let any one who has simply done the State service in a way the State never recognises, the im- provement of his age — let him ask for the smallest paring of the golden apple, and see what answer he will get from the Secretary of the Treasury, who has only six letters for the code of his office — b a r t e r. 1 My form of government shall be monarchical. Few laws, but those severely kept, plainly put down, and in the mother tongue, that every man may understand.' Legisla- tion has been hard at work, for two centuries, in multiply- ing statutes that could not be administered, and heaping up enactments that could not be understood. It has been doing a little, too, with Commerce and Taxation, in a way that the plain-thinking John Burton does not recommend : 1 Of such wares as are transported or brought in, if they be necessary, commodious, and such as nearly concern man's life, as corn, wood, coal, and such provision as we cannot want, I will have little or no custom paid, no taxes.' England's corn and meat taxes expired only in the last Parliament ; and London's coal taxes yet oppress three or four millions, that there may be high festival amongst those who, of all men and all bodies of men, are ' fruges con- sumere.nati.' Democritus would regulate the Church, too. 4 No impropriations, no lay patrons of church livings, or one private man ; but common societies, corporations, &c, and those rectors of benefices to be chosen out of the I'ni- versities, examined and approved as the literati in China.' Look at ' The Clergy List,' for the current year. In some things, however, our author is unreasonable. Tie says, ■ If it were possible, I would have such priests as would imitate ROBERT BURTON S POETICAL COMMONWEALTH. 179 Christ.' He would have, too, ' charitable lawyers that should love their neighbours as themselves.' Neverthe- less, he does take a practical view or so of legal affairs. 1 Judges and other officers shall be aptly disposed in each province, villages, cities, as common arbitrators to hear causes, and end all controversies.' We have now County Courts; but how were controversies ended twenty years ago ? How are they ended now in the Court of the subtlest learning and the best paid wisdom — the High Court of Chancery — to which Burton could not allude when he held, * No controversy to depend above a year, but without all delays, and further appeals, to be speedily dispatched, and finally concluded in that time allotted?' Amongst the other paradoxes of Democritus he holds, ' First scholars to take place, then soldiers ; for I am of Vegetius his opinion, a scholar deserves better than a soldier, because " Unius oetatis sunt quoa fortiter fiunt, quae vero pro utilitate reipublicae scribuntur, seterna." ' * The honour-givers of our time know that all such assertions of the rights of literature come from literary men — partial judges of their own case. ' Cedant arma togae ' is a foolish maxim. Let the fighters get peerages and ribbons — always provided that they beware the pen. There cannot be a greater proof of the superiority of our age to such preju- dices as Burton propagated, when he put forth a claim to public reward for the man ' that invents anything for public good in any art or science, or writes a Treatise.' AVhat a singular notion has Burton of the recreations of the people ! * As all conditions shall be tied to their task, so none shall be over tired, but have their set times of re- creation and holidays — feasts and merry meetings, even to the meanest artificer, or basest servant, once a week to sing or dance, or do whatsoever he shall please. If any be drunk, he shall drink no more wine or strong drink in a twelvemonth after.' Our rule is, that the meanest artificer or basest servant may have a holiday ' once a week.' But * Those who fight bravely are for an age : those who Avrite for the good of the commonwealth, for all time. N 2 180 OXCE UPON A TIME. no recreations ; no communing with Heaven in the fields ; no going forth to look at mountains and lakes in cheap boats ; no familiarity with rare animals and plants in choice gardens; no gazing upon great works of art, in which God speaks as in any other creation, in noble galleries. Nothing but strong drink, in dirty hovels where no sober man comes — drink in abundance once a week, always provided real happiness is not sought after. ' I will have weights and measures the same throughout.' How long have we had this uniformity ? ' For defensive wars, I will have forces ready at a small warning, by land and sea.' The theory is questioned. ' I will have no multiplicity of offices, of supplying by deputies.' It is not centuries ago since ' the king's turnspit was a member of Parliament.' * It is not twenty years since the Six Clerks and the Sixty Clerks were abolished, with pensions enough to furnish endowments for the education of all the couples that in 1851 made their marks in the Parish Registers. The poetical Commonwealth of Democritus junior is based upon his previous estimate of the madness of his generation. We have given a few sentences of his about legal improvements. He is rabid about lawyers — ' gowned vultures,' as he calls them. But how truly he describes some evils that still exist amongst us, and which we still bear patiently ! ' Our forefathers, as a worthy Cho- rographer of ours observes,! had wont, with a few golden crosses, and lines in verse, make all conveyances, as- surances. And such was the candour and integrity of succeeding ages, that a deed, as I have oft seen, to convey a whole manor, was implicite contained in some twenty lines, or thereabouts. But now many skins of parchment must scarce serve turn. He that buys and sells a house must have a house full of writings.' And then come 1 contention and confusion ;' and men go to law ; and ' I know not how many years before the cause is heard, and * Burke's speech on Economical Reiurin. t Camden, 181 when 'tis judged and determined, by reason of some tricks and errors it is as fresh to begin, after twice seven years, sometimes, as it was at first.' AY ho shall say that this is obsolete ? He is not very tolerant, either, towards his own pro- fession. ' So many professed Christians, yet so few imi- tators of Christ — so many preachers, so little practice ; such variety of sects, such have and hold of all sides — such absurd and ridiculous traditions and ceremonies. * * * On the adverse side, nice and curious schismatics, in another extreme, abhorring all ceremonies.' Others, ' Formalists, out of fear and base flattery, like so many weathercocks turn round, a rout of temporisers, ready to embrace and maintain all that is or shall be proposed, in hope of preferment.' He is no flatterer, either, of those who sit in high places : * A poor sheep-stealer is hanged for stealing of victuals, compelled peradventure by necessity of that intolerable cold, hunger, and thirst, to save himself from starving : but a great man in office may securely rob whole provinces, undo thousands, pill and poll, oppress ad libitum, flea, grind, tyrannise, enrich himself by spoils of the Commons, be un- controllable in his actions, and, after all, be recompensed with turgent titles, honoured for his good service, and no man dare find fault or mutter at it.' The philosophers and scholars — * men above men, minions of the Muses ' — fare little better. ■ They that teach wisdom, patience, meekness, are the veriest dizzards, hairbrains, and most discontent.' * A good orator is a mere voice ; his tongue is set to sale.' ' Poets are mad ; a company of bitter satirists, detractors, or else parasitical applauders.' ' Your supercilious critics, grammatical triflers, note-makers, curious antiquaries, find out all the ruins of wit, ineptiarum ddicias, amongst the rubbish of old writers; make books dear, themselves ridiculous, and do nobody good ; yet if any man dare oppose or contradict, they are mad, up in arms on a sudden — how many sheets are written in defence, how bitter invectives, what apologies !' I could almost 182 ONCE UPON A TIME. fancy the old satirist was pointing at Skakspere com- mentators. Burton lived before newspapers, and yet he had a very competent knowledge of what was going pn in the world. I will conclude with a curious passage, which might, with few exceptions, have been written by one of our age of electric telegraphs : ' Though I still live a collegiate stu- dent, as Democritus in his garden, and lead a monastic life, secluded from those tumults and troubles of the world, in some high place above you all, as he said, — I hear and see what is done abroad, — how others run, ride, turmoil, and macerate themselves in court and country, — a mere spec- tator of other men's fortunes and adventures, and how they act their parts, which methinks are diversely presented to me, as from a common theatre or scene. I hear new news every day, and those ordinary rumours of war, plagues, fires, inundations, thefts, murders, massacres, meteors, comets, spectrums, prodigies, apparitions; — of towns taken, cities besieged, daily musters and preparations, and such like, which these tempestuous times afford : battles fought, so many slain, monomachies, shipwrecks, piracies and sea- fights, peace, leagues, stratagems, and fresh alarums. A vast confusion of vows, wishes, actions, edicts, petitions, law-suits, pleas, laws, proclamations, complaints, grievances, are daily brought to our ears. New books every day, pamphlets, currantoes, stories, whole catalogues of volumes of all sorts, new paradoxes, opinions, schisms, heresies, controversies in philosophy, religion, &c. Now come tidings of weddings, maskings, mummeries, entertain- ments, jubilees, embassies, tilts and tournaments, trophies, triumphs, revels, sports, plays. Then again, as in a new shifted scene, treasons, cheating tricks, robberies, enormous villainies in all kinds, funerals, burials, death of princes, new discoveries, expeditions ; now comical, then tragical matters. To-day we hear of new lords and offices created, to-morrow of some great men deposed, and then again of fresh honours conferred ; one is let loose, another im- prisoned ; one purchaseth, another breaketh ; he thrives, ROBERT BURTON'S POETICAL COMMONWEALTH. 183 his neighbour turns bankrupt; now plenty, then again dearth and famine ; one runs, another rides, wrangles, laughs, weeps, &c. Thus I daily hear, and such like, both private and public news, amidst the gallantry and misery of the world ; jollity, pride, perplexities and cares, sim- plicity and villainy, subtlety, knavery, candour, and in- tegrity, mutually mixed and offering themselves.' Who, at first sight, would imagine that this was written — Once upon a Time — in the seventeenth century ? ' The world pursues the very track Which it pursued at its creatiou ; And mortals shrink in horror back From any hint of innovation : From year to year the children do Exactly what their lira hare done; Time ii ! Time wa> ! there '■ nothing new. There 's nothing new- beneath the sun.' * * ^V. M. Praed: Brazen Head. 184 ONCE UPON A TIME. MILTON, THE LONDONER The best successor of Milton has described the character of the great poet's mind in one celebrated line :— * Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart.' It might at first seem, looking at the accuracy of this forcible image, that the name of Milton could not be properly associated with the state of society during the times in which he flourished. It is true that in the writings of Milton we have very few glimpses of the familiar life of his day ; no set descriptions of scenes and characters ; nothing that approaches in the slightest degree to the nature of anecdote; no playfulness, no humour. Words- tar) >rth continues his apostrophe : — •Thou liail-t a vnicc whose BOtlltd was Like tin- MILTON, THE LONDONER. 185 The sprightlier dramatists have the voices of ' Shallow nvers, by whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals.' It is pleasant to sit in the sunshine and listen to the bub- bling of the runnel over its pebbly bottom : but the times of Milton were for the most part dark and stormy, and with them the voice of the sea was in harmony. We can leam, while listening to that voice, when there was calm and when there was tempest. But Milton was not only the great literary name of his period — he was a public man, living in the heart of the mightiest struggle betwixt two adverse principles that England ever encountered. Add to this he was essentially a Londoner. lie was born in Bread Street; he died in Cripplegate. During a long life we may trace him, from St. Paul's School, through a succession of London residences which, taking their names with their ordinary associations, sound as little poetical as can well be imagined* — St. Bride's Churchyard, Aldersgate Street, Barbican, Ilolborn, Petty France, Bartholomew Close, Jewin Street, Bunhill Fields. The houses which he in- habited have been swept away ; their pleasant gardens are built over. But the name of Milton is inseparably con- nected with these prosaic realities. That name belongs especially to London. The Milton of nineteen has himself left us a picture of his mind at this period. His first Latin elegy, addressed to Charles Deodati, is supposed by Warton to have been written about 1627. The writer was born in 1608. We shall tran- scribe a few passages from Cowper's translation of this ele°*y i — oJ < I we ll content, where Thames with influent tide My native city laves, meantime reside : Nor zeal nor duty now my steps impel To reedy Cam, and my forbidden cell ; Nor aught of pleasure in those fields have I, That, to the musing bard, all shade deny. T is time that I a pedant's threats disdain, And fly from wrongs my soul will ne'er sustain. If peaceful days in letter'd leisure spent, Beneath my father's roof, be banishment, 186 ONCE UPON A TIME. Then call me banish'd ; I will ne'er refuse A name expressive of the lot I choose. .1 would that, exiled to the Pontic shore, Home's hapless bard had suffered nothing more ; He then had equall'd even Homer's lays, And, Virgil ! thou hadst won but second praise. For here I woo the Muse, with no control ; For here my books — my life — absorb me whole.' His father's roof was in Bread Street, in the parish of All- hallows. The sign of the Spread Eagle, which hung over his father's door, was the armorial bearing of his family ; but the sign indicated that the house was one of business, and the business of Milton's father was that of a scrivener. Here, in some retired back room, looking most probably into a pleasant little garden, was the youthful poet sur- rounded by his books, perfectly indifferent to the more profitable writing of bonds and agreements that was going forward in his father's office. It was Milton's happiness to possess a father who understood the genius of his son, and whose tastes were in unison with his own. In the young poet's beautiful verses, Ad Patrem, also translated by Cowper, he says. — ' thou never bad'st me tread The beaten path, and broad, that leads right on To opulence, nor didst condemn thy son To the insipid clamours of the bar, The laws voluminous, and ill observ'd.' Of Milton's father, Aubrey says, ' He was an ingenious man, delighted in music, and composed many songs now in print, especially that of Oriana.' The poet thus addresses his father in reference to the same accomplishment : — thyself Art skilful to associate verse with airs Harmonious, and to give the human voice A thousand modulations, heir by right Indisputable of Arion's fame. Now say, what wonder is it, if a son Of thine delight in verse ; if, so conjoin'd In close affinity, we sympathise In social arts and kindred studies sweet ?' MILTON, THE LONDONER. 187 There was poetry then, and poetical associations, within Milton's home in the close city. Nor were poetical influ- ences wanting without. The early writings of Milton teem with the romantic associations of his youth, and they have the character of the age sensibly impressed upon them. In the epistle to Deodati we have an ample description of that love of the drama, whether comedy or tragedy, which he subsequently connected with the pursuits of his mirthful and his contemplative man. To the student of nineteen, * The grave or gay colloquial scene recruit-; My spirits ipaaj in learning's long pursuits.' 1 1 is descriptions of the comic characters in which he delights appear rather to be drawn from Terence than from Jonson or Fletcher. But in tragedy he pretty clearly points at Shakspere'a ■ Romeo • and at • Hamlet.' ■ L'Allegro ' and ' II Penseroso ' were probably written some four or five years after this epistle, when Milton's father had retired to Horton, and his son's visits to London were occasional. But ' the well-trod stage ' is still present to his thoughts. There is a remarkable peculiarity in all Milton's early poetry which is an example of the impressibility of his imagination under local circumstances. He is the poet, at one and the same time, of the city and of the country. In the epistle to Deodati he displays this mixed affection for the poetical of art and of nature : — ' Nor always city-pent, or pent at home, 1 dwell; but, when spring calls me forth to roam, Expatiate in our proud suburban shades Of branching elm, that never sun pervades.' But London is thus addressed : — ' Oh city, founded by Dardanian hands, Whose towering front the circling realms commands, Too blest abode ! no loveliness we see In all the earth, but it abounds in thee.' Every reader is familiar with the exquisite rural pictures of ' L'Allegro ;' but the scenery, without the slightest 188 OXCE UPON A TIME. difficulty, may be placed in the immediate 'suburban shades ' which he has described in the epistle. It is scarcely necessary to remove them even as far as the valley of the Colne. The transition is immediate from the hedge-row elms, the russet lawns, the upland hamlets, and the nut-brown ale, to ' Tower'd cities please us then, And the busy hum of men, Where throngs of knights and barons bold In weeds of peace high triumphs hold, With store of ladies, whose bright eyes Rain influence, and judge the prize Of wit, or arms, while both contend To win her grace, whom all commend. There let Hymen oft appear In saffron robe, with taper clear, And pomp and feast and revelry, With mask and antique pageantry, — Such sights as youthful poets dream , On summer-eves by haunted stream. Then to the well-trod stage anon,' &c. So, in ' II Penseroso,' there is a similar transition from the evensong of the nightingale, and the sullen roar of the far- off curfew, to ' The bellman's drowsy charm To bless the doors from nightly harm.' And there, in like manner, we turn from Arched walks of twilight groves And shadows brown,' to 1 the high embowed roof With antic pillars massy proof, And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light.' ' Xo man,' says Thomas Warton, ■ was ever so disqualified to turn Puritan as Milton/ In these his early poems, ac- cording to this elegant critic, his expressed love of choral church music, of Gothic cloisters, of the painted windows MILTON, THE LONDONER. 189 and vaulted aisles of a venerable cathedral, of tilts and tournaments, of masques and pageantries, is wholly re- pugnant to the anti-poetical principles which he afterwards adopted. We doubt exceedingly whether Milton can be held to have turned Puritan to the extent in which Warton accepts the term. Milton was a republican in politics, and an asserter of liberty of conscience, independent of Church government, in religion. But the constitution of his mind was utterly opposed to the reception of such ex- treme notions of formal fitness as determined the character of a Puritan. There has been something of exaggeration and mistake in this matter. For example: Warton, in a note on that passage in the epistle to Deodati in which Milton is supposed to allude to Shakspere's tragedies, says, ' His warmest poetical predilections were at last totally obliterated by civil and religious enthusiasm. Seduced by the gentle eloquence of fanaticism, he listened no longer to the " wild and native wood-notes of Fancy's sweetest child." In his " Iconoclastes " he censures King Charles for study- ing " one, whom we well know was the closet-companion of his solitudes, William Shakspeare." This remonstrance, which not only resulted from his abhorrence of a king, but from his disapprobation of plays, would have come with propriety from Prynne or Hugh Peters. Nor did he now perceive that what was here spoken in contempt conferred the highest compliment on the elegance of Charles's private character.' Mr. Waldron had the merit of pointing out, some fifty years ago, that the passage in the ' Iconoclastes ' to which Warton alludes gives not the slightest evidence of Milton's listening no longer to ' Fancy's sweetest child/ nor of reproaching Charles for having made Shakspere the 1 closet-companion of his solitudes.' Milton is arguing — with the want of charity certainly which belongs to an advocate — that ' the deepest policy of a tyrant hath been ever to counterfeit religious;' and, applying this to the devotion of the ' Icon Basilike,' he thus proceeds : — ' The poets also, and some English, have been in this point so mindful of decorum as to put never more pious words in 190 ONCE UPON A TIME. the mouth of any person than of a tyrant. I shall not instance an abstruse author, wherein the King may be less conversant, but one whom we well know was the closet- companion of his solitudes, William Shakespeare, who intro- duces the person of Richard III. speaking in as high a strain of piety and mortification as is uttered in any passage in this book ' (the ' Icon Basilike '). He then quotes a speech of Shakspere's Richard III., and adds, ' The poet used not much licence in departing from the truth of history.' If Milton had meant to reproach Charles with being familiar with Shakspere, the reproach would have recoiled upon himself, in evidencing the same familiarity. There was, in truth, scarcely a greater disparity between the clustering locks of Milton and the cropped hair of the Roundheads, than between his abiding love of poetry and music and the frantic denunciations of both by such as Prynne. Prynne, for example, devotes a whole chapter of the ' Histrio- mastix ' to a declamation against ' effeminate, delicate, lust-provoking music,' in which the mildest thing he quotes from the Fathers is, • Let the singer be thrust out of thy house as noxious ; expel out of thy doors all fiddlers, sing- ing-women, with all this choir of the devil, as the deadly songs of syrens.' Compare this with Milton's sonnet, pub- lished in 1648, 'To my Friend, Mr. Henry Lawes,' — the royalist Henry Lawes :, — ' Harry, whose tuneful and well-measur\l Bong First taught our English music how to span Words with just note and accent, not to scan With Midas' ears, committing short and Ion--; Thy worth and skill exempt thee from the throng, With praise enough for envy to look wan ; To after age thou shalt be writ the man Thai with smooth air couldst humour best our tongue.' Doubtless since * Comus ' was presented at Ludlow Castle in 1634, and Lawes composed and sung some of its lyrics, up to the period when Milton wrote the ■ Icono- clastes,' the elegancies, the splendours, the high triumphs, the antique pageantries, which so captivated the youthful MILTON, THE LONDONER. 191 poet, had given place to sterner things. In his own mind, especially, that process of deep reflection was going forward which finally made him a zealous partisan and a bitter controversialist; but which was blended with purer and loftier aspirations than usually belong to politics or polemics. But his was an age of deep thinkers and resolute actors. The leaders and the followers then of either party were sincere in their thoughts and earnest in their deeds. They were not a compromis- ing and evasive generation. There was no mistaking their friendships or their enmities. Milton early chose his part in the great contention of his times. Amidst the classical imagery of Lycidas we have his bitter denunciations against the hirelings of the Church, who — ' Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold.' He would not enter the service of that Church himself lest he should be called upon to ' subscribe slave.' To that vocation, however, he says, ' I was destined of a child and in mine own resolutions.' That he was impatient of what he considered the ty- 192 OXCE UPOX A TIME. ranny which interfered between a service so suited to his character was to be expected from the ardour of his nature ; but we can scarcely think that in those lines of Lycidas, written in 1637— ' But that two-handed engine at the door Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more ' — he anticipates, as some have maintained, the execution of Archbishop Laud. Matters were scarcely then come to that pass. But yet Laud in 1637 had some unpleasant de- monstrations of the temper of the times. In that year Bastwick, Burton, and Prynne were sentenced by the Star Chamber, ' That each of the defendants should be fined five thousand pounds ; that Bastwick and Burton should stand in the pillory at Westminster, and there lose their ears ; and that Prynne. having lost his ears before by sentence of this court, should have the remainder of his ears cut off, and should be branded on both cheeks with the letters S. L., to signify a seditious libeller.' The execution to the tittle of this barbarous sentence maddened and disgusted those who looked upon the spectacle. Laud's Diary, for two months after this revolting exhibition, contains some very significant entries, recording the libels which it pro- duced. A short libel pasted on the cross in Cheapside de- scribed him as the arch-wolf of Canterbury ; another, on the south gate of St. Paul's, informed the people that the devil had let that house to the Archbishop ; another, fastened to the north gate, averred that the government of the Church of England is a candle in the snuff going out in a stench. These were warnings ; but power is apt to look upon its own pomp, and forget that the day of humiliation and weak- ness may arise. Howell, in one of his letters written in the year of Laud's execution, says, 'Who would have dreamt ten years since, when Archbishop Laud did ride in state through London streets, accompanying my Lord of Lon- don, to be sworn Lord High Treasurer of England, that the mitre should have now come to such a scorn, to such a national kind of hatred?' In those eventful days such MILTON, THE LONDONER. 193 contrasts were not unfrequent ; and they sometimes followed each other much more closely than the triumphal procession of Laud, and his execution. On the 25th of November, 1641, the city of London welcomed Charles from Scotland with an entertainment of unusual magnificence ; and the historian of the city, after revelling in his description of aldermen and liverymen, to the number of five hundred, mounted on horseback, with all the array of velvet and scarlet and golden chains, — of conduits running with claret, — of banquetings and loyal anthems, says, ' The whole day seemed to be spent in a kind of emulation, with reverence be it spoken, between their Majesties and the City ; the citizens blessing and praying for their Majesties and their princely issue, and their Majesties returning the same bless- ings upon the heads of the citizens.' In 1042, not quite a year after these pleasant gratulations, Milton wrote the following noble sonnet : — 'WHEN THE ASSAULT WAS INTENDED TO THE CITY. ' Captain, or Colonel, or Knight in anus, Whose chance on these defenceless doors may seize, If deed of honour did thee ever please, Ouard them, and him within prated from harms. He can requite thee, for he knows the charms That call fame on such gentle acts as these. And he can spread thy name o'er lands and seas, Whatever clime the sun's bright circle warms. Lift not thy spear against the M uses' bow'r : The great Emathian conqueror bid span.' The house of Pindarus, when temple and tow'r Went to the ground : and the repeated air Of sad Electra's poet had the pow'r To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare.' On the 25th of August, 1642, the King erected his standard on Nottingham Castle. Essex, as Generalissimo of the Parliament forces, had already marched upon Xorthampton. The Kings army was advancing towards the capital ; and London, with its vast suburbs, required to be put in a state of defence. It was on this occasion that o 194 ONCE UPON T A TIME. the dogged resolution, the unflinching courage of the citizens of all ranks and all ages, manifested themselves in their willing labours to give London in some degree the character of a fortified city. The royalists ridiculed the citizens in their song of ' Roundheaded cuckolds, come dig.' The battle of Edgehill was fought on the 23rd of October ; and on the 7th of November Essex returned to London. While the Parliament was negotiating, the sound of Prince Rupert's cannon was heard in the immediate neighbourhood of the capital ; and the citizens marched out to battle. But the bloody contest of Edgehill was not to be renewed at Brentford and Turnham Green. The King's forces retired ; and the trained-bands refreshed themselves and made merry with the good things which their careful wives had not forgotten to send after them in this hour of danger and alarm. It was upon this occasion that the sonnet which we have just transcribed was written. We might infer from the tone of this sonnet that Milton had little confidence that the arms of the citizens would be a sufficient protection for his ' defenceless doors.' He was living then in Alders- gate Street ; in that sort of house which was common in Old London, and which Milton always chose — a garden- house. This house might unquestionably be called ' the Muses' bower ;' for here he was not only carrying on the education of his nephews and of the sons of a few intimate friends, but, as we learn from • The Reason of Church Government,' he was preparing for some high work which should be of power ' to inbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and public civility ; to allay the perturbation of the mind, and set the affections in right tune—* * * * a work not to be raised from the heat of youth or the vapours of wine, like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amourist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite ; nor to be obtained by the invocation of dame Memory and her syren daughters ; but, by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar to touch and purify the lips of MILTON, THE LONDONER. 195 whom he pleases.' Cherishing high thoughts such as these, Milton called upon the assaulting soldier, ' Lift not thy spear against the Muses' bow'r.' Since his return from Italy, in 1639, his principles had been too openly proclaimed for him to appeal to ' Captain, or Colonel, or Knight in arms,' to spare the house of Milton the polemic. It was Milton the poet who left unwillingly ' a calm and pleasing solitari- ness, fed with cheerful and confident thoughts, to embark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes,' that thus asked that the Muses' bower should be protected, as the house of Pindar and the city of Euripides had been spared. But London was saved from the assault ; and a few months after the Common Council and the Parliament raised up much more formidable defences than invocations founded upon classical lore. All the passages and ways leading to the city were shut up, except those entering at Charing Cross, St. Giles's in the Fields, St. John Street, Shoreditch, and \Vhitechapel. The ends of these streets were fortified with breastworks and turnpikes, musket proof; the city wall was repaired and mounted with artillery ; finally an earthen rampart, with bastions, and redoubts, and all the other systematic defences of a beleaguered city, was carried entirely round London, Westminster, and Southwark. In 1643 Milton married. Aubrey's account of this marriage and the subsequent separation is given with his characteristic quaintness : — ' His first wife (Mrs. Powell, a Royalist) was brought up and lived where there was a great deal of company and merriment, dancing, &c. : and when she came to live with her husband at Mr. Eussel's, in St. Bride's Churchyard, she found it very solitary ; no company came to her, oftentimes heard his nephews beaten and cry. This life was irksome to her, so she went to her parents at Forest Hill. He sent for her (after some time), and I think his servant was evilly entreated ; but as for wronging his bed, I never heard the least suspicion, nor 196 ONCE UPOX A TIME. had he of that jealousy.' In another place he says, • She was a zealous Royalist, and went without her husband's consent to her mother in the King's quarters near Oxford : two opinions do not well on the same bolster.' Philips, Milton's relation, gives pretty much the same account of the matter. That such cases were not uncommon in an age distracted by controversial opinions in religion and politics may readily be imagined. The general argument of Milton's elaborate treatises on divorce is, that disagree- ments in temper and disposition, which tend to produce in- difference or dislike, are sufficient to set aside the bond of marriage. The company and merriment, dancing, &c, in the midst of which Milton's wife was brought up, were in- consistent with his notions of pleasure and propriety. Aubrey tells us, ' he was of a very cheerful humour. He would be cheerful even in his gout-fits, and sing.' In his sonnet to Lawrence, written most probably when he was fifty, the same cheerfulness prevails : — ' What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise To hear the lute well touch'd, or artful voice Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air?' Again, in his sonnet to Cyriack Skinner : 1 To-day deep thoughts resolve with me to drench In mirth, that after no repenting draws.' He adds, mild Heaven ' disapprove! that care, though wise in show, That with superfluous burden loads the day, And when God sends a cheerful hour refrains.' This was not Puritanism ; but neither was it the tumul- tuous merriment nor the secret licentiousness of the Cava- liers. The example of Milton may instruct us that the society of London was not to be wholly divided into these extreme classes. His plan of an academy, which Johnson calls impracticable, was founded, we have little doubt, upon a careful consideration of the desires and capacities of the MILTON, THE LONDONER. 197 intellectual class amongst whom he lived. There were other Englishmen in those days than fanatics and repro- bates. He has eloquently described, in 'The Liberty of unlicen»ed Printing,' the thirst for knowledge, the ardent desire for truth, which prevailed in London even amidst the disorders of contending factions, the din of warfare, and the going forth of its sons and husbands to battle in a great cause : — ' Behold now this vast city, a city of refuge, the mansion-house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with his (God's) protections. The shop of war hath not there more anvils and hammers waking to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed justice in defence of be- leaguered truth, than there be pens and heads there sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching reformation : others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and conviucement. What could a man require more from a nation go pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge ?' Yet in the same wonderful composition he tells us plainly enough, and without any severity of rebuke, that London had its recreations and its lighter thoughts, amidst this ' diligent alacrity in the pursuance of truth ;' and that there were temptations which were only innocuous upon his principle, that ' he that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true warfaring Christian.' The following graphic description of some of the social aspects of London is a remarkable exception to Milton's usual style of writing ; and it almost tempts us to withdraw the remarks with which we introduced this paper, in which we spoke too slightingly of Milton's power as a painter of manners: — 'If we think to regulate printing, thereby to rectify manners, we must regulate all recreations and pastimes, all that is delightful to man. No music must be heard, no song be set or sung, but what is grave and Doric. There must be licensing dancers, that no gesture, motion, 198 ONCE UPON A TIME. or deportment be taught our youth, but what by their allowance shall be thought honest ; for such Plato was provided of. It will ask more than the work of twenty licensers to examine all the lutes, the violins, and the guitars in every house ; they must not be suffered to prattle as they do, but must be licensed what to say. And who shall silence all the airs and madrigals that whisper soft- ness in chambers ? The windows also, and balconies, must be thought on ; there are shrewd books, with dangerous frontispieces, set to sale; who shall prohibit them? — shall twenty licensers? The villages also must have their visitors, to inquire what lectures the bagpipe and the rebeck reads, even to the ballatry and the gammut of every muni- cipal fiddler ; for these are the countryman's Arcadias, and his Monte Mayors. Next, what more national corruption, for which England hears ill abroad, than household gluttony? who shall be the rector of our daily rioting ? and what shall be done to inhibit the multitudes that frequent those houses where drunkenness is sold and harboured ? Our garments also should be referred to the licensing of some sober work- masters, to see them cut into a less wanton garb. AYho shall regulate all the mixed conversation of our youth, male and female together, as is the fashion of this country ? Who shall still appoint what shall be discoursed, what presumed, and no farther? Lastly, who shall forbid and separate all idle resort, all evil company ? These things will be, and must be ; but how they shall be least hurtful, how least enticeing, herein consists the grave and govern- ing wisdom of a state. To sequester out of the world into Atlantis and Utopian politics, which never can be drawn into use, will not mend our condition ; but to ordain wisely as in this world of evil, in the midst whereof God hath placed us unavoidably.' Milton's reconciliation with his wife took place, it is recorded, in the house of a relation in St. Martin's-lo ( J rand. Committed as he was by his opinions on the general subject of divorce, he perhaps considered it fortunate that circum- stances had prevented him acting upon them, He probably, MILTON, THE LONDONER. 199 had this trial been reserved to him, would have been an evidence of the hollowness of his own arguments. As it was, we hear no subsequent complaints ; and his house afforded his wife's family a shelter when the advocates of the Koyalist cause were exposed to persecution. It was in Barbican that Milton lived after his wife returned to him. May I be pardoned for inserting a little poem which belongs to this domestic history : — ELLEN AND MARY. The street-door is ajar, and Ellen enters. She pauses in the empty hall, for sounds Come, from the right, of music — soft, low sounds Of one preluding on the organ, rapt Into an ecstacy at his own touch. She pauses still ; for, on the left, she hoars A querulous voice, and then a long-drawn sigh : She opens the left-hand door — Mary sits weeping. * Yes, Ellen, I am wretched — I, the bride Two little months agone, am very wretched. I am a lonely woman : in the morning He drudges with his boys ; then comes the dinner — A short, sad meal ; and then — hear you that organ ? — I hate those notes he calls " a winding bout Of linked sweetness." Then, at eventide, He reads aloud some dismal tragedy, Or puritanic sermon. I'm weary on't.' 1 Mary, 1 grieve for you ; but not because Of what you think your loneliness. Believe me, There 's something heavier than a weary hour — Heavier to bear in this new life of yours. Forgive me, if I say the fault is one That oft besets our sex — we seek delights When man asks only sympathy. Knew you not What manner of mind was his ? — what earnestness ? Deep contemplation — proud and resolute will — A poet's tenderness, but yet withal The heroic heart, to do and suffer all things For duty ? Mary, you must mould your spirit To his more lofty nature. Did he win you By common blandishments — by bows and smiles ? — Talk'd he as Charles's cavaliers would talk, When they danc'd at Forest-hill ?' 200 OXCE UPON A TIME. ' I thought him beautiful — I knew him wise ; he held my soul subdued To his most absolute power. I loved and trembled — And yet I loved. I was a giddy girl, Brought up in country pleasures. My heart yearns For the old revelries. And, then, I dread To listen to his talk, of kings discrown'd For their misdoings, and of mitred bishops Thrust from the altar. He is very stern. Would I had never left my father's house !' 1 Your father's house was a strange house for him To find a wife in — so short a couitship, too ! But now your Husband's party must be yours, And not your father's. 'T is an evil time — Friend against friend, and brother against brother.' 1 My brothers are with the king ; they draw the swords Of loyal subjects. My Husband does not fight, Save with the pen ; but he writes bitter words — Foul, rebel words, they say. I cannot read them : I will not listen when he eagerly paces The garden up and clown, declaiming loud His eloquent sentences, of Liberty, And private Judgment — and I know not what. Would I had never left my father's house !' A year has gone since Mary was a bride. She sits at her father's hearth. The autumn flowers Have perish'd at Forest-hill, and now the earliest Are blooming there. Mary has gather'd both — Fled from her Husband. A false cheerfulness flickers about her face ; there is no radiance Of inward peace now beaming from her eyes. Ofttimes is gaiety within that house : Lovelocks are floating in the midnight dance ; Cups are there drain'd, with tipsy shouts of joy At rumours of success, and throats of vengeance Pour'd forth with curses, as some news is heard Of rebel daring. The king's quarters are nigh, Some five miles off, at Oxford. Volunteers, And plumed ensigns, reckless, fiery spirits, Hover round Mary. There are sometimes sneers Whisper'd, not very low, at widowM wives ; And some would think that freedoms might l>e safe. But Mary keeps her innocence: the mind Undisciplin'd and weak, is gathering strength. At first she never uses her Husband's name: 201 She is plain Mary. Now and then she hears Men speak that name in hatred ; bnt they speak With fear, too, of his might. There conies one thither Who loved him once ; they parted in deep anger ; Milton and Cleveland went their several ways. But Cleveland speaks no bitter word to Mary Of that old College friend. He has within him The poet's yearnings; and the nobleness With which a poet bows before the genius Even of a rival and an enemy. Though wassail, and the license of the camp, Made him a Boomer and a ballad-monger, He scorn'd not him who wrote that lofty book The ' Areopagitica.' Mary hears From him some gentle memories of the man Whose soul had awe 1 her. Then remorse creeps in ; And she daily weeps to think what cold replies Her stubbornness had given his mild requests, And then his brief commands, for her return. The summer comes. Fear is within that house Where late was revelry — galliards and country-rounds, And moonlit madrigals on dewy lawns. Fear now abides there, for the news has reach M Of Naseby field. Ituin is drawing near. The sequestrators come; and Mary's father Hurries to London. Ellen is sitting in her father's house — A garden-house, in the City. She is reading. A grave and l oom ed book is on her knee — 1 The Doctrine and the Discipline of Divorce.' ' Down, idle fancies ! Perish, wicked thoughts ! Thou great logician, thou hast steep'd thy argument In the deep dye of thy hopes. ' I could hope, too ; But T will strive against temptation. Lord, Forgive my erring and tumultuous thoughts ! It cannot be — it is not true — that difference Of temper — incompatibility — make A cause of final separation. Yet How hard it is ! It is not just ; for what a crowd would rush, Upon that plea, to sever household ties, Play false with oaths ' Mary is on the threshold. Another minute, and she bathes the cheek Of Ellen with hot tears. 202 ONCE UPON A TIME. • I knew liim not — Knew not his greatness — nor his gentleness. I wrong'd him, Ellen ; yet he hath redeem'd My father from deep ruin. Will he spurn me ? Yes, he will spurn me. Ellen, I would ask Forgiveness, and then die.' The book is shut. Another morn, and Mary's Husband comes At Ellen's bidding. There is mystery. A sob — and then a silence — then a rush. Mary is kneeling at her Husband's feet, And Ellen joins their hands. In 1(547 Milton had again moved to a small house in Holbom, which opened behind into Lincoln's Inn Fields. He here continued to work in the education of a few scholars : — ' So didst thou travel on life's common way In cheerful godliness ; and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay.' But within two years Milton was called to higher occupa- tion. In the Council-books at the State Paper Office, some extracts from which were first published in the preface to Dr. Sumner's translation of Milton's 'De Doctrina Chris- tiana,' there is this entry, under date of November ] 2, 1649 : ' Ordered that Sir John Hippesley is spoken to that Mr. Milton may be accommodated with the lodgings that he hath at Whitehall.' And on the following 19th of November : — ' That Mr. Milton shall have the lodgings that were in the hands of Sir John Hippesley in Whitehall, for his accommodation, as being secretary to the Council for Foreign Languages.' Here, then, was Milton, after having written the ' Tenure of Kings and Magistrates,' and the ' Iconoclastes,' fixed upon the very spot where, according to his own account, a ' most potent King, after he had trampled upon the laws of the nation, was finally, by the supreme council of the kingdom, condemned to die, and beheaded before the very gate of the royal palace ;' * but where, according to those who took a different view of the * Defenaio pro Populo Anglicano. MILTOX, THE LONDONER. 203 matter, a ' black tragedy was acted, which filled most hearts among ns with consternation and horror.'* After the sword was drawn and the scabbard thrown away, the "Whitehall which Milton must have had in his mind when he wrote of ' Throngs of knights and barons bold In weeds of peace,' was deserted ; its courts were solitary, its chambers were vacant ; their hangings rotted on the walls ; their noble pictures were covered with dust and cobweb. Howell tells a remarkable story about the desolation of the favourite palace of James and Charles : — ' I send you these following prophetic verses of Whitehall, which were made above twenty years ago to my knowledge, upon a book called " Balaam's Ass," that consisted of some invectives against King James'and the court in statu quo tunc. It was composed by one Mr. Williams, a counsellor of the Temple, but a Roman Catholic, who was hanged, drawn, and quartered at dialing Cross for it ; and I believe there be hundreds that have copies of these tferses ever since that time about the town yet living. They were these : — " Some seven years since Christ lid to court, And there he left liis as>. The com tiers kick'd him out of doors. Because they had no grass : The ass went mourning up and down. And thus I heard him bray, — If that they pould not u'ive me grafts, They might have given me hay : But sixteen hundred forty-three, Whosoe'er shall see that day, Will nothing find within that court But only grass and hay." "Which was found to happen true in Whitehall, till the soldiers coming to quarter there trampled it down.' Milton was settled in Whitehall little more than two years. Within six months of his establishment there he received from the Council a warrant to the trustees and * Howell's Letters. 204 OXCE UPON A TIME. contractors for the sale of the King's goods, to deliver to him such hangings as should be sufficient for the furnishing of his lodgings. In 1651 the Council and the Committee of Parliament for Whitehall were at issue with regard to Milton's remaining in these lodgings; and the Council appointed a Committee to endeavour with the Committee of Parliament, ' that the said Mr. Milton may be continued where he is, in regard of the employment he is in to the Council, which necessitates him to reside near the Council.' But he left these lodgings. From 1052, till within a few weeks of the restoration of Charles II. in 1660, he resided in Petty France, Westminster, in the house ' next door to the Lord Scudamore's, and opening into St. James's Park.' He held the office of Foreign Secretary till 1655. In April the 17th of that year the following entry is found in the Council-books : — ' Ordered that the former yearly salary of Mr. John Milton, of two hundred and eighty-eight pounds, &c, formerly charged on the Council's contingencies, be reduced to one hundred and fifty pounds per annum, and paid to him during his life out of his Highness's Exchequer.' This reduced payment was no doubt a retiring pension to Milton ; and the reasons for that retirement are sufficiently pointed out in his second sonnet to Skinner, written in 1655: — 1 Cyriack, this three years day these eyes, though clear. To outward view, of blemish or of spot, Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot ; Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear Of sun, or moon, or star throughout the year. Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not Against Heav'n's baud or will, nor bate a jot Of heart or hope ; but still bear up and steer Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask ? The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied In liberty's defence, my noble task, Of which all Europe rings from side to side. This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask. Content, though blind, had I no hotter guide.' The European fame of the author of the ' Defensio pro Populo Anglicano' was not overstated by the poet. MILTON, THE LONDONER. 205 Aubrey says, ' He was mightily importuned to go into France and Italy; foreigners came much to see him and much admired him, and offered to him great preferments to come over to them ; and the only inducement of several foreigners that came over into England was chiefly to see O. Protector and Mr. J. Milton ; and would see the house and chamber where he was born. He was much more admired abroad than at home.' Milton must indeed have felt that, during the four or five years in which he com- municated to foreign nations, in his own powerful and majestic style, the wishes and opinions of a strong and resolved government, he was filling a part which, however obnoxious might be his principles, could not forbear to command the respect of the highest-minded men of all countries. As Milton continued to reside in Westminster for several years after he had been compelled by blindness to resign his office, there is little doubt that his intimacy was close and confidential, not only with his own immediate friends, Marvell, and Skinner, and Harrington, who accord- ing to Anthony Wood belonged with him to the political club which met at the Turk's Head in Palace Yard — but with the more powerful leaders in the Commonwealth, and with ' Cromwell, our chief of men.' The celebrity of the Rota Club gave rise probably to the assertion that ' Milton and some other creatures of the Commonwealth had instituted the Calves ' Head Club,'* which met on the 30th of January to revile the memory of Charles I. by profane ribaldry and mock solemnities. Milton, however stern a controversialist, was of too lofty a nature to stoop to such things. Pepys, in his Diary of January 1660, gives us a pretty adequate notion of the nature of the proceedings at this political club, the Rota, of which Harrington was the founder : — * I went to the Coffee Club, and heard very good discourse ; it was in answer to Mr. Harrington's answer, who said that the state of the Roman government was not a settled government, and so it was no wonder that the balance of prosperity was in one hand, and the command in * Secret History of the Olves' Head Club. Harleian Miscellany. 206 ONCE UPON A TIME. another, it being therefore always in a posture of war : but it was carried by ballot that it was a steady government, though it is true by the voices it had been carried before that it was an unsteady government ; so to-morrow it is to be proved by the opponents that the balance lay in one hand and the government in another.' All this, after the real business of the Long Parliament, looks like boys' play ; but it was one mode by which the heat of political theorists quietly smouldered away without explosion. Wood says, ' The discourses of the members about govner- ment and ordering a commonwealth were the most in- genious and smart that ever were heard ; for the arguments in the Parliament House were but flat to them.' Yet these smart and ingenious things told for little when the genius of Cromwell was no more. While Harrington was de- claiming, Monk was bringing in Charles II. The Eump Parliament, which had overthrown the feeble government of Richard Cromwell, was very shortly after cast down by the force of popular opinion. In three months after Charles was on the throne ; and Milton was proscribed. Up to the last moment he had lifted up his voice against what he called 4 the general defection of a misguided and abused multitude.' In the' ' Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth ' we have almost his last words of solemn exhortation in connection with public affairs : — 1 What I have spoken is the language of that which is not called amiss, the good old cause : if it seem strange to any, it will not seem more strange, I hope, than convincing to backsliders : thus much I should perhaps have said, though I were sure I should have spoken only to trees and stones, and had none to cry to ,but with the prophet, " earth, earth, earth!" to tell the very soil itself what her perverse inhabitants are deaf to. Nay, though what I have spoke should happen (which Thou suffer not who didst create mankind free ! nor Thou next who didst redeem us from being servants of men !) to be the last icords of our expiring liberty, 1 This w;«s prophetic. For thirty years do such words were again beard; and in 'Paradise Lost' there is MILTON, THE LONDONER. 207 but one solitary allusion to his position, with reference to public affairs and public manners : — • More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchang'd To hoarse or mute, though fall'n on evil days, On evil days though 1'all'n, and evil tongues; In darkness, and with dangers compass 'd round, And solitude ; yet not alone, while thou Visit 'st my slumbers nightly, or when morn Purples the east : still govern thou my song, Urania, and tit audience rind, though lew. But drive far oil' the barbarous duKHMBCe Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race Of that wild rout thai tore the Thracian baid In Khodope, where woods and rocks had ears To rapture, till the savage clamour drown'd Both harp and voice ; nor could the mtlM defend Her sou.' Milton, upon the Restoration, was in hiding, it is said, at a friend's house in Bartholomew Close. He was well concealed ; for the proclamation for his apprehension, and that of Goodwin, says, ' The said John Milton and John Goodwin are so fled, or so obscure themselves, that no endeavours used for their apprehension can take effect, whereby they may be brought to legal trial, and deservedly receive condign punishment for their treasons and offences.' Johnson thinks that the escape of Milton was favoured. Unquestionably his judicial murder would have been the most disgraceful act of the restored government. It is said that in 1650 Milton saved the royalist D'Avenant, and that in 1660 D'Avenant saved the republican Milton. Milton's ' Iconoclastes ' and ' Defensio ' were burnt by the common hangman; but he was rendered safe by the Act of In- demnity. ^Ye have thus very hastily and imperfectly traced Milton through his public life. In the remaining fourteen years he was perhaps happier than in the confident and cheerful thoughts of his active existence. He was then truly ' like a star, and dwelt apart.' He was wholly devoted to the accomplishment of those great labours which he had 208 OXCE UPON A TIME. shadowed forth in his youth. He clung to London with an abiding love, and from 1660 to 1665 he lived in Holborn and Jewin Street. During this period he completed 1 Paradise Lost.' When the great plague broke out he found a retreat at Chalfont. From this period his abode, up to the time of his death in 1674, was in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields. It was here that Dryden visited him. Aubrey records this visit ; and amongst ' his familiar learned acquaintance ' mentions ' Jo. Dryden, Esq., Poet Laureat, who very much admired him, and went to him to have leave to put his "Paradise Lost " into a drama in rhyme. Mr. Milton received him civilly, and told him he would give him leave to tag his verses' Chancel of St. Giles, Cripplogatc. ( 209 ) LUCY HUTCHINSON. The ' Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson ' is a book to be loved. In many passages it is tedious— a record of petty strategies of partisan warfare — and, more dreary still, of factious jealousies and polemical hatreds. The absolute truth of the book is fatal, in one direction, to our hero- worship. The leaders of the Great Rebellion, in such minute details, appear as mere schemers, as rival agents at a borough election ; and the most fervent in professions of religious zeal are as bitter in their revenges as the heroes of a hundred scalps. But there arises out of the book, and is evermore associated with it, the calm quiet shadow of a woman of exquisite purity, of wondrous constanc}% of untiring affection, — Lucy Hutchinson, its writer. John Hutchinson is at Richmond, lodging at the house of his music-master. He is twenty-two years of age. The village is full of ' good company,' for the young Princes are being educated in the palace, and many ' ingenious persons entertained themselves at that place.' The music-master's house is the resort of the king's musicians ; ' and divers of the gentlemen and ladies that were affected with music came thither to hear.' There was a little girl ' tabled ' in the same house with John Hutchinson, who was taking lessons of the lutanist — a charming child, full of vivacity and intelligence. She told John she had an elder sister — a studious and retiring person — who was gone with her mother, Lady Apsley, into Wiltshire — and Lucy was going to be married, she thought. The little girl ever talked of Lucy — and the gentleman talked of Lucy — and one day a song was sung which Lucy had written — and John and p 210 ONCE UPON A TIME. the vivacious child walked, another day, to Lady Apsley's house, and there, in a closet, were Lucy's Latin books. Mr. Hutchinson grew in love with Lucy's image ; and when the talk was more rife that she was about to be married — and some said that she was indeed married — he became un- happy — and ' began to believe there was some magic in the place, which enchanted men out of their right senses ; but the sick heart could not be chid nor advised into health.' At length Lucy and her mother came home ; and Lucy was not married. Then John and Lucy wandered by the pleasant banks of the Thames, in that spring-time of 1638, and a ' mutual friendship ' grew up between them. Lucy now talked to him of her early life ; how she had been born in the Tower of London, of which her late father, Sir John Apsley, was the governor ; how her mother was the bene- factress of the prisoners, and delighted to mitigate the hard fortune of the noble and learned, and especially Sir Walter Raleigh, by every needful help to his studies and amuse- ments ; how she herself grew serious amongst these scenes, and delighted in nothing but reading, and would never practise her lute or harpsichords, and absolutely hated her needle. John was of a like serious temper. Their fate was determined. The spring is far advanced into summer. On a certain day, the friends on both sides meet to conclude the terms of the marriage. Lucy is not to be seen. She has taken the small-pox. She is very near death. At length John is permitted to speak to his betrothed. Tremblingly and mournfully she comes into his presence. She is ' the most deformed person that could be seen.' Who could tell the result in words so touching as Lucy's own? 'He was nothing troubled at it, but married her as soon as she was able to quit the chamber, when the piiest and all that saw her were affrighted to look on her. But God recompensed his justice and constancy by restoring her ; though she was longer than ordinary before she recovered to be as well as before.' They were married on the 3rd of July, 1638. LUCY HUTCHINSON". 211 In the autumn of 1641, John and Lucy Hutchinson are living in their own house of Owthorpe, in Nottinghamshire. They have two sons. They are 'peaceful and happy.' John has dedicated two years since his marriage to the stud} r of ' school divinity.' He has convinced himself of ' the great point of predestination.' This faith has not, as his wife records, produced a ' carelessness of life in him,' but ' a more strict and holy walking.' He applies himself, in his house at Owthorpe, ' to understand the things then in dispute' between the King and Parliament. He is satisfied of the righteousness of the Parliament's cause ; but he then 'contents himself with praying for peace.' In another year the King has set up his standard at Notting- ham ; the battle of Edgehill has been fought ; all hope of peace is at an end. John Hutchinson is forced out of his quiet habitation by the suspicions of his royalist neigh- bours. He is marked as a Roundhead. Lucy does not like the name. ' It was very ill applied to Mr. Hutchinson, who, having naturally a very fine thickset head of hair, kept it clean and handsome, so that it was a great ornament to him ; although the godly of those days, when he embraced their part} r , would not allow him to be religious because his hair is not in their cut.' The divinity student now becomes a lieutenant-colonel. He raises a company of ' very honest godly men.' The Earl of Chesterfield is plundering the houses of the Puritans in the Vale of Belvoir, near Owthorpe ; and the young colonel has appre- hensions for the safety of his family. In the depth of winter a troop of horse arrive one night at the lonely house where Lucy and her children abide. They are hastily summoned to prepare for an instant journey. They are to ride to -Nottingham before sunrise, for the soldiers are not strong enough to maroh in the day. Lucy is henceforth to be the companion of her husband in his perilous office— his friend, his comforter — a ministering angel amongst the fierce and dangerous spirits, whom he sways by a remarkable union of courage and gentleness. Let us look at the shadow of Lucy Hutchinson. She P 2 212 ONCE tJPON A TIME. tranquilly sits in one of the upper chambers of the old and ruinous castle of which her husband is appointed governor. It is a summer evening of 1643. In that tower, built upon the top of the rock, tradition says that Queen Isabel received her paramour Mortimer ; and at the base of the rock are still shown Mortimer's Well, and Mortimer's Hole, as Lucy Hutchinson saw them two centuries ago. She looks out of the narrow windows by which her chamber is lighted. There is the Trent, peacefully flowing on one side, amidst flat meadows. On the other is the town of Nottingham. The governor has made the ruinous castle a strong fortress, with which he can defy the Cavaliers should they occupy the town beneath. Opposite the towers is the old church of St. Nicholas, whose steeple commands the platform of the castle. The governor has sent away his horse, and many of his foot, to guard the roads by which the enemy could approach Nottingham. There is no appearance of danger. The reveille is beat. Those who have been watching all night lounge into the town. It is in the possession of the Cavaliers. The scene is changed. The din of ordnance rouses Lucy from her calm gaze upon the windings of the Trent. For five days and nights there is firing without intermission. Within the walls of the castle there are not more than eighty men. The nvusque- teers on St. Nicholas' steeple pick off the cannoneers at their gnns. Now and then, as the assailants are beaten from the walls, they leave a wounded man behind, and he is dragged into the castle. On the sixth day, after that terrible period of watchfulness, relief arrives. The Cavaliers are driven from the town with much slaughter, and the castle is filled with prisoners. Lucy has not been idle during 1hoc Biz days of peril. There is a task to be performed, — a fitting one for woman's tenderness. Within the castle was a dungeon called the Lions' Den, into which the prisoners were cast; and as they were brought up from the town, two of the fanatical ministers of the garrison reviled and maltreated them. Lucy reads the commands of her Master LUCY HUTCHINSON, 213 after another fashion. As the prisoners are carried bleeding to the Lions' Den, she implores that they should be brought in to her, and she binds up and dresses their wounds. And now the two ministers mutter — and their souls abhor to see this favour done to the enemies of God — and they teach the soldiers to mutter. But Lucy says, ' I have done nothing but my duty. These are our enemies, but they are our fellow-creatures. Am I to be upbraided for these poor humanities ?' And then she breathes a thanksgiving to Heaven that her mother had taught her this humble surgery. There is a tear in John's eye as he gazes on this scene, That night the Cavalier officers sup with him, rather as guests than as prisoners. In the Vale of Belvoir, about seven miles from Belvoir Castle, is the little village of Owthorpe. When Colonel Hutchinson returned to the house of his fathers, after the war was ended, he found it plundered of all its moveables — a mere ruin. In a few years it is a fit dwelling for Lucy to enjoy a life-long rest, after the terrible storms of her earty married days. There is no accusing spirit to disturb their repose. John looks back upon that solemn moment when he signed the warrant for the great tragedy enacted before Whitehall without remorse. He had prayed for 1 an enlightened conscience,' [and he had carried out his most serious convictions. He took no part in the despotic acts that followed the destruction of the monarchy. He had no affection for the fanatics who held religion to be incompatible with innocent pleasures and tasteful pursuits. At Owthorpe, then, he lived the true life of an English gentleman. He built— he planted — he adorned his house with works of art — he was the just magistrate — the bene- factor of the poor. The earnest man who daily expounded the Scriptures to his household was no ascetic. There was hospitality within those walls — with music and revelry. The Puritans looked gloomily and suspiciously upon the dwellers at Owthorpe. The Cavaliers could not forgive 214 ONCE UPON A TIME. the soldier who had held Nottingham Castle against all assaults* The Restoration comes* The royalist connexions of Lucy Hutchinson have a long struggle to save her husband's life ; but he is finally included in the Act of Oblivion. He is once more at Owthorpe, without the compromise of his principles. He has done with political strife for ever. On the 31st of October, 1663, there is a coach waiting before the hall of Owthorpe. That hall is filled with tenants and labourers. Their benefactor cheerfully bids them farewell ; but his wife and children are weeping bitterly. That coach is soon on its way to London with the husband and wife, and their eldest son and daughter. At the end of the fourth day's journey, at the gates of that fortress within which she had been born, Lucy Hutchinson is parted from him whose good and evil fortunes she has shared for a quarter of a century. About a mile from Deal stands Sandown Castle. In 1664, Colonel Hutchinson is a prisoner within its walls. It was a ruinous place, not weatherproof. The tide washed the dilapidated fortress ; the windows were unglazed ; cold, and damp, and dreary was the room where the proud heart bore up against physical evils. For even here there was happiness. Lucy is not permitted to share his prison ; but she may visit him daily. In the town of Deal abides that faithful wife. She is with him at the first hour of the morning ; she remains till the latest of night. In sunshine or in storm, she is pacing along that rugged beach, to con- sole and be consoled. Eleven months have thus been passed, when Lucy is persuaded by her husband to go to Owthorpe to see her children. ' \\ hen the time of her departure came, she left with a very sad and ill-presaging heart.' In a few weeks John Hutchinson is laid in the family vault in that Vale of Belvoir. Lucy Hutchinson sits in holy resignation in the old sacred LUCY HUTCHINSON. 215 home. She has a task to work out. She has to tell her husband's history for the instruction of her children : — ' I that am under a command not to grieve at the common rate of desolate women, while I am studying which way to moderate my woe, and if it were possible, to augment my love, can, for the present, find out none more just to your dear iather, nor consolatory to myself, than the preserva- tion of his memory.' 216 ONCE UPON A TIME. ASTEOLOGICAL ALMANACS. The stormy period from trie rupture of Charles I. with his Parliament to the Kevolution, was the golden age of astrology in England. James I., 'the wisest fool in Christendom/ did little more for 'the art' than to grant the monopoly of promulgating its absurdities in almanacs to the Universities and the Stationers' Company. As a matter of state craft, this was a politic measure. Almanacs have always had a considerable influence upon the opinions of the common people ; and it was, therefore, prudent to secure the compliance of a powerful body of men with the wishes of the ruling authority. The French government, half a century earlier, had forbidden the almanac-makers to prophesy at all : but it was a more subtle device to render the liberty of prophesying profitable to those who would take especial care that their ' old men should dream dreams' after that holy and legitimate fashion which should give ' the right divine of kings ' the last and best varnish of superstition, wherewith it might shine and look lovely in the eyes of the ignorant multitude. The Univer- sities, to their honour be it spoken, grew ashamed of their participation in this pious work ; but they were not ashamed of the lucre which their share of the monopoly produced. They sold their right to the Stationers' Company ; and that company earned their title to this and other privileges so fully, that in the next century they had the honour of being called ' the literary constables to the Star Chamber, to suppress all the science and information to which we owe our freedom.' But Charles I. did even more than his sapient father. He not only encouraged astrology, but he affected to believe in it. He "raised up Lilly and Gadbury from the low con- ASTROLOGICAL ALMANACS. 217 dition in which they were born, to publish the ' Royal Horoscope,' and to threaten disobedient subjects with ma- lignant aspects of the stars. But Charles could not secure even the loyalty of the astrologers. The Stationers' Com- pany always had especial reason for being on the side of the ruling power. They could always see clearly, 'by the help of excellent glasses,' who would be lord of the ascendant. They prophesied for Cromwell as they had prophesied for Charles; they sang ' Te Deum' for the Restoration, as they had done for the Protectorate; and although they dated their little books from the year ■ of our deliverance by King William from popery and arbitrary government,' they had not forgotten to invoke the blessings of the planets upon the last of the Stuarts ; and to prognos- ticate all the evils of comets and eclipses upon those who resisted his paternal sway. Lilly was unquestionably the prince of the powers of the air in those glorious days of horoscopes and witch-burnings. He was originally a domestic servant; but he was not satisfied to tell fortunes to the wenches of the kitchen, or to predict the recovery of a stolen spoon. In 1633 he boldly published the horoscope of Charles I., at the period when that unfortunate prince was crowned king of Scotland. Charles had either too much weakness or too much cunning to put the impostor in the pillory, as one might have ex- pected from the friend of Strafford and the patron of Rubens. The astrologer was for years in the habit of giving counsel to the monarch. Whether he predicted evil or good in their private moments we are not informed ; but the pre- sumption is that astrologers could flatter as well as lords of the bedchamber. It is doubtful whether Charles found as much truth in the predictions of Lilly, as when he con- sulted the Sortes Virgiliance, with Falkland, at Oxford. The old impostor, however, was not content to be cabinet coun- sellor of the king. In 1644 he began to prophesy for the ear of the whole world; and he went onward through good report and evil report till he acquired a considerable fortune, bought an estate at Hersham, near Walton-upon- 218 ONCE UPON A TIME. Thames, and died there in 1681. In his old age he became cautious in his prophecies ; and was fearful, according to his own words, * of launching out too far into the deep, lest There is no doubt, however, of He deluded others till he was he should give offence.' his semi-belief in his art himself deluded. Gadbury , who was originally the pupil of Lilly, became eventually his arch-rival and enemy ; and when the one published his 'Merlinus Anglicus,' the other had his 4 Anti-Merlinus.' Lilly, some three or four years before he was removed to learn the value of all attempts to pene- trate into futurity, from the lessons of ' the great teacher Death,' thought fit to contradict ■ all flying reports ' of his decease, ' spread abroad for some years past.' The astrolo- ASTROLOGICAL ALMANACS. 219 gers of that day had a wicked trick of -vilifying each other, by anticipating the summons of the Fates ; and thns Lilly himself, when he could not write down Gadbury, an- John Gadbury. nounced to the world that his disciple, whom he proscribed as a monster of ingratitude, had perished in the passage to Barbadoes. But Gadbury outlived his master ten years, very much to his own satisfaction. He had a narrow escape in the days of Titus Oates, for he was a staunch Catholic, and had no belief in the ' horrid, popish, Jacobite plot,' from the epoch of which Partridge dated to our own day. Partridge hated Gadbury as much as Gadbury hated Lilly ; and when Gadbury died, Partridge published the history of what he called ' his Black Life.' But though Gadbury was dead, the Stationers, according to their most indubitable privilege in all such cases, continued to publish his almanacs, till another Gadbury (Job) succeeded to the honours and emoluments of his worthy relative, and pro- phesied through another generation of most credulous dupes. 220 ONCE UPON A TIME. Swift lias conferred an immortality upon John Partridge, whom he killed as an almanac-maker in 1709. The old man, at the time when this wicked wit assailed him, had been nearly forty years labouring in his vocation. He appears, originally, to have been a harmless, and, for an almanac-maker, somewhat sensible person. When Swift assailed him he had passed his grand climacteric ; and though the almanac perished in this memorable affray, the man lived for six years after Bickerstaff had killed him. But when Partridge refused any longer to predict, the Station ers* Company did not choose to be laughed out of the profit of his reputation for prediction. They accordingly, in 1710, printed a Partridge's almanac, with Partridge's portrait, which Partridge never wrote. During the three succeeding years the publication was discontinued ; but in 1714, the year before the mortal part of the astrologer died, Partridge's ' Merlinus Liberatus ' again made its appearance ; and went dragging on a decrepit existence, with the sins of a century and a half upon its head. Swift's account of Partridge's death is one of the most pungent pieces of solemn humour which the genius of that most terrific of controversialists ever produced. No wonder that it killed the almanac for a season, though the man escaped. The confession of the astrologer is admirable : — * "I am a poor ignorant fellow, bred to a mean trade, yet I have sense enough to know, that all pretences of foretelling by astrology are deceits, for this manifest reason — because the wise and learned, who can only judge whether there be any truth in this science, do all unanimously agree to laugh at and despise it ; and none but the poor ignorant vulgar give it any credit, and that only upon the word of such silly wretches as I and my fellows, who can hardly write or read." I then asked him, why he had not calculated his own nativity, to see whether it agreed with BickerstafFs prediction. At which he shook his head, and said, " Oh ! sir, this is no time for jesting, but for repenting these fooleries, as I do now from the very bottom of my heart!" "By what I can gath^j from you," said I, "the ASTROLOGICAL ALMANACS. 221 observations and predictions you printed with your alma- nacs were mere impositions on the people ?" He replied, " If it were otherwise, I should have the less to answer for. We have a common form for all these things ; as to foretell- ing the weather, we never meddle with that, hut leave it to the printer, who takes it out of any old almanac, as he thinks fit." ' It is a hundred and forty years* since this attack, which one would have thought irresistible, was levelled against the prophecy-makers of the Stationers' Company; but these fooleries still exist amongst us. At the time of Swift, the greater part of the astrologers of the civil wars had long been dead ; but the almanacs, which were issued from this great patent store-house of imposture, bore the names of their original authors. * Poor Robin, Dove, Wing, and several others do yearly publish their almanacs, though several of them have been dead since before the Revolu- tion.' The individual men were gone ; but the spirit of delusion, which they had originally breathed into their works, was not extinguished by their death, for the corpora- tion of the Stationers' Company could never die. Francis Moore, ' Physician,' began his career of imposture in 1698 ; and, by the condensation within himself of all the evil qualities of his contemporaries, he gradually contrived to extinguish the lives, and then, with a true vampire- spirit, to prey upon the carcases, even up to the present hour, of Lilly, Gadbury, Lord, Andrews, Woodhouse, Dade, Pond, Bucknall, Pearce, Coelson, Perkins, and Parker, — the illustrious and the obscure cheats of the seven- teenth century. One hundred and fifty-five years is a pretty long career of imposture. Poor Eobin, the hoary jester of the fraternity, gave up the ghost a quarter of a century ago, after a life of iniquity longer than that of Old Parr or Henry Jenkins. Heaven avert the omen from Francis Moore ! As the old astrologers died in the body, and their spirits, * This, and other dates of the same character, are the same as in the first edition of this volume, 1854. 222 ONCE UPON A TIME. after lingering awhile near * Paul's,' reposed also, the Stationers' Company raised up new candidates for the emoluments and honours of their trade of 'using subtil craft to deceive and impose on his Majesty's subjects.' At the beginning of the reign of George III., Andrews, and Parker, and Pearce, and Partridge, and Moore, were still Francis Moore, 1637. From an anonymous Print. flourishing, of the old set; but the more glorious names were gone to enjoy the celestial converse of Albumazar and Raymond Lully. Their places were filled (how ignoble !) by Saunders and Season, and Tycho Wing. Even these are gone. Moore alone remains upon this wicked earth, where common-sense walks abroad and laughs at him as the forlorn mummer of a bygone generation. He now belongs to 'Once upon a Time.' ( 223 ) MAY-FAIR. This region of fashion was, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, a large field, extending from Park Lane almost to Devonshire House, in the West ; and com- prising the space to the North where the famous Lord Chesterfield, in the middle of that century, built his magnificent mansion, and looked with pride upon his spacious garden from the windows of !his noble library. The brook of Tyburn ran through this district, so that the place was also called Brook Field, which name is still preserved in Brook Street. In this Brook Field was held an Annual Fair, commencing on the 1st of May, which, without going back into more remote antiquity, had been not only a market for all commodities, but a place of fashionable resort, in the early years of the Resto- ration. Mr. Pepys was a visitor there in 1G60. The general character of May-Fair may be gathered from an advertisement of the 27th of April, 1700: — 'In Brook Field Market-place, at the East Corner of Hyde Park, is a Fair to be kept for the space of sixteen days, beginning with the 1st of May: the first three days for live cattle and leather ; with the same entertainments as at Bartholomew Fair : where there are shops to be let, ready built, for all manner of tradesmen that annually keep fairs ; and so to continue yearly at the same place.' The surprise that we may feel in thus learning that the business of buying and selling ' cattle and leather ' was to continue for three days, at the extreme West of our Me- tropolis, may be diminished by considering that the dis- trict was essentially a suburb, very thinly peopled ; that to the North there were no streets ; that where Apsley House now stands was a low inn, called the 'Hercules 224 OXCE UPON A TIME. Pillars ;' and a little farther West a roadside watering- place, known as the ' Triumphant Chariot ;' that the villagers of Kensington and Chelsea seldom penetrated into London proper ; that the Fair of Brook Field was, there- w.F.TirriNori.. _rrn. Old Watering-house, ECuightsbrldge, as ii appeared Ifi 1841. fore, a matter of as much convenience as the great Fair of Bury, or any other of the country marts to which dealers brought their commodities. That it was something more than a market for cattle and leather, and a collection of stalls for the sale of gingerbread and beer, we leam from MAY-FAIR. 225 the announcement that • there are shops ready built for all manner of tradesmen.' The observance of May was one of those ancient pecu- liarities of our national character which required an es- sential change of manners to eradicate. Enactments could not put down May-poles and moms-dancers. A Parlia- mentary Ordinance, in 1 044, directed all and singular May- poles, that are or shall be erected, to be taken down and removed by the constables of the parishes. The May -pole in the Strand bowed its head to this ruthless command. There, in 1634, had the first stand of hackney-coaches been established — four coaches with men in livery, with fares arranged according to distances. But the May-pole did not fall unhonoured. There was a lament for the May- pole, ' which no city, town, nor street can parallel ;' and the Cavalier-poet sighs over the 'happy age,' and the ' harmless days,' * when every village did a May -pole raise :' ' times and men are changed,' he says. It was true. The May-pole in the Strand, and the hackney-coaches, were somewhat incongruous companions. After twenty years of strife and blood came the Restoration ; and the Cavaliers believed that ■ times and men ' were not changed. A new May-pole was to be raised, in 1661 — a ' stately cedar' of enormous height, which landsmen were unable to raise ; and so the Duke of York commanded seamen ' to officiate the business ;' and the May-pole was hoisted up, in four hours, to the sound of drum and trumpet; and a morris-dance was danced, to pipe and tabor, as blithely as in the days of Elizabeth; and 'little children did much rejoice, and ancient people did clap their hands, saying, "Golden days begin to appear."' In 1672 the mighty May-pole — ' the most prodigious one for height that per- haps was ever seen,' says old Aubrey — was broken by a high wind. The Revolution came, and then the contests of faction, and a foreign war, gave the people graver subjects to think of than ' Whitsun ales and May games ' The broken May-pole of the Strand gradually decayed and became a nuisance ; but it had a higher destiny — typical Q 226 ONCE UPON A TIME. of the changes of ' times and men.' In 1717 it was carted away to Wanstead, under the direction of Newton, and there set np to support the largest telescope in the world, which had been presented to the Royal Society by a French Member, M. Huyon. The age of morris-dancers was about to be superseded by the age of Science ; and in due time would come the age of the Mechanical Arts. A century ago Hume said, * We cannot reasonably expect that a piece of woollen cloth will be brought to perfection in a nation that is ignorant of astronomy.' The power-loom is the natural descendant of the telescope in Wanstead Park. On May morning, in 1701, it is not unlikely that a few of the busy London population were dancing round the broken May-pole in the Strand. The chimney-sweepers had not yet taken exclusive possession of this festival ; but the milk-maids, with their garlands, might be there as the representatives of rural innocence. The great bulk of the holiday-makers would abandon the May-pole for the keener excitement of May-Fair. For there (according to the evi- dence of a letter from Mr. Brian Fairfax, of 1701) would be attraction for all classes. ' I wish you had been at May- Fair, where the rope-dancing would have recompensed your labour.' There, according to the ' Tatler,' was Mr. Penkethman, with his tame elephant ; and there were wont to be * many other curiosities of nature.' There were theatres with ' gentlemen and ladies, who were the orna- ments of the town, and used to shine in plumes and diamonds.' There, was * Mrs. Saraband, so famous for her ingenious puppet-show,' — the proprietress of 'that rake- hell, Punch, whose lewd life and conversation had given so much scandal.' There, was the conjuror, and the mountebank, and the fire-eater. But, more attractive than all, there, was * Lady Mary,' the dancing lass— a very jewel, according to Brian Fairfax. * All the nobility in town were there. Pray ask my Lord Fairfax after her, who, though not the only lord by twenty, was every night an admirer of her, while the fair lasted.' But there were MAY-FAIR. 227 great rarities of Art to be seen — specimens of ingenuity that might rival 1851. ' There was the city of Amster- dam, well worth your seeing ; every street, eveiy indu vidual house, was carved in wood, in exact proportion, one to another ; the Stadthouse was as big as your hand.' The city of Amsterdam might attract discreet observers, who kept out of the way of the bull-bait and the ducking-pond — polite sports to which Young England, in the last century, was somewhat addicted. Last of all, there was the sober business of the fair — the real work transacted in the ' shops ' that were ' let, ready built, for all manner of tradesmen.' Of the commodities exposed for sale in these temporary shops would, first of all, be clothing. Of woollen fabrics there would be abundance. The great work of legislation was to keep all the wool at home, and to make vhe people wear nothing but woollen garments. A writer of 1698 says :— ' Men are very careful to preserve their rents ; but, above all, gentlemen are in the greatest disquiet for their wool. Both the living and the dead must be wrapt in wool ; nor is any law wanting to complete the business, but onty one, — that our perukes should be made of wool.' The great problem of legislation was how to encourage the growth of wool, and the manufacture of wool ; and a perpetual controversy was going on between the manu- facturers and the agriculturists. The agriculturists were then the free-traders, — they wanted a foreign market for their wool : the manufacturers would have kept it all at home. But they both agreed that nothing which inter- fered with wool should be worn in England. Silk buttons were an article of dress : the silk was bought in foreign parts in exchange for our woollen manufacture ; but the making of silk buttons, says the Act of 1698, was dis- couraged by making buttons out of the shreds of cloth, — and thousands of men, women, and children, who made silk buttons with the needle, were impoverished ; and so a penalty of forty shillings was to be paid by any unhappy tailor who used his shreds to make buttons. But this Q 2 228 ONCE UPON A TIME. microscopic legislation was always working in the dark. In 1697 the importation of foreign lace and needlework was absolutely prohibited, because the importation was ' to the great discouragement of the manufactures in this kingdom.' In 1699 the Act of 1697 was repealed, on account of the decay of the woollen manufactures, because the prohibition of foreign lace and needlework ' has been one great cause thereof, by being the occasion that our woollen manufactures are prohibited to be imported into Flanders.' At May-Fair, in 1701, there must have been a keen competition amongst the fashionable ladies for the last chance of a purchase in the fair of Indian silks and calicoes ; for after the 29th of. September the wearing of all wrought silks of the manufacture of Persia, China, or India, and all coloured calicoes, was absolutely prohibited. The whole principle of our commercial legislation was protection, — tohftve no real exchange with other countries, and no free industry in our own commodities. The inte- rest of the consumer was never regarded. The perpetual cry was the duty of employing the poor, — in regulating which employment the poor were starved. There was but one man of those days who had discovered the broad truths of commerce, which he promulgated in these words : — ' The whole world, as to trade, is but one nation or people, and therein nations are as persons. * * * There can be no trade unprofitable to the people, for if any prove so, men leave it off. * * * No laws can set prices on trade. * * * All favour to one trade or interest is an abuse, and cuts off so much profit from the public' It is a hundred and sixty years ago since the great merchant, Sir Dudley North, proclaimed these principles, — the highest application of which belongs to Our day. But, with all the defects of the class-legislation 1li.it prevailed in the first year of the eighteenth century, England was advancing in commercial prosperity. In five years after the peace of Eyswick the exports were mora than doubled, and the mercantile murine more than quad- MAY-FAIR. 229 nipled. The exports in 1701 were about six millions, of which about four millions consisted of our own .produce and manufactures, — one-eighteenth part of our present ex- ports. In 1701 the mercantile navy carried about three hundred thousand tons, — about one-fifteenth part of our present tonnage. The navigation laws, which it has re- quired the slow growth of political philosophy to abolish, bit by bit, during two centuries, were held to be the foun- dation of our marine superiority. And yet, whilst an exclusive protection was given to English-built vessels, worked by English seamen, we utterly lost the old Green- land whale-fishery for want of skilled crews. At the Revolution the agriculture of the country required a stimu- lus, so the bounty system was commenced. Foreign corn could not be brought in except when scarcity prevailed at home, and the exporters of English wheat received a bounty of five shillings a quarter, when the home price did not exceed forty shillings. The Dutch stored the wheat, which the bounty to the grower enabled them to buy at a cheaper rate than the average European price, and sold it us again, in dear seasons, at a large profit. All commerce was a system of restriction, evasion, and compromise, resting upon the belief that one nation's gain was another's loss — and that commercial advantage was only to be measured by the balance of money received for commodities, and not by the exchange of the useful pro- ducts of industry, varying with the peculiar soil, climate, and manners of the exchangers. At this period England was not, in any large sense of the term, a manufacturing country. With the exception of our woollen cloths — which amounted to nearly half our exports — some articles of raw produce were our chief ship- ments to foreign countries. The principal products of our mines were lead and tin, both of which we exported. Tin was in great demand, both at home and abroad, on account of the extension of luxurious habits, which required pewter plates instead of wooden trenchers. We raised and smelted no copper, but imported it unwrought. The greater part 230 ONCE UPON A TIME. of our iron was also imported. No beds of rock-salt had been worked, — edible salt was imported, — for the wretched produce of our brine-pits was nauseous and injurious. And yet salt was of prime necessity at a period when the rota- tion of crops was unknown, and winter-food for sheep and cattle not being raised, the greater number were killed and salted at Martinmas. The coal-mines were limited in their produce, — partly by the want of machinery, and partly by the difficulty of communication. The greater part of the coal consumed in the kingdom was sea-borne — hence called sea-coal ; but occasionally pack-horses travelled with coal inland, for the supply of blacksmiths' forges. Factories, in the modern sense, did not exist. Even the great wool manufacture was, in most of its processes, domestic. Wean vers left their shuttles idle in their cottages, when harvest work demanded their labour in the fields ; and this, not as a matter of choice, but under legal compulsion. The Norwich and the Yorkshire looms were the subjects of minute regulation, as to wages and material. We im- ported spun silk for our Spitalfields looms. John Lombe built his Derby silk-mill in 1717. An ingenious adven- turer, who made the attempt in 1702, was ruined. Our linen fabrics were imported from France, Germany, and Holland, and so were our threads. We manufactured hats and glass only after the accession of William the Third, when the war with France drove us to employ our capital and skill in their production. It was the same with paper. Before the Revolution there was little made in England, except brown paper. W r e imported our writing and print- ing papers from France and Holland. We imported our crockery-ware, which retained the name of Delft, even when our Potteries had begun to work. Sheffield produced its old • whittle ' — the common knife for all uses ; but the finer cutlery was imported from France. We obtained most of our printing- type from Holland — not that England wanted letter-founders, but that their characters were so rude, that our neighbours supplied us, till an ingenious artist, William Caslon, established his London foundry in MAY-FAIR. 231 1720. There was a demand then for types, for the age of newspapers was come. When England was restricted to twenty master-printers — as it was before the Revolution — there was little need of skilful type-founders. In the May-Fair of 1701 the news-venders would be busy. There would be half-a-dozen papers bearing the name of ' Intelligence,' or • Intelligencer ;' there would be similar varieties of the family of ' Flying Post,' and ' Mer- cury,' and ' Observator ;' there would be ' Dawks's News Letter, done upon good writing-paper, and blank space left, that, any gentleman may write his own private busi- ness.' Each of these would hold less matter than a modem column. The writers upon Dawks's ' good writing-paper,' or any other paper, were not very numerous in a population of five millions. The Postage revenue was about sixty thousand pounds, which, averaging the rate of letters at threepence each (single sheets, carried under eighty miles, were twopence), would give us about a letter annually for each of the population ; about two-thirds of the letters now delivered in one week ; which show about eighteen letters annually for each of the population. The newspapers in May-Fair each had two or three advertisements — some of books, some of luxuries, which are now necessaries of life — such as tea at twenty-four shillings a pound, loaf sugar at eleven shillings, coffee at six shillings. All had adver- tisements of lotteries. Every description of retail traffic was then carried on by gambling. At the ' Eagle and Child,' on Ludgate Hill, all sorts of fine silks and goods were to be had at seven pounds ten shillings a ticket; Mrs. Ogle's plate, value twenty pounds, was at sixpence a ticket ; Mr. William Morris, ' the fairest of dealers,' draws his lottery out of two wheels by two parish-boys, giving one hundred pounds for half-a-crown. There were lotteries drawing in May-Fair, and the thimble-rig was not unknown. The May morning of 1701 sees the busy concourse in Brook Field of sellers and buyers. There is the Jew from Houndsditch and the grazier from Finchley. From the 232 ONCE UrON A TIME. distant Bermondsey comes the tanner, with his peltry and his white leather for harness. Beer is freely drunk. To- bacco perfumes the air from one sunrise to another. It is almost difficult to believe that eleven million pounds of Faux, the Conjurer. tobacco were then annually consumed by a population of five millions; but so say the records. The graziers and the drovers were hungry ; they indulged themselves with the seldom-tasted wheaten bread of the luxurious Lon- doners. They had waded through roads scarcely prac- MAY-FAIR. 233 ticable for horsemen. Pedestrians, who kept the crown of the causeway, on whose sides were perilous sloughs and foul ditches, travelled in company, for fear of the frequent highwayman and footpad. Happy were they when the sun lighted the highway from Tottenham or Tyburn ; for not a lantern was to be seen, and the nickering link made the morning fog seem denser than its reality. That May-day morning has little cheerfulness in its aspect. The afternoon comes. Then the beasts and the leather are sold — and the revelry begins. It lasts through the night. We need not describe the brutality of the prize- fighting, nor record the licentiousness of the Merry Andrew. All the poetical character of the old May sports was gone. It was a scene of drunkenness and quarrel. May-Fair became a nuisance. The Grand Jury presented it seven years after ; and the puppets, and the rope-dancers, and the gambling-booths, the bruisers, and the thieves, had to seek another locality. AVhen Fashion obtained possession of the site, the form of profligacy was changed. The thimble-riggers were gone ; but Dr. Keith married all comers to his chapel, ' with no questions asked, for a gui- nea, any time after midnight till four in the afternoon.' 234 OXCE UPOX A TIME. JOHN AUBREY, AND HIS EMINENT MEN. There are few books that I take up more willingly in a vacant half hour, than the scraps of biography which Aubrey, the antiquary, addressed to Anthony a Wood ; and which were published from the original manuscripts in the Ashmolean Museum, in 1813. These little fragments are so quaint and characteristic of the writer — so sensible in some passages and so absurd in others — so full of what may be called the Prose of Biography, with reference to the objects of historical or literary reverence, — and so encomi- astic with regard to others whose memories have wholly perished in the popular vie w-r that I shall endeavour to look at them a little consecutively, as singular examples of what a clever man thought of his contemporaries and of others who were famous in his day, whether their opinions accord with, or are opposed to, our present estimates. And first of John Aubrey himself. Our common notion of the man used to be that he was a dreaming, credulous old gossip, with some literary preten- sions, and nothing more. He believed in astrology, in omens, dreams, apparitions, voices, knockings. Is he without followers, even at this hour? Anthony a Wood, who was under many obligations to his correspondence, calls him 'a shiftless person, roving and maggoty-headed.' * Koving,' indeed he was ; for he wandered up and down the land when travelling was not quite so easy as now ; and, according to the testimony of Gough, an antiquary after the sober fashion of the race, ' first brought us ac- quainted with the earliest monuments on the Tace of the country — the remains of Druidism, and of Roman, Saxon, JOHN AUBREY, AND HIS EMINENT MEN. 235 and Danish fortifications.' ' Shiftless/ too, he might be called. He possessed an estate in Kent, which was de- stroyed by an irruption of the sea ; he became involved in law- suits ; he made an unhappy marriage ; in a word, to use his own astrological solution of his misfortunes, he was * born in an evil hour, Saturn directly opposing my ascen- dant.' But he was not ' shiftless,' in the sense of one who had no proper business in life. He wanted little for his support, and as he had rich friends his dependence was not very burthensome to them. He lived about in country houses with kind squires, with whom he ' took his diet and sweet otiums.' What could the man do when his estates were gone, but to enjoy what he called ■ a happy delitescency ' — the obscurity of one who was never idle in noting down what he saw around him, for the use of others, or the benefit of those who were to come after him ? He had no constructive power to make a great original book. His age was not an age of periodicals, when his gossiping propensities might have shaped themselves into articles fit for the literary market. It is true that he might have become an almanac-maker like some of his friends ; — but perhaps there was a glut of the commodity. He had nothing for it but to lounge about in coffee-houses ; and go to meetings of the Royal Society ; and gossip with Mr. Evelyn and Mr. Isaac Walton ; and venture to ask Mr. D'Avenant something about Shakspere ; and speak of Milton to Mr. Dryden when they met at Will's ; and cor- respond with Mr. Tanner, and Mr. a Wood, the famous antiquaries ; and study a horoscope with Mr. Dee, or Mr. Vincent W T ing, the astrologers. If he had concentrated his power of picking up anecdotes, and recording sayings, upon more of the really eminent of his time, as he has done upon Hobbes and Milton, he might have left Boswell with- out the merit of being the first, as well as the greatest, in his line. Wood, according to Hearne, used to say of him — ' Look ! yonder goes such a one, who can tell such and such stories ; and I'll warrant Mr. Aubrey will break hia neck down stairs rather than miss him.' My venerable 236 ONCE UPON A TIME. friend Mr. Britton, in his 'Memoir of John Aubrey,'* terms the notice of him by D'Israeli, in the ' Quarrels of Authors,' * hasty,' for D'Israeli calls him ' the little Boswell of his day.' We would desire no higher compliment for our ' curious and talkative inquirer.' D'Israeli certainly does not mean to lower Aubrey ; for in the very passage which suggests the ' little Boswell,' Aubrey has been giving an account how Hobbes composed his ' Leviathan,' and then D'Israeli terms this passage ' very curious for literary students.' Aubrey was born in 1626. He lived seventy-two years in the greatest period of transition in our English history. The despotic Buckingham ruled England when Aubrey was first opening his inquisitive eyes ; — the Whig Somers was Chancellor when he closed them. He lived through the Civil War, the Commonwealth, the Eestoration, the In- volution. When he first heard of literature, men were talking of Shakspere, and Jonson, and Beaumont, and Fletcher; — when he prattled about his septuagenarian memories, Milton and Cowley were getting obsolete. The opinions and manners of the people were wholly changed. Aubrey gives a remarkable instance of this change. When the civil wars broke out, Hollar, the famous engraver, went into the Low Countries, where he stayed till about 1649. * I remember he told me, that when he first came into England, which was a serene time of peace, the people, both poor and rich, did look cheerfully ; but at his return, he found the countenances of the people all changed — melancholy, spiteful as if bewitched.'! In another placej Aubrey writes, with that half-poetry of his nature which made him superstitious, ' Before printing, Old Wives' Tales were ingenious ; and since printing came in fashion, till a little before the Civil Wars, the ordinary sort of people were not taught to read. Now-a-days, books are * Mr. Britton's Memoir is a handsome 4to volume, published by the Wilt- shire Topographical Society; it contains a great deal of curious matter, collected with much care. f Lives, p. 402. J Anecdotes and Traditions, edited by J. Thorn ; p. 102. JOHN AUBREY, AND HIS EMINENT MEN. 237 common, and most of the poor people understand letters ; and the many good books, and variety of turns of affairs, have put all the old fables out of doors. And the divine art of printing, and gunpowder, have frighted away Robin Good-fellow and the Fairies.' Bishop Corbet thought that the fairies went out when Protestantism came in. Accord- ing to Aubrey they lingered till the people became readers. ' The variety of turns of affairs ' made them readers. The change was beginning when Aubrey was in his swaddling- clothes. One almost of the latest masques of Jonson which was presented before James I., ' Time Vindicated,' whispers an echo of that turmoil whose hoarse sounds were still dis- tant. Two ' ragged rascals ' are thus described in the ante- masque : — ' One is his printer m disguise, and keeps His press in a hollow tree, where, to conceal him, He works by glow-worm light, the moon's too open. The other zealous rag is the compositor, Who, in an angle where the ants inhabit, (The emblems of his labours,) will sit curl'd Whole days and nights, and work his eyes out for him.' This was the age of libels — ' straws,' as Selden has it, * thrown up to show which way the wind blows.' The 1 press in a hollow tree ' was no mere poetical exaggeration. That terrible machine did its work in silence and darkness. It laboured like a mole. If it was sought for in the garret, it was in the cellar ; if it was hunted to the hovel, it found a hiding-place in the palace. The minds of men were in a state of preternatural activity. Prerogative had tampered with opinion, and opinion was too strong for it. The public mind, for the first time in England, began to want news — coarse provender for opinion to chew and ruminate. Jonson wrote his ' Staple of News,' in which we have an office with a principal and clerks busily employed in col- lecting and recording news, to be circulated by letter. The countrywoman at the office would have ' A groatworth of any news, I care not what, To carry down this Saturday to our vicar.' 238 ONCE UPON A TIME. There was then, in reality, a weekly pamphlet of news published under the high-sounding editorial name of Mer- curius Britannicus. Jonson had a right notion of what gave authority to such a publication : — * See divers men's opinions ! unto some The very printing of 'em makes them news, That have not the heart to believe anything But what they see in print.' Jonson called the newspaper 'a weekly cheat to draw money ;' and he sets about ridiculing the desire for news, as if it were an ephemeral taste easily put down, and people had a diseased appetite for news, ' made all at home, and no syllable of truth in them.' The people were thirsting for pamphlets of news because therein they found glimpses of truth. The age was indeed credulous : but credulity and curiosity are nearly allied ; and curiosity goes before comparison, and comparison goes before discontent, and discontent goes before revolt ; and so in less than twenty years after Jonson's « Staple of News ' the country was plunged in civil war. Anthony a Wood asked Aubrey to write these ■ Lives,' seeing that he ' was fit for it, by reason of his general ac- quaintance ;' and, in 1680, Aubrey sends the Oxford anti- quary * Minutes,' which * may easily be reduced into order.' He says, that he undertook the task, ■ having now not only lived above half a century of years in the world, but have been also much tumbled up and down in it, which hath made me so well known. Besides the modern advantage of coffee-houses in this great city — before which men knew not how to be acquainted, but with their own relations or societies — I might add that I come of a longeevous race, by which means I have wiped some feathers off the wings of time for several generations.' These lives, as we have said, were first printed from the Ashmolean Manuscripts in 1813. They had been previously examined and used by Warton ; and by Malone, who made a transcript of them. He also made some arrangement of the scattered papers. In the v< .1 times of 1813 they are given alphabetically. Our notices JOHN AUBREY, AND HIS EMINENT MEN. 239 will pretend to no system ; but will be held together by some slight thread of association. The first name that presents itself in this alphabetical order is that of ' Sir Eobert Aiton, Knight.'* How many have looked upon his ' monumental bust,' in the south side of the choir of Westminster Abbey, without knowing what Aubrey tells us, that ' Sir Eobert was one of the best poets of his time.' How many would have believed Aubrey, before our old poetry began to be appreciated, when he further records that 'Mr. Jo. Dryden says he has seen verses of his, some of the best of that age, printed with some other verses ?' Look in the ' Biographia Britannica,' and you will find no Eobert Aiton. Look in any collection of English poetry, and you will find no Eobert Aiton. This Scot, a courtier of James I., was indeed known as the friend of Jonson, who told Drummond 'Sir Eobert Ayton loved him dearly.' Burns found one of Ay ton's poems in James AYatson's ' Collection of Scots Poems,' and thought he ' improved the simplicity of the sentiments by giving them a Scots dress.'f It is not easy for one poet of genius to make an adaptation of the work of another poet. Let us hear forgotten Eobert Ayton : — 1 I do confess thou'rt smooth and fair, And I might have gone near to love thee, Had 1 not found the slightest prayer That lips could speak had power to move thee. But I can let thee now alone, As worthy to be loved by none. ' I do confess thou'rt sweet, yet find Thee such an unthrift of thy sweets, Thy favours are but like the wind, Which kisseth every thing it meets ; And since thou can'st love more than one Thou'rt worthy to be kissed by none.' * The name is more properly spelt ' Ayton.' ■j- See Burns' song, beginning — 1 1 do confess thou art sae fair, I wad been o'er the lugs in love, Had 1 not found the slightest prayer That lips could speak, thy heart could muve. 240 OXCE UPOX A TIME. But there is another poem by Burns, whose truth and tenderness has made many a heart thrill. He said himself that he ' took it down from an old man's singing.' But ' all his editors,' says Allan Cunningham, ' have considered it to have been written, either wholly or partially, by Burns.' Robert Ay ton, whose memory might have died out, even though Dryden had praised his verses, if it had not been for the care of ' the Bannatyne Club,' and the accidental discovery of a MS. Collection of his Poems,'* was the writer of these lines : — * Should old acquaintance be forgot, And never thought upon, The flames of love extinguished, And freely past and gone ? Is thy kind heart now grown so cold In that loving breast of thine, That thou can'st never once reflect On old langsyne?' What is fame, when such verses as these we have given were wrapt up in mummy-cloth for two centuries? How truly does Aubrey say, • What uncertainty do we find in printed histories ! They either treading too near on the heels of truth that they dare not speak plain ; or else for want of intelligence, things being antiquated, become too obscure and dark.' Who was Ayton, amongst Aubrey's * Eminent Men ?' The ' obscure and dark ' has been made clear in his case. Who was Gregorie ? Our antiquary tells us he was * the famous peruque-maker,' and, moreover, that he ' was buried at St. Clements-Danes church door.' Famous indeed he was, according to this authority, for Baron Gregory, Baron of the Exchequer, wrote his epitaph in rhyme ; and in Cot- grave's French Dictionary peruques are called Gregorians. Who can now tell us of the fashion of Gregory's peruques ? 'Printed histories' are silent. W ho was GoodWyu? 1 He was a general scholar and had a" delicate wit ; was a great historian and an excellent poet. He wrote, among * The Poems of Sir Robert Ayton, edited by Chuilis Roger, 1844. JOHN AUBREY, AND HIS EMINENT MEN. 241 other things, a Pastoral, acted at Ludlow, about 1637, an exquisite piece.' Alas, for Goodwyn ! In 1680, Aubrey also writes, ' he was as fine a gentleman as any in England, though now forgot.' How capricious is fame ! There teas a Pastoral — a Mask, I will call it — acted at Ludlow in 1634, which will never be forgot. The author of that poem had ample fame, too, in his life-time.* But no foreigners, I fear, would see the house and chamber where Goodwyn was born. Aubrey himself is somewhat a niggard of his praise as to another truly ' fine gentleman.' Richard Lovelace, he tells us, wrote a poem called * Lucasta ;' but no word of eulogy for Lovelace. ' He was an extraordinary handsome man, but proud * * *. George Petty, haberdasher, in Fleet Street, carried twenty shillings to him every Monday morning from Sir — — Many, and Charles Cotton, but was never repaid.' Poor Lovelace ! ' He died in a cellar, in Long Acre,' says Aubrey. Even in a cellar, he that wrote these lines must have had consolations which his persecutors could not feel : — 1 Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage ; Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage. If I have freedom in my love, And in my soul am free, Angels alone, that soar above, Enjoy such liberty.' The cavalier, Lovelace, sings, ' When thirsty grief in wine we steep, When healths and draughts go tree, Fishes that tipple in the deep Know no such liberty.' The republican friend of Milton, Andrew Marvell, according to Aubrey, ' would never drink hard in compan}^, and was wont to say, that he would not play the good-fellow in any man's company in whose hands he would not trust his life.' In the early days of the Restoration, Marvell saved Milton * See page 205. *• R 242 ONCE UPON A TIME. from the wrath of the Royalists ; but with his longing for a constitutional government he knew there was danger in that profligate court of ' the merry monarch,' and he clung for safety to the * allaying Thames,' at least in social life. But the coffee-house gossip of Aubrey, and his ' longaevous ' remembrances, are very minute about the ' follies of the wise,' and their secret indulgences, of which * History ' very properly doubteth. Thus, he tells us that Marvell ' kept bottles of wine at his lodging, and many times he would drink liberally by himself to refresh his spirits and exalt his muse.' The domestic tipplings which Aubrey records of the ' eminent ' are very various, and somewhat amusing. Marvell drank wine to exalt his muse. Not so Bacon. ' His Lordship would often drink a good draught of strong beer (March beer) to bedwards, to lay his working fancy asleep, which otherwise would keep him from sleeping the great part of the night.' Aubrey has a ' small-beer ' anecdote, too, of Bacon, which I should blush to record if I had the slightest belief in it : ' In his Lordship's prosperity, Sir Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, was his great friend and acquaintance ; but when he was in disgrace and want, he was so unworthy as to forbid his butler to let him have any more small-beer, which he had often sent for, his stomach being nice, and the small-beer of Gray's Inn not liking his palate.' Where could Aubrey have picked up this bit for his scandalous chronicle ? Bacon died the year Aubrey was born ; and Greville two years after. I dare say Aubrey and Dmmmond were both somewhat nearer the truth, in the matter of ' Canary,' when their subject was Ben Jonson. 1 He would many times exceed in drink,' says Aubrey. 1 Drink was one of the elements in which he lived,' Bays Drummond. Aubrey, however, is circumstantial about the influence of the element : ' Canary was his beloved liquor : then ho would tumble home to bed, and when he had thoroughly perspired, then to study.' I should have thought that the roystering cavalier-poet, John Cleveland, would have furnished Aubrey with some bibulous anecdotes; but he Bimplv says, * He and Sam Butler, &c, of Gray's Inn, JOHN AUBREY, AND HIS EMINENT MEN. 243 did hold a club every night.' No private toss-potting for them. Who were the et-caeteras ? Surely Robert Herrick was of the number. Of him Aubrey has no record. But he ' that kept a pet pig which he taught to drink out of a tankard,'* must surely have been a true clubbable man during the thirteen years when he was wandering in London, away from his dull vicarage of Dean Prior, from which he had been ejected. How he revels and luxuriates in his ' Welcome to Sack !' How rapturously he invokes the great 4 Ben 'to ' Meet at those lyrick feasts Made at the Sun, The Dog, the Triple Tun, y Where we such clusters had As made us nobly wild, not mad.' These poets have left a Bacchanalian odour behind them. But there is a smack of tipsy jollity in every grade of society, as if in defiance of the Puritans. If Denham, who, according to Aubrey, ' was generally temperate in drink- ing,' was betrayed on one occasion, after being ■ merry at the tavern,' into the fancy ' to get a plasterer's brush and a pot of ink, and blot out all the signs between Temple Bar and Charing Cross,' — what shall we say of Dr. Butler, a famous physician, who, our veritable record tells, ' would many times go to the tavern, but drink by himself : about nine or ten at night old Nell comes for him with a candle and lanthorn, and says, u Come home, you drunken beast ?" ' We wonder at Nell ; for drunkenness in the days of James I. was the rule of good society. It was an awful time when Sir John Harrington writes, ' The ladies abandon their sobriety, and are seen to roll about in intoxication,' — and sincerely laments ' that the Gunpowder fright is got out of all our heads, and we are going on, hereabouts, as if the devil was contriving every man should blow up himself by wild riot, excess, and devastation of time and temperance.' It is no wonder that in that century, Aubrey, and every gossiping writer, has something to tell of good-fellowship * See Quarterly Review, vol. iv. p. 172. r2 244 ONCE UPON A TIME. that went beyond the limits of reason, — and of that degra- dation of the learned, the witty, and the high-born, which we now associate with ignorance, stupidity, and menial condition. A great change for the better has taken place in our own day amongst all ranks. But whilst we flatter ourselves that we are marvellously improved with regard to the grosser vices, let us be quite sure that we have retained the elevation of character that in those days made men fast friends and generous enemies. Aubrey has plenty of anecdotes which show that in a time of fiery politics and common danger there were high qualities evolved out of the strifes of the time, and that if ' men fell out they knew not why,' they could lay aside dirty revenges and life-long hatreds. George Withers got Denham's estate from the Parliament. After the Eestoration Withers is in danger, for he had written bitter things against the Royalists. ' Sir John Denham went to the King, and desired his Majesty not to hang him, for that whilst George "Withers lived, he, Sir John, should not be the worst poet in England.' The kind heart is as admirable as the ready wit. D'Avenant held a command under the Marquis of Newcastle in the Civil Wars, when he had the custody of two aldermen of York, who were contumacious in the matter of ransom. He treated the aldermen kindly, and at last suffered them to escape. When D'Avenant was in danger of his life from the Parliament, the aldermen made a journey to London, and succeeded in accomplishing his safety. Harrington, the republican, was a friend of Charles I. : ' The King loved his company, only he would not endure to hear of a Commonwealth ; and Mr. Harrington passionately loved his Majesty. Mr. Harrington and the King often disputed about government.' Sir James Long was colonel of horse, in a Royalist brigade. ' Oliver, Protector, hawking at Ilounslow Heath, discoursing with ln'm, fell in love with his company, and commanded him to wear his sword, and to meet him a hawking, which made the strict Cavaliers look on him with an evil eye.' The chivalric spirit was not quite extinct. JOHN AUBKEY, AND HIS EMINENT MEN. 245 If the Boswell of the first coffee-houses gives us glimpses of the romance of biography, he more frequently lets down the heroic into the common ways of common men. I shall continue to gaze upon the richest side of the shield, in spite of Aubrey. When I think of Falkland, I shall see him as Clarendon has painted him. Let me look at the Secretary of Charles as he presents himself to my view, on the night before the battle of Newbury. The watch-fires of two armies are lighted. The King has marched into Newbury that afternoon. The Earl of Essex has advanced from Hungerford, and has found the royal forces in possession) the town, and of the low meadows immediately adjoining. He takes up his position on a little hill about a mile distant. It is midnight. Charles is sleeping. The fiery Rupert dreams of exterminating the rebel trained-bands. Falkland can take no rest. He w r alks by the side of the river amongst the outposts. He comes before me, shaping his melancholy thoughts into language: — ' Yes, John Hampden, my once friend, my beloved enemy, would I could follow thee to-morrow ! Three months ago thou didst ride blithely on a sunny morning into the field of Chalgrave, and shortly thou didst ride out of the field with thy head hanging down and thy hands upon the neck of thy horse. A week of agony, John, and then to the grave of thy fathers. When we stood together, in our wordy war against exorbitances, we little thought it would come to this. Oh, Peace ! Peace !' Shall I give up this shadow of Falkland — shall I doubt Clarendon, who says that he rushed into danger, ' that all might see that his impatiency for peace proceeded not from pusillanimity, or fear to adventure his own person ?' Aubrey calls those who took the heroic view of Falkland's death 1 superfine discoursing politicians,' and says, ' I have been well informed, by those that best knew him, and knew intrigues behind the curtain, as they say, that it was the grief of the death of Mistress Moray, a handsome lady at court, who was his mistress, and whom he loved above all creatures, was the true cause of his being so madly guilty 246 OXCE UPON A TIME. of his own death.' It may be. The private grief and the public were not incompatible. But I will not believe Aubrey when he depreciates those whom history loves. I will not believe that Falkland ' in his youth was very wild, and also mischievous, as being apt to stab.' I will not believe the story of Greville denying Bacon small-beer. I can believe that Ealeigh ' was damnable proud.' I cannot believe of Sir Henry Saville, Provost of Eton, that he said * when a young scholar was recommended to him for a good wit — "Out upon him, I'll have nothing to do with him; give me the plodding student. If I would look to wits I would go to Newgate : there be the wits !" ' Some day or other I may be brought to believe what Aubrey says of Mr. William Shakspere, — 'his father was a butcher; and I have been told heretofore by some of the neighbours, that when he was a boy he exercised his father's trade, but when he killed a calf he would do it in a high style, and make a speech.' But I will not believe that the great Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood by patient in- duction, said of Bacon, ■ he writes philosophy like a Lord Chancellor.' Some of the modes in which Aubrey deals with the habits and opinions of men are very characteristic, not only of the writer, but of his age. Newspapers were more feared than admired. Sir John Birkenhead, who was the editor of one of the earliest newspapers, ■ Mercurius Aulicus,' ' would lie damnably.' A very singular editorial quality that! Admiral Blake, when at Oxford, ' would steal swans.' We may think less harshly, now, of Shakspere's alleged deer- stealing. Of Butler, he writes, • Satirical wits disoblige whom they converse with ;' and yet Butler, according to his estimate, was 'a good fellow.' The habits and tempers of the race are not altered. He tells some stories of Bishop Corbet — not very clerical, but funny : ' After he was Doctor of Divinity ho sang ballads at the cross at Abingdon, on a market-day. He and some of his camerades were at the tavern by the cross ; the ballad-singer complained he had no custom — he could not put off his ballads. The jolly JOHN AUBREY, AND HIS EMINENT MEN. 247 Doctor puts off his gown and puts on the ballad-singer's leathern jacket, and being a handsome man, and had a rare full voice, he presently vended a great many, and had a great audience.' We can believe this of the author of ' The Fairies' Farewell.' There is real music in these lines : — ' When Tom came home from labour, Or Ciss to milking rose, Then merrily went their tabour, t And nimbly went their toes.' Aubrey has a story of Sir Miles Fleetwood, Recorder of London, which sounds a little apocryphal : * He was a very severe hanger of highwaymen, so that the fraternity were resolved to make an example of his worship, which they executed in this manner : — They lay in wait for him not far from Tyburn, as he was to come from his house in Bucks ; had a halter in readiness ; brought him under the gallows, fastened the rope about his neck, his hands tied behind him and servants bound, and then left him to the mercy of his horse, which he called Ball. So he cried, " Ho, Ball! Ho, Ball!" and it pleased God that his horse stood still till somebody came along, which was half a quarter of an hour or more.' Was the eminent example of the highwaymen of London known to the Porteous mob of Edinburgh in the next century ? Lord Chief Justice Pop- ham, according to Aubrey, deserved well to have been upon Ball instead of the active Becorder — Ball would have been wiser than to have stood still with Popham. For the Chief Justice obtained a park and a manor to save an honourable murderer's life. ' He for several years addicted himself but little to the study of the laws, but profligate company, and was wont to take a purse with them. His wife considered her and his condition, and at last prevailed upon him to lead another life, and to stick to the study of the law, which, upon her importunity, he did, being then about thirty years old. He spake to his wife to provide a very good entertainment for his camerades to take leave of them.' Memorandum 248 ONCE UPON A TIME. for a pair of historical pictures by Mr. Ward or Mr. Egg : The barrister at his rogues' feast j the judge charging the jury for the murderer. Some of Aubrey's Oxford recollections-are amusing illus- trations of University manners. Doctor Kettle is preaching at St. Mary's. The learned fellows are bound to hear Doctor Kettle, but not so their lackeys, and so the Divine concludes a sermon thus : — ' But now I see it is time for me to shut up my book, for I see the Doctors' men come in wiping their beards, from the ale-house.' A good specimen, this, of a funeral-sermon, on a gentleman commoner, who died of the small-pox: — 'He was the finest, sweetest young gentleman ; it did do my heart good to see him walk along the quadrangle. We have an old proverb, that hungry dogs will eat .dirty puddings ; but I must needs say for this young gentleman, that he always loved sweet things.' A great geometry professor was Doctor Kettle. * As they were reading and circumscribing figures, said he, " I will show you how to inscribe a triangle in a quadrangle. Bring a pig into the quadrangle, and I will set the college dog at him, and he will take the pig by the ear ; then come 1 and take the dog by the tail, and the hog by the tail, and so you have a triangle in a quadrangle." ' It was unkind in Aubrey to tell posterity these stories of the Principal of his own College, for the sagacious Doctor ' observed that, the houses that had the smallest beer had the most drunkards, for it forced them to go into the town to comfort their stomachs ; wherefore Dr. Kettle always had in his college excellent beer, not better to be had in Oxon.' I have lingered about good old Aubrey somewhat too long, rather picking out some of his less familiar scraps than those which have been accepted in serious Biography. \\ hat he collected about Milton was really valuable ; and so of Hobbes, with whom he was intimate. Aubrey and all writers of his class, however trivial t>e their stories and quaint their remarks, have a value beyond that of the solemn annalists of the public deeds of past generations, who JOHN AUBREY, AND HIS EMINENT MEN. 249 put down very little from their own knowledge. ' We can read anywhere of the battle-field and the council-chamber — show us, if you can, the domestic interior. We are sated with state apartments ; let us have a peep into the kitchen or the housekeeper's room.'* * Quarterly Roview, vol. xciii. p. 463. 248 ONCE UPON A TIME. for a pair of historical pictures by Mr. Ward or Mr. Egg : The barrister at his rogues' feast ; the judge charging the jury for the murderer. Some of Aubrey's Oxford recollections-are amusing illus- trations of University manners. Doctor Kettle is preaching at St. Mary's. The learned fellows are bound to hear Doctor Kettle, but not so their lackeys, and so the Divine concludes a sermon thus : — ' But now I see it is time for me to shut up my book, for I see the Doctors' men come in wiping their beards, from the ale-house.' A good specimen, this, of a funeral-sermon, on a gentleman commoner, who died of the small-pox: — 'He was the finest, sweetest young gentleman ; it did do my heart good to see him walk along the quadrangle. We have an old proverb, that hungry dogs will eat .dirty puddings ; but I must needs say for this young gentleman, that he always loved sweet things.' A great geometry professor was Doctor Kettle. ' As they were reading and circumscribing figures, said he, " I will show you how to inscribe a triangle in a quadrangle. Bring a pig into the quadrangle, and I will set the college dog at him, and he will take the pig by the ear ; then come 1 and take the dog by the tail, and the hog by the tail, and so you have a triangle in a quadrangle." ' It was unkind in Aubrey to tell posterity these stories of the Principal of his own College, for the sagacious Doctor ' observed that, the houses that had the smallest beer had the most drunkards, for it forced them to go into the town to comfort their stomachs ; wherefore Dr. Kettle always had in his college excellent beer, not better to be had in Oxon.' I have lingered about good old Aubrey somewhat too long, rather picking out some of his less familiar scraps than those which have been accepted in serious Biography. \\ hat he collected about Milton was really valuable ; and so of Hobbes, with whom he was intimate. Aubrey and all writers of his class, however trivial be their stories and quaint their remarks, have a value beyond that of the solemn annalists of the public deeds of past generations, who JOHN AUBREY, AND HIS EMINENT MEN. 249 put down very little from their own knowledge. ■ We can read anywhere of the battle-field and the council-chamber — show us, if you can, the domestic interior. We are sated with state apartments ; let us have a peep into the kitchen or the housekeeper's room.'* * Quarterly Review, vol. xciii. p. 463. 252 ONCE UPON A TIME. them. The first printers of the Bible were, however, cautious ; they did not see the number of readers upon which they were to rely for a sale. In 1540, Grafton printed but 500 copies of his complete edition of the Scriptures ; and yet, so great was the rush to this new supply of the most important knowledge, that we have existing 326 editions of the English Bible, or parts of the Bible, printed between 1526 and 1600. The early English printers did not attempt what the continental ones were doing for the ancient classics. Down to 1540 no Greek book had appeared from an English press. Oxford had only printed a part of Cicero's Epistles; Cambridge, no ancient writer whatever: only three or four old Roman writers had been reprinted, at that period, throughout England. But a great deal was done for public instruction by the course which our early printers took ; for, as one of them says, ' Divers famous clerks and ^learned men translated and made many noble works into our English tongue, whereby there was much more plenty and abundance of English used than there was in times past.' The English nobility were, probably, for more than the first half-century of English printing, the great encouragers of our press : they required transla- tions and abridgements of the classics, versions of French and Italian romances, old chronicles, and helps to . devout exercises. Caxton and his successors abundantly supplied these wants ; and the impulse to most of their exertions was given by the growing demand for literary amusement on the part of the great. Caxton, speaking of his ' Boke of Eneydos,' says, ' This present book is not for a rude up- landish man to labour therein, nor read it.' But a great change was working in Europe ; the ' rude uplandish man,' if he gave promise of talent, was sent to school. The priests strove with the laity for the education of the people ; and not only in Protestant but in Catholic countries, were schools and universities everywhere founded. Here, again, was a new source of employment for the press — A, B, C's, or Abseys, Primers, Catechisms, Grammars, Dictionaries, BEGINNINGS OF POPULAR LITERATURE. 253 were multiplied in every direction. Books became, also, during this period, the tools of professional men. There were not many works of medicine, but a great many of law ; and even the people required instruction in the ordinances they were called upon to obey, which they received in the form of proclamations. The course of the early printers was based upon the principle that they could produce books cheaper by the press than by the scribe. This point once established, the next fact would be also clear — that the more impressions they printed the cheaper the book could be afforded. Beyond this great fact there was a difficulty. There would arise in their minds the same doubt which has puzzled all printers and booksellers from the time of Caxton to our times; which is at the bottom of all con- troversies about dear books and low-priced books at the present hour; and which will continue to perplex the producers of books, even should the entire population beyond infancy become readers, and have the means of purchasing books in some form or other. That question is simply a commercial one, and is perfectly independent of any schemes of public or private generosity for the en- lightenment of the people ; it is— Given the subject of a book, its mode of treatment, the celebrity or otherwise of its author, its amount of matter — what is the natural limit of its first sale, and the necessary ratio of its published price ? If the probable demand be under- rated, there will be a high price, which will restrict the natural demand ; and if over-rated, there will be a low price, which will curtail the natural profit. This is scarcely a question for enthusiasts for cheapness to decide, upon the broad asser- tion that a large sale of low-priced books will be more profitable than a small sale of high-priced books. In 1825, Archibald Constable, then the great publisher, propounded to the then ' Great Unknown,' his plan for revolutionizing 'the art and traffic of bookselling.' He exhibited the annual schedule of assessed taxes, having reckoned the number of persons who paid for each separate 254 ONCE UPON A TIME. article of luxury; and from that document he calculated that, if he produced every year ' twelve volumes so good that millions must wish to have them, and so cheap that every butcher's callant may have them, if he please to let me tax him sixpence a week,' he should sell them, ' not by thousands or tens of thousands, but by hundreds of thou- sands — ay, by millions.' It is recorded that a worthy divine, instructing his bookseller to publish a sermon of his composition, decided that at least twelve thousand should be the number printed, he having calculated that one copy would be required in each parish by the clergy- man alone, to say nothing of chance customers. These statistics were ingenious, but they were not safe guides. The callants did not consent to be taxed sixpence a week ; and the rectors and curates did not rush to St. Paul's Churchyard to buy up the limited impression of the sermon. But the Edinburgh publisher, and the rural divine, were nevertheless right in their endeavour to find some principle upon which they could determine the probable demand for a literary work. Constable proposed to himself the union of goodness and cheapness, to create a demand that (still using his own words) would have made him * richer than the possession of all the copyrights of all the quartos that ever were, or will be, hot-pressed.' The good- ness without the cheapness might have produced little change in the market ; the cheapness without the goodness might have been more influential. But, with the truest combination of these qualities, there is nothing so easy or so common as to over-rate a demand in the commerce of books. The price of a book aspiring to the greatest popularity can only be settled by an estimate of the probable number of readers at any one time in the com- munity, and by a still more difficult estimate of the sort of reading which is likely to interest the greatest number. The same difficulty arises with regard to every new book, and has always arisen. The amount of the ' reading public,' with its almost endless subdivisions, arising out of station, or ago, or average intelligence, or prevailing taste, BEGINNINGS OF POPULAR LITERATURE. 255 is very difficult to be estimated in our own day ; and there are not many authentic details ready to our hand upon which we can make an estimate for any past period. We will endeavour, out of these scanty landmarks, to collect some facts relating to the former state and progressive ex- tension of the realms of print. It is no modern discovery that a book cheap enough for the many amongst reading people to buy, and at the same time a book which the many would have a strong desire to buy, would be more advantageous to the manufacturer of books than a dear book which the few only could buy, and which the few only would desire to buy. There is pre- served, in the handwriting of Christopher Barker, in 1582, ' A Note of the offices and other special licences for printing granted by her Majesty, with a conjecture of their valuation.'* This worthy printer to the Queen probably a little under-rated his own gains, when he says that the whole Bible requires so great a cost, that his predecessors kept the realm twelve years without ventur- ing a single edition, but that he had desperately ad- ventured to print four in a year and a half, expending about 3000?., to the certain ruin of his wife and family if he had died in the time. Of these four editions, three were in folio, and one in quarto. The sale of the folios would necessarily be limited by the cost, in the way that the same unhappy patentee complains of as to his Book of Common Prayer, ' which few or none do buy except the minister.' But how stands the sale of smaller and less expensive books ? Mr. Daye prints the Psalms in metre, which book, ' being occupied of all sorts of men, women, and children, and requiring no great stock for the furnish- ing thereof is therefore gainful.' The small Catechism is * also a profitable copy, for that it is general.' Mr. Seres prints the Morning and Evening Prayer, Avith the Collects and the Litany ; and where poor Mr. Barker sells one Book of Common Prayer, ' he (Seres) furnisheth the whole parishes throughout the realm, which are commonly a * Archa-ologia, vol. xxv. page 100, &c. 256 ONCE UPON A TIME. hundred to one.' But with all his laments and jealousies, Queen Elizabeth's printer, in those anti-commercial days, had hit the sound principle that is at the root of the commerce of books. There is one of the printers, he says, whose patent contains all dictionaries in all tongues, all chronicles and histories whatsoever; and his position is thus described : — ' If he print competent numbers of each to maintain his charges, all England, Scotland, and much more, were not able to utter them ; and if he should print but a few of each volume, the prices would be exceedingly great, and he in more danger to be undone than likely to gain.' Here are the Scylla and Charybdis of the book- trade. Let * all good books on their first appearance appeal to the needy multitude,' says one adviser. Mr. Barker answers, ' All England, Scotland, and rnuch more, were not able to utter them.' ' Let the rich and luxurious be first addressed,' say the old traditional belie vers that dearness and excellence' are synonymous. Mr. Barker answers, — ' Print but a few of each volume, at exceedingly high prices, and there is more danger of ruin than gain.' The Note of Christopher Barker to Lord Burghley is an answer to a complaint that had been made in 1582, that the privileges granted to members of the Stationers' Com- pany ' will be the overthrow of the printers and stationers within this city, being in number one hundred and seventy- five, and thereby the excessive prices of books prejudiciable to the state of the whole realm.' In the absence of any knowledge of the numbers printed of a book, and of its consequent price, at the time of this complaint against the monopolists of charging ' excessive prices,' it may enable us to form some estimate of the character of the books issued in 1582, and thence of the quality of the readers of books, if we glance at two other sources of information — Ames and Herbert's ' Typographical Antiquities,' and Mr. Collier's ' Extracts from the Registew of the Stationers' Company.' The latter is especially valuable, as showing what was doing in the most popular literature — the litera- ture of ballads and broadsides, of marvellous adventures BEGINNINGS OF POPULAR LITERATURE. 257 and merry tales — which matters Ames and Herbert rejected in a great degree. In the twenty -fifth year of Queen Elizabeth then, we learn that the printers of London had a good deal of work to do, in the production of Bibles, Testaments, and Prayer- books — of A B C's, Primers, and Catechisms ; of divinity, chiefly controversial ; of almanacs and prognostications ; of Latin books for grammar-schools ; of grammars and dictionaries; of statutes and law-books. This was the staple work of the press, which had been going on from the beginning of the century, and constantly increasing. We learn from the ' Privy-purse Accounts of Elizabeth of York,' that, in 1505, twenty pence were paid for a Primer and a Psalter. This sum was equal to a week's wages of a labourer in husbandry. The Primer and the Psalter were scarcely for the labourer. In 1516 * Fitzherbert's Grand Abridgment,' then first published, cost the lawyer forty shillings — a price equal to the expense of a week's commons for all the students of Fitzherbert's inn. No doubt a century of printing in England had greatly lowered the price of all books that were essential instruments in the learned professions, or for the conduct of school education. But in the reign of Elizabeth the class of general readeis had arisen; a class far more extensive than that of the clerks and noble gentlemen to whom our first printers addressed their translations of the classics, their French and Italian romances, their ' Gesta Eomanorum,' their old chronicles, and their early poetry. It was a time of travel and adventure. In this year, 1582, we find printed ' Discovery and Conquest of the East Indies,' ' Discovery and Conquest of the Provinces of Peru, and also of the rich Mines of Potosi,' 'Divers Voyages touching the Discovery of America ' (Hakluyt), ' Acts and Gests of the Spaniards in the West Indies,' ' State of Flanders and Portugal.' ' A Discourse in commendation of Sir Francis Drake ' had appeared in 1581. Frobisher had received his poetical ' Welcome Home,' by Churchyard, in 1 579. Of historical works, we have none printed in 1582, with the exception s 258 ONCE UPON A TIME. of ' The Life, Acts, and Death of the most noble, valiant, and renowned Prince Arthur,' which the readers of all classes would receive with undoubting mind as an au- thentic record. But solid books of history had very recently been produced. Holinshed had published his ' Chronicles ;' Guicciardini had been translated by Jeffrey Fenton, and Herodotus by B. K. The rude historical drama was then just arising to familiarise the people with their country's annals. In ten more years the press would teem with play-books ; for the triumphant era was approaching of those whom, in 1579, Stephen Gosson denounced to uttermost perdition in his * Pleasant invective against poets, pipers, jesters, and such- like caterpillars of a commonwealth.' That species of popular literature is almost absent from the Eegisters of 1582 ; but the materials upon which much of the romantic drama is founded were familiar to the readers of this period. Who were the readers, we may judge from the titles of some of these novels. One will indicate a class : — ' The Wonderful Adventures of Simonides, gathered as well for the instruction of our noble young gentlemen as our honourable courtly ladies.' The translators and writers of these romances seem to have had no notion of a class of readers beyond the circle of the rich and the high-born. Sidney's ' Arcadia' is called ' The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia ;' and in his Dedication to ' My dear Lady and Sister,' he says, ' It is done only for you, and to you ; * * * for indeed for severer eyes it is not, being but a trifle, and that triflingly handled.' A few years after came Robert Greene, and other writers of imagination, who were equally starved in writing plays for the stage-managers and stories for the stationers. Greene's ■ randosto,' afterwards called 4 Dorastus and Fawnia,' is a small quarto of fifty-six pages, in which Shakspere found the story of ' The Winters Tale.' The author describes this novelet as ' pleasant for age to avoid dreary thoughts; profitable for youth to eschew other wanton pastimes ; and bringing to both a desired content.' He dedicates it 'To the Gentlemen Readers, BEGINNINGS OF POPULAR LITERATURE. 259 Health ;' and to these ' Gentlemen ' he says, * If any con- demn my rashness for troubling your ears with so many unlearned pamphlets, I will straight shroud myself under the shadow of your courtesies.' The scholar was address- ing the ' gentlemen ' of the Inns of Court and of the Uni- versities. He was looking to a ruder class of readers when, in 1591, he published 'A Notable Discovery of Cosenage,' having himself, as he confesses, kept villainous company. This tract he addresses ' To the young Gentle- men, Merchants, Apprentices, Farmers, and plain Country- men.' Here is a great extension of the reading public : but we have some doubts if Greene's tract ever reached ' Farmers and plain Countrymen.' The question arises, how were books to be circulated in the provinces ? It was more than a century later before some of the largest towns, such as Birmingham, had their booksellers. The pedlers who kept the fairs and markets were the book- sellers of the early days of the press. The last new pamphlet travelled into the country in the same pack with the last new ruff; it travelled many miles, and found few buyers. And yet for some popular books the demand was not contemptible. Sir Thomas Challoner translated ' The Praise of Folly,' of Erasmus, which was published in 1577 ; and the Stationers' Company stipulated with the publisher that he should print ' not above 1 500 of any impression^' and that ' any of the Company may lay on with him, reasonably, at every impression.' Mr. Collier, who gives this curious extract from ' the Stationers' Registers,' thinks that this meant ' sharing the profits.' It meant that whilst the sheets were at press any member of the Company might print off a reasonable number for his own sale. To * lay on ' is still a technical term in printing. Chal loner's Erasmus was an amusing book for the scholar, and had, no doubt, a special sale amongst teachers and students. Philip Stubbes, in his ' Anatomy of Abuses,' first published in 1583, bitterly complains that 'pamphlets of toys and babbleries corrupt men's minds and pervert good wits ;' and he especially laments that such books, being ' better s2 260 ONCE UPON A TIME. esteemed and more vendible than the godliest and sagest books that be,' have caused 'that worthy Book of Martyrs, made by that famous father and excellent instrument in God his Church, Master John Foxe, so little to be accepted.' We might have concluded that, even in those days of limited bookselling, the great popular book of the ' Acts and Monuments ' would have had an universal sale, with its wonderful woodcuts and its deep interest for the bulk of the people. But when its excitement was simply historical, two centuries afterwards, the same book would be found in many a peasant's cottage, for the sole reason that it might be purchased in small portions by- a periodical out- lay. Whilst the wares of worthy John Fox were sleeping in the bookseller's warehouse, the people were buying their ' Almanacs and Prognostications,' which Christopher Barker, speaking of their patentee, calls 'a pretty com- modity towards an honest man's living.' They were buy- ing, in this year of 1582, ' The Dial of Destiny,' an astro- logical treatise ; ' The Examination and Confession of Witches ;' ' The Execution of Edmund Campion, the Jesuit ;' ' The Interpretation of Dreams ;' ' A Treatise of the rare and strange Wonders seen in the Air.' They were buying ■ A Ballad of the Lamentation of a modest Maiden being deceitfully forsaken ;' ■ A Ballad entitled * Now we go, or the Papists' new overthrow ;' ' The picture of two pernicious Varlets, called Prig rickthank and Clem Clawback ;' ' A Ballad entitled a doleful Ditty, declaring the unfortunate hap of two faithful friends, the one went out of her wits and the other for sorrow died.' They were buying story-books in prose and rhyme, — accounts of murders and treasons, of fires and earth- quakes, — and songs, ' old and plain.' The Court had its 1 Euphues, very pleasant for all gentlemen to read ;' and the City its mirror of Court manners, entitled * How a young gentleman may behave himself in all companies.' If we look very broadly at the character of the popular literature of the middle period of the reign of ElizabHh, and compare it with the popular literature of our own BEGINNINGS OF POPULAR LITERATURE. 261 day, we shall find that the differences are more in degree than in kind. We have purposely selected the period before the uprising of our great dramatic litera- ture, which must have had a prodigious effect upon the intellectual condition of the people. There was a great deal of training going forward in the grammar- schools for the sons of tradesmen, and of the more opulent cultivators ; but the rudiments of knowledge .were not accessible to the labourers in rural districts, and the in- ferior handicraftsmen. There was, probably, no great distinction in the acquirements of the gentry and the burgesses. Some read with a real desire for information ; some for mere amusement. Newspapers were not as yet. In the country-house, where reading was an occupation, there was Hall's ' Chronicle,' and Stow's * Chronicle,' and, may be, his rival, Grafton's ; there was Painter's ' Palace of Pleasure,' Tusser's 'Five Hundred Points of good Hus- bandry,' and, though Thilip Stubbes denies its popularity, Fox's * Book of Martyrs.' Chaucer and Gower had become obsolete in the courtly circles ; but Surrey, and Sackville, and Gascoigne were dozed over after the noontide dinner. The peers and commoners who came to Court and Parlia- ment bought the new Travels and Discoveries, and carried them into the country, for the solace of many a long winter evening's curiosity about ' antres vast and deserts idle.' The Greek and Koman classics were becoming somewhat popularly known through translations. But it is tolerably clear that much of the light reading, and most of the cheapest books, were rubbish spun over and over again out of the novels of Bandello, and Boccaccio, and Boisteau, and losing their original elegance in hasty and imperfect translations. The taste for such reading received its best counteraction when the stage became a noble instrument of popular instruction; and when those who did not frequent the theatres had a wondrous store of exciting fiction opened to them by a few plays of Shakspere and many more of his contemporaries. It was in vain that Puritanism, such as that of Prynne, denounced ' the ordi- 262 ONCE UPON A TIME. nary reading of Comedies, Tragedies, Arcadias, Amorous Histories, Poets,' as unlawful. They held their empire till civil war came to put an end to most home-studies, except that of party and polemical pamphlets. But even in the tempestuous times that preceded the great out- break, Sir Henry Wotton, quoting the saying of a French- man, laments that ' his country was much the worse by old men studying the venom of policy, and young men reading the dregs of fancy.' SECTION II. In a condition of society which may be characterised as that of a very imperfect civilisation — when communication is difficult, and in some cases impossible ; when the influ- ence of the capital upon the provinces is very partial and uncertain ; when knowledge is for the most part confined to the learned professions — we must regard the rich upper classes precisely in the same relation to popular literature as we now regard the poor lower classes. We must view them as essentially uncritical and unrefined, swallowing the coarsest intellectual food with greediness, looking chiefly to excitement and amusement in books, and not very willingly elevating themselves to mental improve- ment as a great duty. When Ben Jonson speaks of the 1 prerogative the vulgar have to lose their judgments, and like that which is naught '—when he derides the taste of ' the beast the multitude ' — he also takes care to tell us that his description of those who 'think rude things greater than polished,' not only applied to ■ the sordid multitude, but to the neater sort of our gallants : for all are the multitude ; only they ditfer in clothes, not in judgment or understanding.'* About the time when Jonson wrote thus — more calmly than when he denounced * the loathed stage, and the more loathsome age ' — Burton was exhibiting the intellectual condition of the gentry in his 'Anatomy of Melancholy:' * Discoveries. BEGINNINGS OF POPULAR LITERATURE. 263 — ' I am not ignorant how barbarously and basely for the most part our ruder gentry esteem of libraries and books ; how they neglect and contemn so great a treasure, so inesti- mable a benefit, as iEsop's cock did the jewel he found in the dunghill ; and" all through error, ignorance, and want of education.' Again, he says, ' If they read a book at any time, 'tis an English chronicle, St. Huon of Bordeaux, Amadis de Gaul, &c, a play-book, or some pamphlet of news ; and that at such seasons only when they cannot stir abroad.' The ' pamphlet of news ' was a prodigious ingredient in the queer cauldron of popular literature for the next half -century. Every one has heard of the thirty thousand tracts in the British Museum, forming two thousand volumes, all published between 1640 and 1660. The impression of many of these was probably very small ; for Eush worth, to whom they became authorities, tells us that King Charles 1. gave ten pounds for the liberty to read one at the owner's house in St. Paul's Churchyard. This was the twenty years' work of Milton's ■ pens and heads, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas.' Others were, * as fast reading, trying all things.' Milton asks, ' AVhat could a man require more from a nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge ?' He truly answers : * Wise and faithful labourers, to make a knowing people, a nation of prophets, sages, and worthies.'* The ' wise and faithful labourers ' were scarcely to be found in the civil and eccle- siastical violence of these partisan writers. But they were the pioneers of constitutional liberty ; and till that fabric was built up, literature, properly so called, would offer few things great or enduring. The demand for books in that stormy period was, doubtless, very limited. The belief that the ~Eu:u)v BcHTtXitcri was written by Charles I. would natu- rally account for the sale of fifty editions in one year. But from 1623 to 1664 only two editions of Shakspere were sold ; and when the Restoration came, an act of * Areopagitica. 26-i OXCE UPON" A TIME. Parliament was passed that only twenty printers should practise their art in the kingdom. The fact, as recorded by Evelyn, that at the fire of London, in 1666, the book- sellers who carried on their business in the neighbourhood of St. Paul's lost as many books, in quires, as were worth 200,000/., is rather a proof of a slow demand than of the enormous extent of bookselling. In the vaults of Saint Faith's were rotting many a copy of what the world has agreed to call ' heavy ' books ; books in advance of their time ; books that no price would have made largely saleable — the books for the few. The terrible quarter of a century that had preceded the Restoration, and the new tastes which the return of the Stuarts brought to England, would seem to have swept away even the remembrances of the popular literature of Elizabeth and James. Edward Phillips, the nephew of Milton, has a remarkable passage with reference to the poets : ' As for the antiquated and fallen into obscurity from their former credit and reputation, they are for the most part those who have written beyond the verge of the present age ; for let us look back as far as about thirty or forty years, and we shall find a profound silence of the poets beyond that time, except of some -few dramatics, of whose real worth the interest of the now flourishing stage cannot but be sensible.'* This was written in 1674. What had the people to read who had forgotten Spenser, and Daniel, and Drayton, and Herbert ; who knew little of Shakspere, except in the translations of D'Avenant and Dryden ; and who, unquestionably, had small relish for the popular prose of another age, such as Bacon's ' Essays ?* They had rhyming tragedies ; they had obscene comedies ; they had their Sedleys and Rochesters. It is not wonder- ful that the popular taste soon grew corrupted. Pepys says (1666), 'To Deptford by water, reading Othello, Moor of Venice, which I ever heretofore esteemed a mighty good play ; but having so lately read The Adventures of * Theatrnm Poetarum, Preface. BEGINNINGS OF POPULAR LITERATURE. 265 Five Hours, it seems a mean thing.' Their ' light reading ' was a marvel — that romance literature which at one time was as popular in its degree as the shilling novel of our own day. We have before us Mr. Samuel Speed's Catalogue of Books, printed for him in 1670. The first is ' Pharamond, the famed Eomance, written by the author of those other two eminent volumes, Cassandra and Cleopatra.' These famed and eminent volumes are large folios, trans- lated from the French of M. de la Calprenede. If Calpre- nede was the Dumas, Madeleine Scudery was the Eugene Sue of those days. No popularity that these moderns have obtained by their feuilletons could have exceeded the ex- citement produced here, as well as in France, by the wonderful folios of their predecessors. ' Artamenes ' and 'Clelia,' to say nothing of ' Almahide ' and 'The Illus- trious Bassa,' were in every mansion of the ladies of quality. The matron and her daughters sat at their embroidery while the companion read aloud, night after night, a page or two of these interminable adventures, in which Greeks and Romans talked the language of the Grand Moimrque ; and the intrigues of the court, and the characters of its personages, were mysteriously shadowed forth in what were called ' Portraits' What signified that they were stupid ? They were as level to the compre- hension of their high-born readers as the penny novels of the present day are to the intelligence of the factory-girl. They had a long popularity, and were reprinted again and again, in their eight or ten volumes, when the age of duodecimos had arrived. They had been fashionable, and that was enough. Character they had none, and very little of human passions. They were constructed upon the ad- mirable recipe of Moliere in the ' Precieuses Ridicules ' — a lover without feeling ; a mistress without preference ; mutual insensibility ; sedulous attention to forms ; a decla- ration in a garden ; the banishment of the lover by the coquetting fair ; perseverance ; timid confessions ; rivals ; persecutions of fathers ; jealousies conceived under false appearances ; laments ; despairs ; abductions ; and all 266 OXCE UPON A TIME. that. Mammas thought they were wisely instructing their daughters, when they permitted Mademoiselle Scudery to teach them ' des regies dont, en bonne galanterie, on ne saurait se dispenser.' In vain Moliere, and Boileau, and Scarron laughed at the great heroic romances. They held their own till Le Sage in France, and Defoe and Fielding in England, spoke the language of real life. They show us how long the great and little vulgar will feed upon husks, till some real fruit is offered to them. But it is remarkable how, in the same age, works of real genius and works of intense dulness will run side by side. It may be a question how far ' Don Quixote ' drove out the romances of chivalry. ' Tartufe,' and ■ Le Malade Ima- ginaire ' were of the same era as that of the wonderful productions in which Cyrus was talking galanterie to Mandane through a thousand folio pages. When Pepys thought ' Othello ' a mean thing compared with* * The Adventures of Five Hours,' he also bought 'Hudibras, both parts, the book now in greatest fashion for drollery ;' but he tells us, his honest mind when he says, ' I cannot, I confess, see enough where the wit lies.' Voltaire had a different standard of taste when he wrote, 'I never met with so much wit in one single book as in this.' The politics of ' Hudibras ' made it ' in greatest fashion ;' the wit shot over the heads of the idle, dissipated, slavish, and corrupt courtiers who gave it their patronage, but eventually left its author to starve. Butler became popular in another generation ; and so did Milton. The first edition of 'Paradise Lost' sufficed for a circulation of seven years. The earliest Catalogue of Books published in this country contains a list of ' all the books printed in England since the dreadful fire, 1666, to the end of Trinity term, 1680.' The statistical results of this catalogue of the pro- ductions of the press for fourteen years have been ascer- tained by us. The whole number of books printed was 3550 ; of which 947 were divinity, 420 law, and 153 physic; 397 were school-books, and 253 on subjects of BEGINNINGS OF POPULAR LITERATURE. 267 geography and navigation, including maps. About one- half of these books were single sermons and tracts. Deducting the reprints, pamphlets, single sermons, and maps, we have estimated that, upon an average, 100 new books were produced in each year. About the time when this catalogue was published, John Dunton, one of the most eccentric, and perhaps therefore amusing, of the publishing race, went into business with half a shop. He can tell us something of the manufacture of some of these books of the London catalogue. He says, Luuton. 1 Printing was now uppermost in my thoughts ; and hackney authors began to ply me with specimens as earnestly, and with as much passion and concern, as the watermen do passengers with oars and scullers.' He adds, * As for their honesty, 'tis very remarkable. They'll either persuade you to go upon another man's copy, to steal his thought, or to abridge his books which should have got him bread for his lifetime.'* There were varieties of this * Dunton's ' Life and Errors/ ed. 1705, p. 70. 268 ONCE UPON A TIME. class : — ' Mr. Bradshaw was the best accomplished hackney author I have met with; his genius was quite above the common size, and his style was incomparably fine.' Dun- ton had a suspicion that Bradshaw wrote ' The Turkish Spy,' which might justify somewhat of his eulogium. Roger North says that ' the demi-booksellers,' who deal in ' the fresh scum of the press,' are such as • crack their brains to find out selling subjects, and keep hirelings in garrets, at hard meat, to write and correct by the great ; and so puff up an octavo to a sufficient thickness, and there is six shillings current for an hour and a half's reading, and perhaps never to be read or looked upon after.' The people get these wares cheaper now. The publishers of that day, and long afterwards, were not very nice as to the uniform excellence of the books they issued. Dunton informs us that Mr. William Rogers, who was the publisher of Sherlock and Tillotson, was concerned in publishing ' some Dying Speeches.' They had books for all tastes, and carried their goods to many markets. They were equally at home in Cheapside or at Stourbridge fair ; and the great Bernard Lintot exhibited his ' rubric posts ' in his shop, and kept a booth on the Thames when it was frozen over. Some, according to Dunton, were 'pirates and cormorants ;' others, who had ' the intimate acquaint- ance of several excellent pens, could never want copies.' Some were good at ' projection ' — the devisers of ' selling subjects ; ' and the talent of some ' lies at collection/ which Dunton exemplifies by Mr. Crouch, who ' melted down the best of our English histories into twelvepenny books, which are filled with wonders, rarities, and curio- sities.' One, who ■ printed The Flying Post, did often fill it with stolen copies ;' whilst Jacob Tonson, who paid Dryden like a safe tradesman as he was, and made him presents of melons and sherry, is very indignant that the great poet charged him fifty guineas for fourteen hundred and forty-six lines, when he expected to have had fifteen hundred and eighteen lines for forty guineas. Peace to their manes ! They were all doing something towards the BEGINNINGS OF POPULAR LITERATURE. 269 supply of that great want which was beginning to assert itself somewhat extensively in their day. They were, for the most part, rugged dealers in wares intellectual. They had many modes of turning a penny beyond the profits which they derived, as publishers, from l the great genius,' or ' the eminent hand,' which each patronised. They had some difficulties in their way as manufacturers ; although the more cautious and lucky did make fortunes. The more limited the public, the more uncertain the demand. They were pretty safe with their tracts, and their abridg- Tonson. ments, and their new comedies ; but when they had io deal with works of learning, which were necessarily costly, they and their authors — for the authors had often to sustain the charges of printing — encountered serious losses. We shall see how, as the commerce of books extended, new measures were adopted to lessen, if not to remove, the risk. 270 ONCE UPON A TIME. Amongst the ' Calamities of Authors ' there are many touching records of ' Solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty,' produced by printing books that met with no ready sale. Purchas was ruined by his • Pilgrimes ;' Castell by his ' Lexicon Heptaglotton f ; Ockley by his ' History of the Saracens ;' Rush worth by his ' Historical Collections.' Bishop Kennett gave away his ' Register and Chronicle/ saying, ' The volume, too large, brings me no profit.' The remedy was to be found in publishing by subscrip- tion. This plan, like most other human things, was subject to abuse ; but it was founded upon a true estimate of the peculiar risks of publishing. It is manifest that, if a certain number of persons unite in agreement to purchase a book which is about to be printed, the author may be at ease with regard to the issue of the enterprise, and the subscribers ought to receive what they want at a lower cost than when risk enters into price. For more than half a century nearly all the great books were published by subscription ; and the highest in literature felt no degrada- tion in canvassing themselves with their ■ subscription receipts.' It is easy to perceive, by the subscription prices, when the work was set on foot by an author, or his friends, simply as a more convenient mode of obtaining or bestowing money than begging or borrowing ; and when there was a real market value given for the com- modity offered. The scheme of levying contributions upon subscribers was as old as the days of Taylor, the Water- Poet, lie published his 'Pennilesse Pilgrimage' in iliis fashion ; and it seems that he sometimes gave his books to those who were unwilling to return his honorarium. He consoles himself by a lampoon against his false sub- scribers : — ' They took a book worth tvvelvepence, and were bound To give a crown, an angel, or a pound; A noble, piece, or half-piece, what they list, — They ]>.i>t their words, or freely set their list.' BEGINNINGS OF POPULAR LITERATURE. 271 Honest John had sixteen hundred and fifty such sub- scribers ; but of these, seven hundred and fifty were ' bad debtors.'* In the next century, Myles Davies has the same story to tell of the degradation of the literary beg- ging-letter writer. He leaves his books at the great man's door ; he writes letter upon letter, ' with fresh odes upon his graceship, and an account where I lived, and what noblemen had accepted of my present.' He walks .before the ' parlour- window,' and ' advances to address his grace to remember the poor author.' At last his parcel of books is returned to him unopened, ' with half-a-guinea upon top of the cargo,' and 'with desire to receive no more.' Heaven, in its mercy, has relieved the tribe from these heartbreaking disgraces. There may be ' the fear that kills,' but there is no longer the patron who starves. Goldsmith has described the devices and the abasement of the little man in the coffee-house, who ' drew out a bundle of proposals, begging me to subscribe to a new edition he was going to give the world' of Propertius, with notes.' 1 1 is plans were more ingenious and diversified than those of Myles Davies : ' I first besiege their hearts with flattery, and then pour in my proposals at the breach. If they subscribe readily the first time, I renew my request to beg a dedication fee. If they let me have that, I smite them once more for engraving their coat-of-arms at the top.' Forty years after Myles Davies, Samuel Johnson was enduring the anxieties attendant upon the subscription plan, although friends stood between the author and the customer. He writes to Burney in 1758, ' I have likewise enclosed twelve receipts (for Shakspere) ; not that I mean to impose upon you the trouble of pushing them with more importunity than may seem proper,' &c. Long was the subscribed Shakspere delayed ; and the proud struggling man had to bear Churchill's malignity, as well as the re- proaches of his own sense of honour : — ' He for subscribers baits his hook, And takes your cash ; but where's the book ?' * ' A Kicksey Winsey.' 272 ONCE UPON A TIME. Well might Johnson write, in more prosperous times, ' He that asks subscription soon finds that he has enemies. All who do not encourage him, defame him.' Johnson and his publishers set no price upon their books, as a gratuity to the author, beyond their common market value. But great men had gone before them, who regulated their sub- scription-prices by a higher estimate of the value of their works. Steele had received a guinea an octavo volume for the republication of ' The Tatler ;' Pope had six guineas for his six quarto volumes of ' The Iliad ;' — ' a sum,' says Johnson, 'according to the value of money at that time, by no means inconsiderable.' The subscription to Pope's * Shakspeare ' was also six guineas for six volumes. John- son's projected translation of Paul Sarpi's * History of the Council of Trent' was only to be charged twopence a sheet. That seems to have been the ordinary price of sub- scription books during the first half of the eighteenth centuiy. Du Halde's ' China,' which appears to have required a great deal of what 'the trade' call 'pushing,' was advertised by Cave at three-halfpence a sheet ; besides the attraction of a complicated lottery-scheme, with mar- vellous prizes. When the subscribers to a new book were served, the remaining copies were sold, generally at supe- rior rates. Sometimes, in the case of high-priced works, the unsold copies lay quiet through the mildew of a quarter of a century in the bookseller's warehouse. At Tonson's sale, in 1707, Pope's six-guinea Shakspeare had fallen to sixteen shillings for the hundred and forty copies then sold as a 'remainder.'* Many of the subscription books wore remarkably profitable. The gains of Pope upon his ' Iliad ' are minutely recorded in his Life by Johnson. Lintot paid the expense of the subscription copies, and gave the poet two hundred pounds a volume in addition. Lintot looked for his remuneration to an edition in folio. The project was knocked on the head by a reprint in Holland. in duodecimo; which edition was clandestinely imported, * 'Gentleman's Magazine, 1 vl. lvH„ quoted in Nicholls' 'Literary Anec- dotes,' vol. v. p. 597. BEGINNINGS OF POPULAR LITERATURE. 273 as in the recent days of French editions of Byron and Scott. Lintot took a wise course. He went at once to the general public with editions in duodecimo, at half-a- crown a volume, of which he very soon sold seven thousand five hundred copies. But it may well be doubted if Pope would have made five thousand three hundred pounds, if he had originally gone, without the quarto subscription process, to the buyers of duodecimos. Perhaps even the duodecimos would not have sold extensively without the reputation of the quartos. There was no great reading public to make a fortune for the poet out of small profits upon large sales. Some may think that Pope would have been as illustrious without the ease which this fortune gave him. It may be so. But of one thing we 1 are clear — that in every age the higher rewards of authorship, reaped by one eminent individual, are benefits to the great body of authors ; and thus that the villa at Twickenham had a certain influence in making what the world called ' Grub- street' less despicable and more thriving. It dissociated authorship from garrets. Yet it is marvellous, even now, how some of the race of attorneys and stockbrokers turn up their eyes when they hear of a successful writer keep- ing a brougham, and lament, over their claret, that such men will be improvident. In those days of subscription books there were great con- trasts of success and loss ; of steady support and capricious neglect. Conyers Middleton made a little fortune by his • Life of Cicero,' in two volumes quarto, published in 1741. His suspected heterodoxy was no bar to his success. Carte, in 1747, printed three thousand copies of the first volume of his ' General History of England,' for which he had ade- quate support. In that unlucky volume his Jacobitism peeped out, in a relation of an astonishing cure for the king's-evil, produced by the touch of the first Pretender, who, he says, 'had not at that time been crowned or anointed.' Away went the ' remainder ' of the three thou- sand volumes to the trunk-maker, and of the subsequent volumes only seven hundred and fifty were printed. T 274 ONCE UPON A TIME. Whether by subscription, or by the mode of fixing a pub- lished price for a general sale, — which, in the second half of the century, was superseding the attempt to ascertain the number of purchasers before publication, — there was always a great amount of caprice, or prejudice, in the unripe public judgment of a book, which rendered its fate very hazardous and uncertain. Hume, in 1754, published the first volume of his ' History of England.' He says, ' Mr. Millar told* me that in a twelvemonth he sold only forty-five copies of it.' Gibbon published the first volume of his 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ' in 1776 : ' I am at a loss,' he modestly tells us, ' how to describe the success of the work without betraying the vanity of the writer. The first impression was exhausted in a few days ; a second and third edition were scarcely adequate to the demand ; and the bookseller's property was twice invaded by the pirates of Dublin.' Thomson's ' Seasons ' was lying as waste paper in the pub- lisher's shop, when one Mr. Whatley purchased a copy; and his authority in the coffee-houses brought it into notice. Collins was not so fortunate. His • Odes ' would not sell. He repaid the bookseller the price he had received for the copyright, settled for the printing, and burnt the greater part of the impression. We have put together some of these scattered facts, to show how difficult was the publication of books before a great general public had been raised up to read and pur- chase, and how the risk of expensive works was sought to be lessened by taking hostages against evil fortune. The subdivision of large books into weekly or monthly numbers \\;i- one of the expedients that was early resorted to for attracting purchasers. Some curious relations of the first days of number-publishing are given in a rare pamphlet by the Rev. Thomas Stackhouse, the author of the well-known < History of the Bible.' In 1732 two booksellers, Mr. AYil- ford and Mr. Edlin, • when the success of some certain tilings published weekly set every little bookseller's wits to work,' proposed to this poor curate of Finchley ' to write some- thing which might be published weekly, but what it was BEGINNINGS OF POPULAR LITERATURE. 275 they knew not' At the Castle Tavern, in Paternoster Eow, the trio deliberated upon the ' something ' that was to have a run. Edlin was for a ' Roman History, brushing up Ozell's dull style, when the old thing would still do in a weekly manner.' Wilford was for ' Family Directors.' Stackhouse proposed the ' New History of the Bible.' AVilford backed out ; Edlin and Stackhouse quarrelled. The divine wanted many works of commentators and critics. The bookseller maintained ■ that the chief of his subscribers lived in South- wark, Wapping, and Ratclitf Highway ; that they had no notion of critics and commentators ; that the work would be adapted to their capacity, and therefore the less learning in it the better.' Stackhouse got out of the hands of this encourager of letters, found another publisher, and pros- pered, as well as he could, upon the subscriptions to his ' four sheets of original matter for (sixpence. '* Many of the number-books were published under fictitious names of authors ; and some actual authors, clerical and lay, lent their names to works of which they never saw a line. One of the most accomplished of the number-book writers was Dr. Robert Sanders, a self-created LL.D. He produced Histories of England, in folio and quarto, under various names. He was the writer of the Notes to the edition of the Bible, published in 1773, under the honoured name of Dr. Henry Southwell. The ingenious note-writer has told' the story without reservation : — { As I was not a clergyman, my name could not be prefixed to it. Appli- cation was made to several clergymen for the use of their names ; and at last Henry Southwell, LL.D., granted his.' In a year or two the indefatigable Sanders was ready with a scheme for a larger commentary. He found a Doctor who would lend his name for a hundred pounds ; but such a sum was out of the question. A mere A.M. was pur- chased for twenty pounds ; but the affair broke down. The commentator relates that he was told by the proprietors ' they had no further occasion for my services, and even * See Nicholla' ■ Literary Anecdotes,' vol. ii. p. 394. t2 276 ONCE UPON A TIME. denied me m}' week's wages.' We hope the laborious Sanders was less scurvily treated by the publishers of that immortal work of his, which has been the glory of the number-trade even up to this hour, namely, ' The Newgate Calendar, or Malefactor's Bloody Register.' How many fortunes have been made out of this great storehouse of popular knowledge is of little consequence to society. It may be of importance to consider how many imps of fame have here studied the path to glory. Sanders had a rival — the Rev. Mr. Villette, ordinary of Newgate — who published the ' Annals of Newgate, or Malefactor's Register,' &c, ' in- tended as a beacon to warn the rising generation against the temptations, the allurements, and the dangers of bad company.' In this title-page 'the celebrated John Shep- pard,' and ' the equally celebrated Margaret Caroline Rudd,' are leading attractions. The author of the 'Annals,' no doubt, prospered better than he of the ' Calendar.' Poor wretched Sanders, during the period when he was correcting Lord Lyttleton's 'History of Henry II.,' had 'a weekly subsistence ;' but in 17C8 he writes, 'During these six weeks I have not tasted one whole meal of victuals at a time.'* The original race of number-publishers had no very exalted notion of the value of literary labour. Their successors had no will to bestow any payment upon litera- ture at all, while they had the old stores to produce and reproduce. They have now been forced into some few attempts at originality. But the employment of new au- thorship is a rare exception to their ordinary course. When the necessity does arise, there is always perturbation of mind. In a moment of despair, when his press was stand- ing still for some of that manuscript which, in an unlucky hour, he had bargained for with a living writer, one of this fraternity exclaimed, ' Give me dead authors, they never keep you waiting for copy !' Many good books have, hew- ever, been produced by the early number-publishers. We may mention Chambers' ' Cyclopaedia,' Smollett's 'History * KichoUs' ' Literary Anecdotes,' vol. ii. p. 780| ami vol. iii. p. 760. BEGINNINGS OF POPULAR LITERATURE. 277 of England,' and Scott's ' Bible.' Some well-printed books are still being produced, but the compilers help themselves freely to what others have dearly paid for. Taken as a whole, they are the least improved, and certainly they are the dearest books, in the whole range of popular literature. The system upon which they are sold is essentially that of forcing a sale ; and the necessary cost of this forcing, called * canvassing,' is sought to be saved in the quantity of the article ' canvassed,' or in the less obvious degradation of its quality. The ' canvasser ' is an universal genius, and he must be paid as men of genius ought to be paid. He has to force off the commonest of wares by the most ingenious of devices. It is not the intrinsic merit of a book that is to command a sale, but the exterior accomplishments of the salesman. He adapts himself to every condition of person with whom he is thrown into contact. As in Birmingham and other great towns there is a beggars' register, which describes the susceptibilities of the families at whose gates beggars call, even to the particular theological opinions of the occupants, so the canvasser has a pretty accurate account of the households within his beat. He knows where there is the customer in the kitchen, and the customer in the parlour. He sometimes has a timid colloquy with the cook in the passage ; sometimes takes a glass of ale in the ser- vants' hall; and, when he can rely upon the charms of his address, sends his card boldly into the drawing-room. No refusal can prevent him in the end leaving his number for inspection. The system is most rife in North and Midland England; it is not so common in the agricultural South, although it might be an instrument of diffusing sound knowledge amongst a scattered population. If an effort were honestly made to publish works really cheap, because intrinsically good, upon 'the canvassing system,' that system, which has many real advantages, might be redeemed from the disgrace which now too often attaches to it, in the hands of the quacks who are most nourishing in that line. The number-trade was a necessary offshoot of that periodical literature which sprang up into importance at 278 ONCE UPON A TIME. the beginning of the eighteenth century, and which, in all its ramifications, has had a more powerful influence than that of all other literature upon the intelligence of the great body of the people. SECTION III. Ox the 8th of February, 1696, our friend John Dunton completed the nineteenth volume of ' The Athenian Mer- cury, resolving all the most nice and curious questions proposed by the ingenious.' This penny tract, published twice a week, consisted of a single leaf. ' The ingenious ' ceased to question, and ' The Athenian Society,' as the bookseller called his scribes, ceased to answer, after six years of this oracular labour. There came an irruption of the barbarians, in the shape of ' nine newspapers every week.' John proposed to resume his task ' as soon as the glut of news is a little over.' The countryman waiting for the river to roll by was not more mistaken. In 1709 there was one daily paper in London ; twelve, three times a week ; and three, twice a week, Amongst those of three times a week was ' The Tatler,' which commenced April 12, 1709. The early Tatlers had their regular foreign in- telligence. They were as much newspapers as ' The Fly- ing Post' and * The^ Postboy.' But Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., very soon discontinued the information which he derived from letters from the Hague and advices from Berlin. He had something of a more original character to offer his readers. The state of popular enlightenment at this period has been described by Johnson in his Life of Addison ; — * That general knowledge which now circulates in common talk was in his time rarely to be found. Men not profess- ing loarning were not ashamed of ignorance ; and in the female world any acquaintance with books was distin- guished only to bo censured.' Steele and Addison had to form the taste of the new generation that they were ad- dressing. They knew that there was a large class craving BEGINNINGS OF POPULAR LITERATURE. 279. amusement, who might at the same time be refined and instructed without the pretensions of ■ the budge doctors of the stoic fur.' They meddled little with politics. They left the furious discussions about Church and State to papers with an earnest political purpose, af which Charles Leslie, a violent Tory, thus spoke in his 'Rehearsals:'— ' The greatest part of the people do not read books ; most of them cannot read at all : but they will gather together about one that can read, and listen to an Observator or Review, as I have seen them, in the streets.' The Tatler has been described as a great success ; but we may measure that success by that of the more popular Spectator. In No. 555 of that work Steele says, — ■ The tax on each half-sheet has brought into the Stamp-Office, one week with another, above 201. a week, arising from the single paper, notwithstanding it at first reduced it to less than half the number that was usually printed before the tax was laid.' The tax being a penny, this would only show a daily circulation of 1600, and of about 3000 when it was unstamped. But the sale in volumes, accord- ing to the same statement, was as high as 9000 of each volume. This fact gives us a higher notion of the popu- larity of these charming papers, and of the consequent extent of general reading, than any other circumstance in the literary history of that period. But even the com- paratively small daily sale was of importance, as showing that the great middle class was beginning to seek some- thing better than could be found in the coarse and meagre news-sheets. The annals of ' The Gentlemen's Society at Spalding' record that in April, 1709, some residents there heard of the Tatlers, and ordered them to be sent to the coffee-house in the Abbey-yard : — ' They were accordingly had, and read there every post-day, generally aloud to the company, who could sit and talk over the subject after- wards.' The narrative goes on to say that 'in March, 1711, the Spectator came out, which was received and read here as the Tatler had been.' Such are the beginnings of popular knowledge. What the Tatler and Spectator 280 ONCE UPON A TIME. were to the gentlemen of Spalding, the Penny Magazine and Chambers' Journal were to many a mechanic a hun- dred and twenty years after. One of this class has re- corded the influence of such works, which addressed a far larger number than could be addressed at the beginning of the eighteenth century : — ' The Penny Magazine was published. I borrowed the first volume, and determined to make an effort to possess myself with the second. Accord- ingly, with January, 1833, I determined to discontinue the use of sugar in my tea, hoping that my family would not then feel the sacrifice necessary to buy the book. ... I looked as anxiously for the issue of the monthly part as I did for the means of getting a living.'* It is this spirit in the great mechanical class of this country that, in spite of some popular reading that is corrupting, and much that is frivolous, will ultimately raise and purify even the meanest sheet of our cheap literature, and compel those who have the responsibility of addressing large masses of the people to understand that an influential portion do feel that the acquirement of knowledge is worth some sacrifice. The « Complete Catalogue of Modern Books, published from the beginning of the century to 1756,' contains 5280 new works. In this Catalogue ' all pamphlets and other tracts ' are excluded. We can scarcely, therefore, compare this period, as to the number of books published, with that of 1 680. The average number of the first fifty-seven years of the eighteenth century was ninety-three new works each year. At the beginning of the century, the price of a folio or quarto volume ranged from 10s. to 12s.; an oc- tavo from 5s. to 6s. ; and a duodecimo from 2s. 6d. to 3s. We have the original • Tatler ' before us, with its curious advertisements of books, sales by the candle, cordial elixirs, lotteries, and bohea tea at 24s. a pound. White- locke's 'Memorials,' folio, is advertised at 12s.; Eowe's edition of Shakspeare, 8vo., is 5s. per volume ; ■ The Peer- age of England,' 8vo., Qs. ; Shakspeare's Poems, 12mo., * ■ Autobiography of an Artisan.' By Christopher Thomson. 1847. BEGINNINGS OF POPULAR LITERATURE. 281 1 s. 6rf. ; ' The Monthly Amusement,' each number con- taining a complete novel, is Is. ; Sermons are 2d. each. We learn, from other sources, that the first edition of ' The Dunciad ' was a sixpenny pamphlet ; whilst ' The Governor of Cyprus, a Novel,' and ' The Wanton Fryar, a Novel,' were each 12s. The number printed of an edition was, no doubt, very moderate, except chiefly of books that were associated with some great popular excitement. Sacheverell's Trial is said to have sold 30,000 ; as, in a later period, 30,000 were sold of Burke's ■ Reflections on the Revolution in France.' The old booksellers were cautious about works of imagination when they were ex- pected to pay handsomely for copyright. The manuscript of ' Robinson Crusoe ' was pronounced dangerous by the whole tribe of publishers, till one ventured upon an edition. The demand was such that the copies could only be sup- plied by dividing the work amongst several printers. One of Defoe's numerous assailants, in attempting to ridicule him, gives the best evidence of his popularity : ' There is not an old woman that can go to the price of it but buys " The Life and Adventures," and leaves it as a legacy with the " Tilgrim's Progress." ' Richardson's ■ Pamela,' published in 1741, sold five editions in one year. There are fabulous accounts of Millar, the publisher, clearing 18,000?. by ' Tom Jones.' In those times the Dublin pirates were as assiduous in their plunder of English copyrights as the American publishers have been in plundering the English, and the English the American, in our days. Richardson was driven wild by the publica- tion of half ' Sir Charles Grandison ' in Ireland, in a cheap form, before a single volume was issued in England. There was a regular system of bribery in the English printing-offices, through which the Dublin booksellers organised their robberies. They sold their books surrep- titiously in England and Scotland ; and from their greater cheapness they had the command of their own market. This system lasted till the Union. The prices of books do not appear to have much in- 282 ONCE UPON A TIME. creased at the beginning of the reign of George III. In some cases their moderation is remarkable. We have seen how small was the demand for the first volume of Hume's ' History ' in 1754. We have a number of ' The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser ' at hand, May 9, 1764; and there we learn, from an advertisement, what a change ten years had produced. A new edition of the third and fourth volumes, in quarto, is advertised at ll. 5s. ; but ' the proprietor, at the desire of many who wish to be possessed of this valuable and esteemed history, is induced to a monthly publication, which will not ex- ceed eight volumes.' These volumes were 5s. each. It is manifest that the bookseller had found a new class to address when he issued the monthly volumes. Hume says, ■ Notwithstanding the variety of winds and seasons to which my writings had been exposed, they had still been making such advances that the copy-money given me by the booksellers much exceeded anything formerly known in England.' He had complained of the neglect of the ' considerable for rank or letters.' His publisher saw that a history with such charms of style — so freed from tedious quotations from state papers and statutes— -so unlike the great folios of Carte and Rapin — was a book for a new race of readers. Coleridge humorously enough says — ' Poets and philosophers, rendered diffident by their very number, addressed themselves to "learned readers;" then, aimed to conciliate the graces of " the candid reader ;" till, the critic still rising as the author sank, the amateurs of literattire collectively were erected into a municipality of judges, and addressed as " the Town." And now, finally, all men being supposed to read, and all readers able to judge, the multitudinous "Public," shaped into personal unity by the magic of abstraction, sits nominal despot on the throne of criticism.'* There is a great truth beneath the sarcasm. The enduring patronage of the public was beginning when Andrew Millar was bold enough to publish * ' Biographia Literaria,' vol. i. p. GO, eJ. 1817 BEGINNINGS OF POPULAR LITERATURE. 283 Hume's History in monthly five-shilling volumes. But there are still many evidences that the commerce of books at that period, and subsequently, did not contemplate the existence of a large class of buyers, beyond those who were at ease in their fortunes. In that farrago of sense and absurdity, « The Life of James Lackington, the present Bookseller, Finsbury-square, London, written by himself (1791), there is a remarkable disclosure of the mode in which books were prevented being sold cheaply, a"fter the original demand had been satisfied : — ' When first invited to these trade-sales, I was very much surprised to leam that it was common for such as purchased remainders to destroy one-half or three-fourths of such books, and to charge the full publication price, or nearly that, for such as they kept on hand. And there was a kind of standing order amongst the trade that, in case any one was known to sell articles under the publication price, such a person was to be excluded from trade-sales — so blind were copy- 284 ONCE UPON A TIME. right holders to their own interest.' Tn the same manner, it is within the memory of many living persons that, there was an invariable high price for fish in London, because the wholesale dealers at Billingsgate always destroyed a portion of what came to market, if the supply were above the average. The dealers in fish had not recognised the existence of a class who would buy for their suppers what the rich had not taken for their dinners ; and knew not that the stalls of Tottenham Court Eoad had as many customers ready for a low price as the shops of Charing Cross for a high price. The fishmongers had not dis- covered that the price charged to the evening customers had no effect of lowering that of the morning. Nor had the booksellers discovered that there were essentially two, if not more, classes of customers for books — those who would have the dearest and the newest, and those who were content to wait till the gloss of novelty had passed off, and good works became accessible to them, either in cheaper reprints, or ' remainders ' reduced in price. But books and fish have one material difference. Good books are not impaired in value when they are cheapened. Their character, which has been established by the first demand, creates a second and a larger demand. Lacking- ton destroyed no books that were worth saving, but sold them as he best could. We have no quarrel with his self- commendation when he says, ' I could almost be vain enough to assert that I have thereby been highly instru- mental in diffusing that general desire for reading now so prevalent among the inferior orders of society.' What Lackington thought ■ a general desire for reading ' was, nevertheless, a very limited desire. • The inferior orders of society ' who had the desire did not comprehend many of the mechanics, and none of the husbandry labourers. It may be doubted whether the Magazine Literature that the eighteenth century called forth ever went beyond the gentry and the superior traders. Kippis says of the maga- zines, ' they have been the means of diffusing a general habit of reading through the nation.' There appears to BEGINNINGS OF POPULAR LITERATURE. 285 have been a sort of tacit agreement amongst all who spoke of public enlightenment in the days of George III. to put out of view the great body of ' the nation ' who paid for their bread by their weekly wages. The magazines were certainly never addressed to this class. But for the general book-buyers of the time, Cave's project of ' The Gentle- man's Magazine ' was a great step in popular literature. The booksellers would not join him in what they held to be a risk. AVhen he had succeeded, and sold 10,000, then they set up the rival ■ London Magazine.' Cave threw all his energy into the magazine, and was rewarded. ' He scarcely ever looked out of the window, but with a view to its improvement,' said Johnson. ■ The Gentleman's Maga- zine' commenced in 1731. Then came, year after year, magazines ' as plenty as blackberries :' — ' The London,' • The Universal,' « The Literary,' « The Royal,' ' The Com- plete,' 'The Town and Country,' 'The Ladies',' 'The Westminster,' ' The European/ < The Monthly.' The first popular review, ' The Monthly,' was published in 1749, and ' The Critical' in 1756. The public were now firmly esta- blished as the real patrons of letters. There was an end of poor authors knocking at great men's doors with a bundle of books. There was an end to paid Dedications and gratu- latory Odes. Johnson could afford to launch his Dictionary without the help of the Earl of Chesterfield. Hume became ' not only independent but opulent ' through the ' copy- money ' of the booksellers. The publication of Collections of the Poets was another proof of the extension of the reading public. The man who first projected such a Collection went for cheapness. In 1777 John Bell announced an edition of 'The Poets of Great Britain ; complete from Chaucer to Churchill.' The London booksellers, to the number of forty, held a meeting, to resist what they considered an invasion of their literary property — some works within the time of the statute of Anne being legally theirs — others their copyright by courtesy. They resolved to combine their various interests; and they produced that edition of the Poets, in sixty-eight volumes, 286 . ONCE UPON A TIME. which is called Johnson's, though, according to Malone, he never saw a line of the text. The ' Lives,' which Johnson wrote for two hundred guineas, will endure as a great classic work, however deformed by hasty or prejudiced judgment. Many of the Poets given in the series have no pretension to be looked upon again, except as a part of literary history, which may show how the most feeble may attain reputation in an age of mediocrity. The booksellers spoke contemptu- ously of Bell's edition, which they called * trifling.' They boasted their superior printing ; but they gave no place in their Collection to Chaucer, Spenser, or Donne, as Bell had done. They did not care to direct the public taste ; — they printed what they thought would sell. The demand for such Collections has always been one of the proofs of a healthy condition of public intelligence ; but the want has not often been supplied with any judgment beyond that of the rude commercial estimate of the prevailing fashion in poetry. It is extremely difficult to deal with such matters. All literary students have a proper horror of abridgments and analyses. They want all of an author, or none. You can neither make Chaucer extremely popular by an entire reprint, nor command a large sale by partial extract. But John Bell was right, in 1777, to risk the printing of three great early poets, whilst the booksellers began with Waller. Here were poets that can never be wholly obsolete. But the rubbish called poetry that found its way, by trade pre- ferences, into Johnson's edition — the inanities of the dri- vellers between Pope and Gray — let not these be reproduced in our time, when such Collections are coming again into fashion, and showing, as they showed before, an extension of readers. The Circulating Library — what a revolution was that in popular literature! How this new plant appeared above the earth, where it first budded, where it bore its early fruit — how it grew into a great tree, like that in the old title to Lilly's Grammar, where the apples of knowledge are being gathered by little climbing-boys — would be difficult to trace and to record. There it was — this great economise!- BEGINNINGS OF POPULAR LITERATURE. 287 of individual outlay for books — in most market-towns at the beginning of the century. The universal adoption of the name is the best proof of the common recognition of the idea. It changed the habits of the old country booksellers. It found them other occupation than keeping a stall in the market-place, as did their worthy forefathers. The} T dealt no longer in tracts and single sermons. It sent the chap- books into the villages. It made the ' Seven Champions of Christendom ' and ' The Wise Masters of Greece ' vulgar. It created a new literature of fiction. 'It banished ' Robin- son Crusoe' to the kitchen, and 'The Arabian Nights' to the nursery. It built up great printing-houses in Leaden- hall-street ; and held out high rewards for rapid composition, at the rate of five pounds per volume, to decayed governesses who had seen the world, and bank-clerks of an imaginative turn of mind. These could produce a wilderness of Italian bandits, with unlimited wealth and beauty, who had won the hearts of credulous countesses, and only surrendered to the hangman when whole armies came out to take them. These could unveil all the mysterious luxuries of great mansions in Grosvenor-square, or of sumptuous hotels in Bond-street. There was ever and anon a • bright particular star ' in the Milky Way of popular fiction. But the circu- lating library went on its own course, whether the empyrean of romance were dim or brilliant. * What have you got new ?' was the universal question put to the guardian of the treasures of this recently-discovered world of letters. When the bower-maid of the luxurious fair one, who lolled upon the sofa through a long summer's day, as Gray did when he was deep in Crebillon, came to ' change ' the book, great sometimes was the perplexity. It w r as not a difficult task to ' change,' but the newness was puzzling. The lady and the neat-handed Phillis pursued their studies simul- taneously. They did not like ' poetry ;' they did not like 4 letters.' ■ Sir Charles Grandison ' was as old and as tire- some as ' Pamela.' ■ Tom Jones,' and ' Peregrine Pickle ;' they wondered why they were allowed to remain in the catalogue. They had read ' Ccelebs in search of a Wife '- 288 ONCE UPON A TIME. the charming book — but the} 7 did not want it again. Per- haps, suggested the bookseller's apprentice, ' The Monk ' might do once more. And so the circulating library went on, slow and struggling, till, about 1814, the unlucky desire for ' something new ' brought down to the little greasy collection, whose delusive numbers of volumes ranged from 1 to 3250, a new novel, with the somewhat unpromising title of ' Waverley, or 'tis Sixty Years since.' At first, the lady upon the sofa, and the counsellor of her studies, could not endure it, for it was full of horrid Scotch. It was often 'at home,' as the phrase went, for six months of its proba- tion ; when, somehow, it was discovered that a new book of wonderful talent had come out of the North. Another and another came, and in a few years the old circulating library was ruined. The Burneys, and Edgeworths, and KadclifTes, and Godwins, and Holcrofts, who had mixed with much lower company upon the librarian's shelves, still held a place. But the Winters in London and Winters in Bath, the Midnight Bells, the Nuns, and the Watch- Towers, retired from business. There was then a new epoch in the circulating-library life. The literature of travels and memoirs timidly claimed a place by the side of the fashion- able novel, which asserted its dignity by raising its price to a guinea and a half. The old legitimate stupidity, which did very well before the trade was disturbed, would no longer ' circulate.' But the names of the producers of the higher fiction were not ' Legion.' ' Something new ' must still be had. To meet the market, every variety of west- end authorship was experimented upon. The number to be printed could be calculated with tolerable exactness, according to the reputation of the writer, — and this calcu- lation regulated the payment of copyright, from fifty pounds, and five hundred printed, to the man without a name, up to fifteen hundred pounds, and an impression of three thou- sand, to ' the glass of fashion. 1 But in this department of the commerce of literature,— as it will be in the end with every branch upon which the growth of popular intelligence is operating,— i ho rubbish is perishable, haa perished; the good Liiduieth. BEGINNINGS OF POPULAR LITERATURE. 289 The circulating library is now, in many instances, a real instrument of popular enlightenment. Yet in some of the smaller towns, and in watering-places where raffles have their charm, and a musical performance is patronised in the 'Fancy Eepository,' by 'audience fit though few' — there the circulating library may be studied in its ancient brilliancy. There, are still preserved, with a paper number on their brown leather backs, and a well-worn bill of the terms of subscription on their sides, those volumes, now fading into oblivion, whence the writers of many a penny journal of fiction are drawing and will still draw their in- spiration. Many of these relics of a past age will live over again in shilling volumes with new titles. The heroes and heroines will change their names ; the furniture of the apartments in which they utter their vows of love will be modernised ; every sentence which in the slightest degree approaches the vulgar will be softened down or obliterated. There is a great deal yet to be done in this way ; and the metamorphosis will go on and prosper. In the meanwhile the circulating libraries, both in London and the provinces, are supporting a higher literature of fiction than those of the past generation ; and they find also that there are other volumes almost as attractive as the last new novel. They are doing the same work as the book-clubs. Both these modes of co-operation have had the effect of making the demand for a book that is at once solid and attractive more certain than the old demand by individual purchasers. The certainty of the demand necessarily produces a gradual reduction of price. An average demand is created, result- ing from an average of taste in those who belong to book- societies and subscribe to circulating libraries. But these channels for the sale of new books are not materially in- fluenced by lowness of price. Cheapness is greatly influen- tial with the private purchaser ; but very many are content with the reading of a new book, through the club or the library, who would never buy it for their own household. This first demand is one of the means by which good books may be cheapened for a subsequent large issue for the per- 290 ONCE UPON A TIME. manent home library. In ' The Life of Lackington ' there is the following passage : — ■ I have been informed that, when circulating libraries were first opened, the booksellers were much alarmed ; and their rapid increase added to their fears, and led them to think that the sale of books would be much diminished by such libraries. But experience has proved that the sale of books, so far from being diminished by them, has been greatly promoted ; as from these repositories many thousand families have been cheaply supplied with books, by which the taste of reading has become much more general, and thousands of books are purchased every year by such as have first borrowed them at those libraries, and, after reading, approving of them, have become purchasers.' One of the first attempts, and it was a successful one, to establish a cheap Book-Club was made by Bobert Burns. He had founded a Society at Tarbolton, called the Bachelors' Club, which met monthly for the purposes of discussion and conversation. But this was a club without books ; for the fines levied upon the members were spent in con- viviality. Having changed his residence to Mauchline, a similar club was established there, but with one important alteration : — the fines were set apart for the purchase of books, and the- first work bought was ' The Mirror,' by Henry Mackenzie. Dr. Currie, the biographer of Burns, in recording this fact, says, ' With deference to the Conversa- tion Society of Mauchline, it may be doubted whether the books which they purchased were of a kind best adapted to promote the interest and happiness of persons in this situa- tion of life.' The objection of Dr. Currie was founded upon his belief that works which cultivated ' delicacy of taste ' were unfitted for those who pursued manual occupations. He qualifies his objection, however, by the remark, that 1 Every human being is a proper judge of his own happiness, and within the path of innocence ought to be permitted to pursue it. Since it is the taste of the Scottish peasantry to give a preference to works of taste and of fancy, it may be presumed they find a superior gratification in the perusal of such works.' This truth, timidly put by Dr. Currie, BEGINNINGS OF POPULAR LITERATURE. 291 ought to be the foundation of every attempt to provide books for all readers. We are learning to correct the false opinions which, for a century or two, have been degrading the national character by lowering the general taste. Those who maintained that taste was the exclusive property of the rich and the luxurious, could not take away from the humble the beauty of the rose or the fragrance of the violet ; they could not make the nightingale sing a vulgar note to the ' swink'd hedger at his supper ;' nor, speaking purely to a question of taste, did they venture to lower the noble trans- lation of the Bible, which they put into the hands of the poor man, to something which, according to the insolent formula of those days, was ' adapted to the meanest capacity.' A great deal of this has passed away. It has been dis- covered that music is a fitting thing to be cultivated by the people ; the doors of galleries are thrown open for the people to gaze upon Eaffaelles and Correggios ; even cot- tages are built so as to satisfy a feeling of proportion, and to make their inmates aspire to something like decoration. All this is progress in the right direction. In the year 1825, Lord Brougham (then Mr. Brougham), in his ' Practical Observations upon the Education of the People,' explained a plan which has yet been only partially acted upon. ■ Book-Clubs or Eeading Societies may be esta- blished by very small numbers of contributors, and require an inconsiderable fund. If the associates live near one another, arrangements may be easily made for circulating the books, so that they may be in use every moment that any one can spare from his work. Here, too, the rich have an opportunity presented to them of promoting instruction without constant interference : the gift of a few books, as a beginning, will generally prove a sufficient encouragement to cany on the plan by weekly or monthly contributions : and, with the gift, a scheme may be communicated to assist the contributors in arranging the plan of their association.' Simple in its working as such a plan would appear to be, the instances of these voluntary associations are really few. In Scotland, Lending Libraries and Itinerating U 2 292 ONCE UPON A TIME. Libraries have, in some districts, been established success- fully ; but in England, Lending Libraries are scarcely to be found, except in connexion with schools, or under the immediate direction of the minister of a parish or of a dis- senting congregation. In these cases, we fear, comes too frequently into action the desire, laudable no doubt, to promote 'the interest and happiness of persons in this situation of life.' They are not permitted to choose for themselves. The best books of amusement are kept out of their sight ; and they contrive to. get hold of the worst. The timidity which insists upon supplying these libraries with pattern books renders the libraries disagreeable, and therefore useless. ( 293 ) THE FIKST NEWSPAPEK STAMP. It is the evening of Monday, the 28th of July, in the year of 1712. Two middle-aged men come out of Will's Cbffee- House, and slowly walk through the close lanes that lead to the heart of the City. The one has a brisk and alert step, with an air of frank hilarity in his face, which is somewhat lighted up in the evening sun by the magnum of generous claret which he has been sharing with his friend. The other moves a little unsteadily, with a hesitat- ing step, which is not improved by the wine he has taken ; but a placid smile plays on his features, and, in connection with the dignified repose of his whole manner, gives as- surance of the gentleman. As they pass along they en- counter a bevy of newsvenders, known as hawkers or Mercuries, who are bawling at the top of their lungs, ' Here you have the last number of the Observator — the last number — no other number will ever be published, on account of the stamp.' ' Here you have the Flying Post, which will go on in spite of the stamp.' ' Here you have the Spectator, this day's Spectator, all writ by the greatest wits of the age.' The more hilarious of the two friends twitches his com- panion's arm, and whispers, ' That's at any rate a comfort, Addison. 7 ■ True fame, Steele,' is the reply. Their onward course is to a small printing-office in Little Britain. They climb the narrow staircase, and are in a close and dingy room, with two printing-presses and working spaces for four compositors. A grave man is reading at a desk, and he bows reverently to the gallants in lace and ruffles, who thus honour him by a visit to his dark den of letters. ' Why, Mr. Buckley/ says Steele, * your narrow passages and close rooms remind me of the printer of Ben Jonson, 294 ONCE UPON A TIME. who kept his press in a hollow tree. We are come to talk with you about this infernal Stamp : a red Stamp, they tell me, 'tis to be, not black, like its father. Lillie is obstinate, and says our penny Spectator must be raised to twopence ; and if so, where are our customers to come from ?' 1 I was for stopping,' interposes Addison. I Not so, sir ; not so, I pray,' ejaculates the frightened printer ; ' there isn't such a paper in Town, sir. Goes into the houses of the first of the quality ; not a coffee-house without it. Not like your Post-boys and Posts, which are read by shopkeepers and handicrafts.' I I should like to be read by shopkeepers and handicrafts,' says Steele. f. Oh dear, no, sir ; quite impossible, sir. They must have coarse food ; ghosts and murders. Delicate wit like Mr. Addison's, fine morality like Mr. Steele's, are for the Town, sir, not the populace.' * A nice distinction, truly,' cries Addison ; ' Audience fit, though few.' 'Few, sir? why, we print three thousand; and we shall print as many when the stamp doubles our price. Our customers will never stand upon a shilling a week. And, besides, those who support the government will rejoice in the opportunity of paying the tax. I shouldn't wonder if the stamp doubled our sale.' 1 Very sanguine, Mr. Buckley.' 1 Sanguine, sir ? Who wouldn't be sanguine, when rare wits like you condescend to write for the Town. There is Doctor Swift, too, I hear, has been writing penny paper after penny paper. A fine hand, gentlemen ! Are we to go back to our old ignorant days because of a red stamp ? We must go on improving. Look at my printing-ofiice, and see if we are not improved. Why, Sir Eoger L'Estrange, when he set up the Intelligencer fifty years ago, gave notice that he would publish his one book a week, u to be pub- lished every Thursday, and finished upon the Tuesday night, leaving Wednesday entire for the printing it off." And now I, gentlemen — Heaven forbid I should boast, — can THE FIRST NEWSPAPER STAMP. 295 print your Spectator off every day, and not even want the copy more than three days before the publication. Think of that, gentlemen, a half-sheet every day ! A hundred years hence nobody will believe it.' ' You are a wonderful man, Mr. Buckley, and we are all very grateful to you,' says the laughing- eyed Essayist. ' But, talking of a hundred years hence, who can say. that our moral and mechanical improvements are to stop here ? I can imagine a time when every handicraft in the. country shall read; when the footman behind the carriage shall read ; when the Irish chairman shall read ; and when your Intelligencer shall hear of a great battle on the Wednesday morning, and have a full account of it published on the Thursday.' 1 That, sir, with all submission, is actually impossible ; and surely you are joking when you talk of the vulgar learning to read, and taking delight in reading. Reading will never go lower than our shopkeepers, I think.' * I wonder,' interposes Addison, * what the people would read a hundred years hence, if they had the ability ? They must have books especially suited to their capacities.' * They would read your " Vision of Mirza," and know something about your " Sir Roger de Coverley." ' * Come, come, Diccon, don't be sarcastic. I thought I was pitching my key low enough to suit our fops, and our courtiers, and our coffee-house loungers ; — but to be relished by the rabble ! A pinch of snuff, if you please.' ' If I could see the day,' replies Steele, ' when we had a nation of readers, and books could circulate rapidly through the whole country, I would leave the Town to mend its follies as it best might, and set up for a teacher of the People. We would make your press do ten times its present work then, Mr. Buckley.' 'Ah, sir, great men like you always have their dreams. I once knew a very clever man who fancied the mail would some time or other go to York in three days. Poor man, he was very nearly mad.' Addison whispers to his friend that the printer would 296 ONCE UPON A TIME. number him amongst the Bedlam candidates if lie pro- pounded any more of his speculations ; and then, drawing himself up with greater dignity, rejoices the honest printer's heart by a memorable declaration : — ' Come what may, we shall go on in spite of the Stamp. There, Mr. Buckley, is the copy for No. 445, Thursday, July 31, which an- nounces our resolve. We will not be cashiered by Act of Parliament.' ( 297 ) 'The foot grows black that was with dirt embrown'd.' TRIVIA. Ix one of the many courts on the north side of Fleet Street, might be seen, somewhere about the year 1820, the last of the ancient shoe-blacks. One would think that he deemed himself dedicated to his profession by Nature, for he was a Negro. At the earliest dawn he crept forth from his neighbouring lodging, and planted his tripod on the quiet pavement, where he patiently stood till noon was past. He was a short, large-headed, son of Africa, subject, as it would appear, to considerable variations of spirits, alternating between depression and excitement, as the gains of the day presented to him the chance of having a few pence to recreate himself, beyond what he should carry home to his wife and children. For he had a wife and children, this last representative of a falling trade; and two or three little woolly-headed decrotteurs nestled around him when he was idle, or assisted in taking off the roughest of the dirt when he had more than one client. 298 x ONCE UPON A TIME. He watched, with a melancholy eye, the gradual improve- ment of the streets ; for during some twenty or thirty years he had beheld all the world combining to ruin him. He saw the foot-pavements widening ; the large flag-stones carefully laid down; the loose and broken piece, which discharged a slushy shower on the unwary foot, instantly removed : he saw the kennels diligently cleansed, and the drains widened : he saw experiment upon experiment made in the repair of the carriage-way, and the holes which were to him as the ' old familiar faces ' which he loved, filled up with a haste that appeared quite unnecessary, if not insulting. One solitary country shopkeeper, who had come to London once a year during a long life, clung to our sable friend ; for he was the only one of the fraternity that he could find remaining, in his walk from Charing Cross to Cheapside. The summer's morning when that good man planted his foot on the three-legged stool, and desired him carefully to turn back his brown gaiters, and asked him how trade went with him, and shook his head when he learned that it was very bad, and they both agreed that new-fangled ways were the ruin of the country — that was a joyful occasion to him, for he felt that he was not quite deserted. He did not continue long to struggle with the capricious world : — • One morn we miss'd him on th' accustomed stand.' He retired into the workhouse; and his boys, having a keener eye than their father to the wants of the com- munity, took up the trade which he most hated, and applied themselves to the diligent removal of the mud in an earlier stage of its accumulation — they swept crossings, instead of cleaning shoes. The last of the ancient Shoe-blacks belongs to history. He was one of the living monuments of old London; he was a link between three or four generations. The stand which he purchased in Bolt Court (in the wonderful resem- blance of external appearance between all these Fleet- Street courts, we cannot be sure that it was Bolt Court) TRIVIA, 299 had been handed down from one successor to another, with as absolute a line of customers as Child's Banking-house. He belonged to a trade which has its literary memorials. In 1754, the polite Chesterfield, and the witty Walpole, felt it no degradation to the work over which they presided that it should be jocose about his fraternity, and hold that his profession was more dignified than that of the author : 'Far be it from me, or any of my brother authors, to intend lowering the dignity of the gentlemen trading in black ball, by naming them with ourselves : we are ex- tremely sensible of the great distance there is between us : and it is with envy that we look up to the occupation of shoe-cleaning, while we lament the severity of our fortune, in being sentenced to the drudgery of a less respectable employment. But while we are unhappily excluded from the stool and brush, it is surely a very hard case that the contempt of the world should pursue us, only because we are unfortunate.'* Gay makes • the black youth '— his mythological descent from the goddess of mud, and his importance in a muddy city — the subject of the longest episode in his amusing Trivia. The shoe-boy's mother thus addresses him : — ' Go thrive : at some frequented corner stand ; This brush I give thee, grasp it in thy hand ; Temper the foot within this vase of oil, And let the little tripod aid thy toil ; On this methinks I see the walking crew, At thy request, support the miry shoe ; The foot grows black that was with dirt embrown'd, And in thy pocket gingling halfpence sound. The goddess plunges swift beneath the flood, And dashes all around her showers of mud : The youth straight chose his post ; the labour ply'd Where branching streets from Charing Cross divide ; His treble voice resounds along the Mews, And Whitehall echoes — " Clean your Honour's shoes !" ' But the shoe-blacks have revived. What was an absolute necessity in the old times is now a luxury. On a fine day * The World, No. 57. 300 ONCE UPON A TIME. the traveller, who has walked through miry ways to his railroad-station, arrives in London, and sees the boots of those who are fresh from their suburban villas brighter by contrast. He no longer is propitiated by 'Clean your honour s shoes,' but he hears ' Clean your boots.' Practical benevolence has found out its ragged boys; has clothed them in a decent scarlet livery; and established them in public thoroughfares, with the foot-rest and the brush. And, indeed, the vast accumulation of public" vehicles has made the shoe-black sometimes as necessary to the pas- senger who has hurried across the busy road, careless of mud so that he save his limbs, as the old neglect. The great thoroughfares cannot now be adequately swept ; and even a sunny day has its dirt, through the indefatigable water-cart. * The black youth ' again thrives. He who would see London well must be a pedestrian. Gay who has left us the most exact as well as the most lively picture of the external London of a hundred and TRIVIA. 301 twenty years ago, is enthusiastic in his preference for walking : — 1 Let others in the jolting coach confide, Or in the leaky boat the Thames divide, Or, box'd within the chair, contemn the street, And trust their safety to another's feet : Still let me walk.' But what a walk has he described ! He sets out — as what sensible man would not? — with his feet protected with ' firm, well-hammer'd soles ;' but if the shoe be too big, ' Each stone will wrench th' unwary step aside.' This, we see, is a London without trottoirs. The middle of a paved street was generally occupied with the channel ; and the sides of the carriage-way were full of absolute holes, where the rickety coach was often stuck as in a quagmire. Some of the leading streets, even to the time of George II., were almost as impassable as the avenues of a new American town. The only road to the Houses of Parliament before 1750 was through King Street and Union Street, 'which were in so miserable a state, that fagots were thrown into the ruts on the days on which the King went to Parliament, to render the passage of the state- coach more easy.'* The present Saint Margaret's Street was formed out of a thoroughfare known as Saint Mar- garet's Lane, which was so narrow that ' pales were obliged to be placed, four feet high, between the foot-path and the coach-road, to preserve the passengers from injury, and from being covered with the mud which was splashed on all sides in abundance.' - ]" The pales here preserved the passengers more effectually than the posts of other thorough- fares. These posts, in the principal avenues, constituted the only distinction between the foot-way and carriage- way ; for the space within the posts was as uneven as the space without. This inner space was sometimes so narrow, that only one person could pass at a time ; and hence those contests for the wall that filled the streets with the vocife- * Smith's Westminster, p. 261. t W- P- 2 62. 302 ONCE UPON A TIME. rations of anger, and the din of assaulting sticks, and some- times the clash of naked steel. Dr. Johnson describes how those quarrels were common when he first came to London ; and how at length things were better ordered. But the change must in great part be imputed to the gradual im- provement of the streets. In Gay's time there was no safety but within the posts. 1 Though expedition bids, yet never stray- Where no ranged posts defend the rugged way : Here laden carts with thundering waggons meet, Wheels clash with wheels, and bar the narrow street.' In wet and gusty weather the unhappy walker heard the craz}' signs swinging over his head, as Gulliver describes the Eed Lion of Brentford. The spouts of every house were streaming at his feet, or drenching his laced hat and his powdered wig with unpitying torrents. At every step some bulk or shop-projection narrowed the narrow road, and drove him against the coach-wheels. The chairmen, if there was room to pass, occupied all the space between the wall and the posts. The ' hooded maid ! came some- times gingerly along, with pattens and umbrella (then exclusively used by women), and of courtesy he must yield the wall. The small-coal man, and the sweep, and the barber, took the wall, in assertion of their clothes-soiling prerogative ; and the bully thrust him, or was himself thrust, * to the muddy kennel's side.' The great rule for the pedestrian was, — * Ever be watchful to maintain the wall.' The dignity of the wall, and its inconveniences, were as old as the time of James and Charles. Donne, in his first satire, describes the difficulties of one who took the wall : — ' Now we are in the street ; he first of all, Improvidently proud, creeps to the wall, And so, Imprisoned and hemmed in by me, Sells for a little state his liberty.' The streets, in the good old times, often presented ob- structions to the pedestrian which appear to us like the TRIVIA. 303 wonders of some unknown region. In the more recent unhappy days of public executions the wayfarer passed up Ludgate Hill with an eye averted from the Old Bailey; for there, as Monday morning came, duly hung some three, and it may be six, unhappy victims of a merciless code, judicially murdered according to our better notions. Then was the rush to see the horrid sight, and the dense crowd pouring away from it; and the pickpocket active under the gallows; and the business of life interrupted for a quarter of an hour, with little emotion even amongst the steady walkers who heeded not the spectacle : it was a thing of course. And so was the pillory in earlier times. Gay says nothing of the feelings of the passer-on ; he had only to take care of his clothes : — ' Where, elevated o'er the gaping crowd, ( 'Lisp'd in the board the perjur'd head is bow'd, Betimes retreat; here, thick as hailstones pour, Turnips and halt-hatch 'd eggs, a mingled shower, Among the rabble rain : some random throw May with the trickling yolk thy cheek o'erflow.' People used to talk of these things as coolly as* Garrard wrote to Lord Strafford of them : ' No mercy showed to Prynne ; he stood in the pillory, and lost his first ear in a pillory in the palace at Westminster in full term ; his other in Cheapside, where, while he stood, his volumes were burnt under his nose, which had almost suffocated him.'* The cruelty is not mitigated by the subsequent account of Garrard, that Mr. Prynne 'hath got his ears sewed on that they grow again, as before, to his head.'f If the mob round the pillory was safely passed, there was another mob often to be encountered. Eushing along Cheapside or Covent Garden, or by the Maypole in the Strand, came the foot-ball players. It is scarcely conceivable, when London had settled into civilization, little more than a cen- tury ago — when we had our famed Augustan age of Addi- sons and Popes, — when laced coats, and flowing wigs, and * Stratford's Letters, vol. i. p. 261. f I* P- 266. 304 ONCE UPON A TIME. silver buckles, ventured into the streets, and the beau prided himself on * The nice conduct of a clouded cane, — ' that the great thoroughfares through which, men now move, ' intent on high designs,' should be a field for foot- ball :— * The prentice quits his shop to join the crew ; Increasing crowds the flying game pursue.'* This is no poetical fiction. It was the same immediately after the Eestoration. D'Avenant's Frenchman thus com- plains of the streets of London : — * I would now make a safe retreat, but that methinks I am stopped by one of your heroic games, called foot-ball ; which I conceive (under your favour) not very conveniently civil in the streets ; especially in such irregular and narrow roads as Crooked-lane. Yet it argues your courage, much like your military pastime of throwing at cocks. But your mettle would be more magnified (since you have long allowed those two valiant exercises in the streets) to draw your archers from Finsbury, and, during high market, let them shoot at butts in Cheapside.'f It was the same in the days of Elizabeth. To this game went the sturdy apprentices, with all the train of idlers in a motley population ; and when their blood was up, as it generally was in this exercise, which Stubbes calls 'a bloody and murthering practice, rather than a fellowly sport or pastime,' they had little heed to the passengers in the streets, whether there was passing by * a velvet justice with a long Great train of blue-coats, twelve or fourteen strong ;'$ or a gentle lady on her palfrey, wearing her • visor made of velvet.'§ The courtier, described in Hall, had an awful chance to save his ■ periwinke ' in such an encounter ; * Trivia, f Entertainment at Rutland House. % Donne. § Stubbes. TRIVIA. 305 when, with his ' bonnet vail'd,' according to the ' courtesies ' of his time, 1 Travelling along in London way,' he has to recover his ' auburn locks ' from the ' ditch ' that crosses the thoroughfare. The days we are noticing were not those of pedestrians. The ' red-heel'd shoes ' of the time of Anne were as little suited for walking as the ' pantofles ' of Elizabeth, ' whereof some be of white leather, some of black, and some of red ; some of black velvet, some of white, some of red, some of green, rayed, carved, cut, and stitched all over with silk, and laid on with gold, silver, and such like.' So Stubbes describes the ' corked shoes ' of his day ; and he adds, what seems very apparent, 'to go abroad in them as they are now used altogether, is rather a let or hindrance to a man than otherwise.'* These fine shoes belonged to the transition state between the horse and the coach; when men were becoming * effeminate ' in the use of the new vehicles, which we have seen the Water-Poet denounced ; and the highways of London were not quite suited to the walker. Shoes such as those are ridiculed by Stubbes as 4 uneasy to go in ;' and he adds, * they exaggerate a moun- tain of mire, and gather a heap of clay and baggage to- gether.' When the coach and the chair were fairly launched into the streets of London, they held joint possession for more than a century and a half. We have no doubt that the chair was a most flourishing invention. The state of the pavement till the middle of the last century must have rendered carriage conveyance anything rather than safe and pleasant. Dulaure tells us that before the time of Louis XIV. the streets of Paris were so narrow, particu- larly in the heart of the town, that carriages could not penetrate into them.j" D'Avenant's picture of London, before the fire, is not much more satisfactory : ' Sure your ancestors contrived your narrow streets in the days of * Anatomy of Abuses. f Histoire de Paris, tome ix., p. 482. X 306 ONCE UPON A TIME. wheelbarrows, before those greater engines, carts, were invented. Is your climate so hot that as yon walk 3*011 need umbrellas of tiles to intercept the sun ; or are your shambles so empty that you are afraid to take in fresh air, lest it should sharpen your stomachs? Oh, the goodly landskip of Old Fish Street ! which, had it not had the ill luck to be crooked, was narrow enough to have been your founder's perspective : and where the garrets (perhaps not for want of architecture, but through abundance of amity), are so made, that opposite neighbours may shake hands without stirring from home.' The chair had a better chance than the coach in such a state of affairs. In the pictures of coaches of the time of Elizabeth, the driver sits on a bar, or narrow chair, very low behind the horses. In those of Charles I. he sometimes drives in this way, and sometimes rides as a posti- lion. But the hackney-coachman after the Restoration is a person- age with a short whip and spurs ; he has been compelled to mount one of his horses, that he ma}- more effectually manage his progress through the narrow streets. His coach, too, is a small affair. D'Avenant describes the coaches as - uneasily hung, and so narroio, that I took them for sedans on wheels.' As the streets were widened, after the fire, the coachman was restored to the dignity of a seat on the carriage ; for, in the times of William III. and Anne, we invariably find him sitting on a box. This was a thing for use and not for finery. Here, or in a leather pouch appended to it, the careful man carried a hammer, pincers, nails, ropes, and other appli- ances in case of need ; and the hammer-cloth vas devised to Hackney Coachman, i6so. TRIVIA. 307 conceal these necessary but unsightly remedies for broken wheels and shivered panels. The skill of this worthy artist in the way of reparation would not rust for want of use. Gay has left us two vivid pictures of the common accidents of the days of Anne. The carman was the terror of coaches from the first hour of their use ; and whether he was the regular city carman, or bore the honour of the dustman, brewer's man, or coal-heaver, he was ever the same vociferous and reckless enemy of the more aristocratic coachman. ' I've seen a beau, in some ill-fated hour, When o'er the stones chokM kennels swell the shower, In gilded chariot loll ; he with disdain Views spatter'd passengers all drench'd in rain. With mud filled high, the rumbling cart draws near ; — Now rule thy prancing steeds, lac'd charioteer : The dustman lashes on with spiteful rage, His ponderous spokes thy painted wheel engage ; Crush'd is thy pride, down falls the shrieking beau, The slabby pavement crystal fragments straw ; Black floods of mire th' embroider'd coat disgrace, And mud enwraps the honours of his face.' The dangers of opened vaults, and of mighty holes in the paving, fenced round with no protecting rail, and illumi- nated only by a glimmering rushlight in a dark street, seem to belong altogether to some barbaric region which never could have been London : — 1 Where a dim gleam the paly lantern throws O'er the mid pavement, heapy rubbish grows, Or arched vaults their gaping jaws extend, Or the dark caves to common-shores descend ; Oft by the winds extinct the signal lies, Or smother'd in the glimmering socket dies Ere Night has half roll'd round her ebon throne ; In the wide gulf the shatter'd coach o'erthrown Sinks with the snorting steeds ; the reins are broke, And from the crackling axle flies the spoke.' But long after Gay's time the carmen and the pave- ment made havoc with coaches. If we open Hogarth, the great painter of manners shows us the vehicular dangers of x2 308 ONCE UPON A TIME. his age. Bonfires in the streets on rejoicing nights, with the ' Flying coach/ that went five miles an hour, over- turned in the flames ;* the four lawyers getting out of a hackney-coach that has come in collision with a carman, while the brewer's man rides upon his shaft in somniferous majesty ;f the dustman's bell, the little boy's drum, the knife-grinder's wheel, all in the middle of the street, to the terror of horses ;J these representations exhibit the perils that assailed the man who ventured into a coach. The chair was no doubt safer, but it had its inconveniences. Swift describes the unhappy condition of a fop during a ' City Shower :'— ' Box'd in a chair the beau impatient sits, While spouts run clattering o'er the roof by fits ; And ever and anon with frightful din The leather sounds ; — he trembles from within !' The chairmen were very absolute fellows. They crowded round the tavern-doors, waiting for shilling customers ; but they did not hesitate to set down their box when a convenient occasion offered for the recreation of a foaming mug.§ They were for the most part sturdy Milesians, revelling, if they belonged to the aristocracy, in all the finery of embroidered coats and epaulettes, and cocked hats and feathers. If they were hackney-chairmen they asserted their power of the strong arm, and were often daring enough as a body to influence the fate of Westminster and Middle- sex elections, in the terror which they produced with fist and bludgeon. They, and the whole race of bullying and fighting ministers of transit, belonged to what Fielding termed ' The Fourth Estate.' That dignity is now assigned to the Press. Civilization has been too strong for Bar- barism. An ingenious Frenchman thus describes the populace of England: — 'The people of the inferior classes are distin- guished by a brutishness of which one can scarcely form an * Night; f Second Stage of Cruelty. X Enraged Musician. § Hogarth 'a I- TRIVIA. 309 idea. Abandoned from their infancy to all the excesses of drunkenness, they display in their whole conduct a spirit of rudeness, of bluntness, and of quarrelsomeness, which engenders those pugilistic encounters of which we have heard so much. Almost all have acquired a deadly aptness The Palace Gate, St. James's. in this bloody exercise : rarely does a holiday pass away without a fatal encounter. Noblemen themselves (for England, in its respect for the Golden Calf, has preserved its great barons, the source of all its riches), and even Peers of Parliament, take part sometimes in these street-fights and these porters' quarrels.' There is an English writer who is equally severe upon 310 ONCE 1 UPON A TIME. the * brutishness ' of the 'fourth estate/ He is speaking most seriously when he complains that 'the mob' attack well-dressed river passengers * with all kinds of scurrilous, abusive, and indecent terms ;' — that they insult foot passen- gers by day, and knock them' down by night; — that no coach can pass along the streets without the utmost diffi- culty and danger, because the carmen draw their waggons across the road, while they laugh at the sufferers from the alehouse window ; — and finally, that they insult ladies of fashion, and drive them from the Park of a Sunday evening. But these two descriptions of great masses of the people are not contemporaneous. The Frenchman writes in a work still in course of publication — ' Encyclopedie Catholique ; Repertoire Universel ' — which in 1848 had reached eighteen quarto volumes. The Englishman is Henry Fielding, who, if we may judge from concurrent testimony, takes no exag- gerated view of the lower London Life of the year 1752.* We trust the Frenchman is a little behind the present time. Let us turn again to Hogarth's print of 'Kight' — the scene, Charing Cross. It is a bonfire night. The fagot blazes in the centre of the narrow street; the dozen far- thing candles illuminate the barber's window ; the light gleams from the watchman's lanthorn, as he leads home the drunken freemason : but there is not a lamp to make ' darkness visible ' when the rioting is over. London was then utterly without a Police. The scene in the night-cellar of ' Industry and Idleness,' where a murdered man is cast into a vault without any attempt at secresy, was the repre- sentation of a common occurrence in 1746; for in 'The Blood Bowl House,' near Water Lane, Fleet Street, of which this is a representation, 'there seldom passed a month without the commission of a murder.'f Fielding tells us that in 1753, in the month of August, he 'was almost fatigued to death with several long examinations, relating to five different murders, all committed within the space of a week, by different gangs of street-robbers.' * Covent Garden Journal, No. 49. f Biographical Anecdotes of Hogarth. TRIVIA. 311 The establishment of the watch in cities by Henry III. was the first step towards a preventive police. But it is not easy to comprehend how, nearly five hundred years afterwards (in 1744), London should have been in such a state that the Lord Mayor and Aldermen went up with an address to the King, representing ' that divers confederacies of great numbers of evil-disposed persons, armed with bind- i.< i*' -. London Street-lights, 1760. geons, pistols, cutlasses, and other dangerous weapons, in- fest not only the private lanes and passages, but likewise tne public streets and places of usual concourse, and commit most daring outrages upon the persons of your Majesty's good subjects, whose affairs oblige them to pass through the streets, by terrifying, robbing, and wounding them ; and these facts are frequently perpetrated at such times as were 312 OXCE UPON A TIME. heretofore deemed hours of security.' If in the ' hours of security ' armed gangs thus destroyed the safety of ordinary life, what must they have been in the hours of darkness, when a feeble light was hung out here and there from six to eleven o'clock, and after that the city was surrendered to gloom and rapine? In the first fifty years of the eighteenth century we should assuredly have thought that society had settled into order and security. These atro- cities could not have existed without a most lamentable weakness in the government. Everything was left to the narrow-minded local authorities. There was no central power. The government (what a misnomer !) had nothing to do but to make war, and to hang. The Lord Mayor and Aldermen cried, * Hang, hang !' ' Permit us, sir, to express our hopes that a speedy, rigorous, and exemplary execution of the laws upon the persons of offenders, as they shall fall into the hands of justice, may, under your Majesty's princely wisdom, conduce greatly to the suppressing these enormities, by striking terror into the wicked, and preventing others from entering into such evil courses.' And the King pro- mised he would hang : ' Nothing shall be wanting on my part to put the laws in execution, to support the magistrates rigorously to punish such heinous offenders.' Some persons, whose good deeds, like those of many others, have fallen into oblivion, suggested a wiser course ; and Maitland, the historian of the city, from whose works we collect these re- markable facts, tells us, ' this year was enacted another Act of Parliament for making more effectual provision for en- lightening the streets of this city.' A mental illumination had been required before this desirable event. Dr. Johnson has given us a picture of the dangers of Night in London, about this period of partial illumination : •Prepare for death if here at night you roam. And sign your will before you rap from home. Some fiery fop, with new commission vain, Who sleeps on bramblee till he kills his man. — Seme frolic drunkard, reeling from ;i feast, i.t's a broil, and stal>s you for a jest. TRIVIA. 313 Yet even these heroes, mischievously gay, Lords of the street and terrors of the way, Flush'd as they are with folly, youth, and wine, Their prudent insults to the poor confine: Afar they mark the flambeau's bright approach, And shim the shining train and golden coach/ This, then, was the age of flambeaux and link-boys. London had only still its lanthorns here and there, and its few glass lamps. Westminster was perhaps worse provided. But the coach rolled from the theatre and the ball with its liveried torch-bearers ; and even the present century has seen flambeaux in London. The intelligent antiquary — not he who discovers nothing of antiquity but what is buried in the earth or described in the classics — may behold a relic 314 ONCE UPON A TIME. of the manners of a hundred years ago in some of our exist- ing squares and streets, that have stood up against the ca- prices of fashion. On each side the door-way, and generally attached to the posts that carry an arching lamp-rail, are two instruments that look like the old tin horn of the crier of ' great news.' They are the flambeaux extinguishers : and when the gilded coach was dragged heavily along at midnight to the mansion (people of fashion once went to bed at midnight), and the principal door was closed upon the lords and ladies of the great house, the footmen thrust their torches into these horn -like cavities, and, as the horses moved oif by instinct to their stables, the same footmen crept down the area in utter darkness. There was perhaps a solitary link-boy at the corner of the square, especially if an open cesspool, or a little lake of mud, promised a locality where gentlemen without his aid might break their necks or soil their stockings. But he generally hovered about the theatres and taverns. Gay describes ' the officious link-boy's smoky light/ but he has also given the fraternity a bad character : — 'Though thou art tempted by the link-man's call, Yet trust him not along the lonely wall ; In the mid-way he '11 quench the flaming brand, And share the booty with the pilfering band. Still keep the public streets, where oily rays, Shot from the crystal lamp, o'crspread thy ways.' Oily rays, and crystal lamps ! The very existence of the 4 link-men,' and 4 the pilfering band ' tells us to what extent the illumination reached, and what were dignified by the name of • public streets.' But the age of lamps was really approaching. The city became vigorous in lighting, when it was found that seve- rity did little against the thieves; and the Westminster Paving and Lighting Act was passed in 1762. Then came the glories of the old lamp-lighters; — the progress through each district to trim the wicks in a morning — and the terrible skurry, with ladders driven a'gainst your breast, and oil showered upon your head, as twilight approached. TRIVIA. 315 What a twinkling then was there through all the streets ! But we were proud of our lamps ; and Beckmann, in his 1 History of Inventions,' has described them as something like a wonder of the world. Beneath the faint lamp slept the watchman; or, if he walked, he still walked with his lanthorn; and the link-boy, yet a need- ful auxiliary to the lamp and the lanthorn, guided the reeling gentleman from his tavern to his lodging. 1 The Silent Woman,' one of the most popular of Ben Jonson's comedies, presents to us a more vivid picture than can elsewhere be found of the characteristic noises of the streets of London more than two centuries ago. It is easy to form to ourselves a general idea of the hum and buzz of the bees and drones of this mighty hive, under a state of manners essentially different from our own ; but it is not so easy to attain a lively conception of the particular sounds that once we,nt to make up this great discord, and so to compare them in their resemblances and their differ- ences with the roar which the great Babel now * sends through all her gates.' The principal character of Jonson's ' Silent Woman ' is founded upon a sketch by a Greek writer of the fourth cen- tury, Libanius. Jonson designates this character by the name of ' Morose ;' and his peculiarity is that he can bear no kind of noise, even that of ordinary talk. The plot turns upon this affectation ; for, having been entrapped into a marriage with the Silent Woman, she and her friends assail him with tongues the most obstreperous, and clamours the Link-boy. 316 ONCE UPON A TIME. most uproarious, until, to be relieved of this nuisance, h< comes to terms with his nephew for a portion of his fortune and is relieved of the silent woman, who is in reality a bo;} in disguise. We extract the dialogue which will form i text to our paper ; the speakers being Truewit, Clerimont and a Page : — ' True. I met that stiff piece of formality, his uncle, yes terday, with a huge turban of night- caps on his head buckled over his ears. ' Cler. ! that's his custom when he walks abroad. H( can endure no noise, man. • True. So I have heard. But is the disease so ridiculous in him as it is made ? They say he has been upon diver; treaties with the fish-wives and orange-women ; and article; propounded between them : many, the chimney-sweepers will not be drawn in. ' Cler. No, nor the broom-men ; they stand out stiffly He cannot endure a costard-monger ; he swoons if he hean one. ' True. Methinks a smith should be ominous. 1 Cler. Or any hammer-man. A brasier is not sufferec to dwell in the parish, nor an armourer. He woulc have hang'd a pewterer's 'prentice once upon a Shrove Tuesday's riot, for being of that trade, when the rest wen quit, ' True. A trumpet should fright him terribly, or th< hautboys. 4 Cler, Out of his senses. The waits of the city have I pension of him not to come near that ward. This youtl practised on him one night like the bellman, and nevei left till he had brought him down to the door with a lon£ sword ; and there left him flourishing with the air. ' Page. Why, sir, he hath chosen a street to lie in, s< narrow at both ends that it will receive no coaches, noi carts, nor any of these common noises : and therefore \\ < that love him devise to bring him in such as we may, nov and then, for his exercise, to breathe him. He would grov resty else in his cage ; his virtue would rust without action TRIVIA. 317 I entreated a bearward, one day, to come down with the dogs of some four parishes that way, and I thank him he did ; and cried his games under Master Morose's window ; till he was sent crying away, with his head made a most bleeding spectacle to the multitude. And, another time, a fencer marching to his prize Tiad his drum most tragically run through, for taking that street in his way at my request. ' True, A good wag ! How does he for the bells? ' Cler. ! in the queen's time he was wont to go out of town every Saturday at ten o'clock, or on holyday eves. But now, by reason of the sickness, the perpetuity of ring- ing has made him devise a room with double walls and treble ceilings ; the windows close shut and caulk'd ; and there he lives by candlelight.' Was Hogarth familiar with the old noise-hater when he conceived his own ■ Enraged Musician ?' In this extraor- dinary gathering together of the producers of the most discordant sounds we have a representation which may fairly match the dramatist's description of street noises. Here we have the milkmaid's scream, the mackerel-seller's shout, the sweep upon the house-top, — to match the fish- wives and orange-women, the broom-men and costard- mongers. The smith, who was ' ominous,' had no longer his forge in the busy streets of Hogarth's time ; the ar- mourer was obsolete : but Hogarth can rival their noises with the paviour's hammer, the sow-gelder's horn, and the knife-grinder'-s wheel. The waits of the city had a pension not to come near Morose's ward ; but it was out of the power of the ' Enraged Musician ' to avert the terrible discord of the blind hautboy-player. The bellman, who frightened the sleepers at midnight, was extinct ; but modern London had acquired the dustman's bell. The bear- ward no longer came down the street with the dogs of four parishes, nor did the fencer march with a drum to his prize ; but there was the ballad-singer, with her squalling child, roaring worse than bear or dog ; and the drum of the little boy playing at soldiers was a more abiding nuisance than the 318 ONCE UPON A TIME. fencer. Morose and the c Enraged Musician' had each the church-bells to fill up the measure of discord. But London has lost most of its individual noises. In our own days there has been legislation for the benefit of tender ears ; and there are now penalties, with police constables to enforce them, against all persons blowing any horn or using any other noisy instrument, for the purpose of call- llorn-men.— 'Great News!' ing persons together, or of announcing any show or enter- tainment, or for the purpose of hawking, selling, distribut- ing, or collecting any article, or of obtaining money or alms. These enactments are stringent enough to have banished from our streets all those uncommon noises which did something to relieve the monotony of the one endless roar of the tread of feet and the rush of wheels. The street noise now is deafening when we aro in the midst of it ; but in some secluded place, such as Lincoln's Inn Gardens, it is the ever-present sullen sound of angry waves dashing upon the shingles. The horn that proclaimed extraordinary TRIVIA. 319 news, running to and fro among peaceful squares and se- cluded courts, was sometimes a relief. The bell of the dustman was not altogether unpleasant. In the twilight hour, when the shutters were not yet closed, and the candles were not yet burning, the tinkle of the muffin-man had something in it very sooth- ing. It is gone. But the legislators have still left us our street-music. There was talk of its abolition ; but they have satisfied themselves with enacting that musicians, on being warned to depart from the neighbourhood of the house of any householder by the occupier or his servant, or by a police-constable, incur a penalty of forty shillings by refusal. De la Serre, who - came to England with Mary de Medici, when she visited the Queen of Charles I., is enthusiastic in his praises of the street-music of London : — ■ In all public places, violins, hautboys, and other kinds of instruments are so common, for the gratification of individuals, that in every hour of the day our ears may be charmed with their sweet melody.' England was then a musical nation ; but from that time nearly to our own her street-music became a thing to be legislated against. In the days of Elizabeth, and of James and Charles, the people were surrounded with music, and imbued with musical associations. The cittern was heard in every barber's shop ; and even up to the publication of the * Tatler ' it was the same : ' Go into a barber's anywhere, no matter in what district, and it is ten to one you will hear the sounds either of a fiddle or guitar, or see the instruments hanging up somewhere/ The barbers or their apprentices were the performers : • If idle, they pass their time in life- ilufTm-iniU), 1 J :i. 320 ONCE UPON A TIME. delighting music' Thus writes a pamphleteer of 1597. Doctor King, about the beginning of the last century, found the barbers degenerating in their accomplishments, and he assigns the cause : ' Turning themselves to periwig-making, they have forgot their cittern and their music' The cittern twanged then in the barbers' shops in the fresh mornings especially; and then came forth the carman to bear his loads through the narrow thoroughfares. He also was musical. We all know how Falstaff describes Justice Shallow : * He came ever in the rear- ward of the fashion, and sung those tunes to the over-scutched housewives that he heard the carmen whistle' He had a large stock of tunes. In Ben Jonson's ' Bartholomew Fair,' one of the characters exclaims, ' If he meet but a carman in the street. and I find him not loth to keep him off of him, he will whistle him and all his tunes over at night in his sleep.' Half a century later even, ' barbers, cobblers, and plowmen,' were enumerated as ■ the heirs of music' Who does not perceive that when Isaac Walton's milkmaid sings, — me live with me and be my love,' she is doing nothing remarkable ? These charming words were the common possession of all. The people wore the heirs of poetry as well as of music. They had their own delicious madrigals to sing, in which music was ' married to immortal verse,' — and they could sing them. Morley, writing in 1507, says, 'Supper being ended, and music- books, according to custom, being brought to the table, the mistress of the house presented me with a part, earnestly requesting me to sing: but when, after many excuses, I protested unfeignedly that I could not, every one began to wonder — yea, some whispered to others, demanding how I was brought up.' In a condition of society like this, the must have been worth listening to. 'A <>( musicians,* as a little hand was palled, was to he found everywhere ; and they attended upon the guests in taverns and ordinaries, and at ■ good men's feasts ' in private houses. In « The Silent Woman,' itifl tie smell of the venison, TRIVIA. 321 going through the streets, will invite one noise of fiddlers or other ;' and again, ' They have intelligence of all feasts ; there's good correspondence betwixt them and the London cooks.' Feasts were then not mere occasions for gluttony and drunkenness, as they became in the next generation. As the drunkenness went on increasing, the taste for music went on diminishing. In the next century, the ' Tatler ■ writes, 4 In Italy nothing is more frequent than to hear a cobbler working to an opera tune ; but, on the contrary, our honest countrymen have so little an inclination to music, that they seldom begin to sing till they are drunk.' Thus we went on till the beginning of the present century, and indeed later. The street-music was an indication of the popular taste. Hogarth's blind hautboy-player, and his shrieking ballad-singer, are no caricatures. The execrable sounds which the lame and the blind produced were the mere arts of mendicancy. The principle of extorting money by hideous sounds was carried as far as it could go by a fellow of the name of Keeling, called Blind Jack, who performed on the flageolet with his nose. Every description of street exhibition was accompanied with these terrible noises. The vaulter, and the dancing lass, and the tumbler creeping through a hoop, and the puppet-showman, and the dancing dogs, and the bear and monkey, had each their own peculiar din, whether of drum, fiddle, horn, or bag- pipes, compared with which the music of Morose's bear- ward and fencer would have been as the harmony of the spheres. 322 ONCE UPON A TIME. The Library, Strawberry Hill. WALPOLE'S WORLD OF FASHION. ' When I was very young, and in the height of the opposi- tion to my father, my mother wanted a large parcel of bugles ; for what use I forget. As they were then out of fashion, she could get none. At last she was told of a quantity in a little shop in an obscure alley in the City. We drove thither ; found a great stock ; she bought it, and bade the proprietor send it home. He said, "Whither?" " To Sir Robert Walpole's." He asked, coolly, " Who is Sir Robert Walpole?"'* ■ What was Strawberry Hill V might be a similar question with many persons, were We not living in a somewhat different age from that of Sir Robert Walpole. Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill is gone. Its place is being occupied with trim villas, inhabited by a class of whose existence Walpole would have been as ignorant as the City * Horace Walpole to the Miss Ben ys. Maivh 6 t 1791. WALPOLE 8 WORLD OF FASHION. 323 shopkeeper was of the great Sir Robert. The maker of Strawberry Hill — the builder-up of its galleries, and tri- bunes, and Holbein-chambers — the arranger of its ' painted glass and gloom ' — the collector of its pictures, and books, and bijouterie, says of himself, ' I am writing, I am build- ing — both works that will outlast the memory of battles and heroes! Truly, I believe, the one will as much as t'other. My buildings are paper, like my writings, and both will be blown away in ten years after I am dead : if they had not the substantial use of amusing me while I live, they would be worth little indeed.'* Horace Wal- pole himself prevented the realisation of his own prophecy. It was said of him, even during his lifetime, * that -he had outlived three sets of his own battlements ;' but he never- theless contrived, by tying up his toy-warehouse and its moveables with entails and jointures through several gene- rations, to keep the thing tolerably entire for nearly half a century after he had left that state of being where ' moth and dust do corrupt.' And though the paper portion of his ' works ' — his * Eoyal and Noble Authors,' his ' Anec- dotes of Painting,' his ' Historic Doubts,' &c. — are formed of materials not much more durable than his battlements, he was during a long life scattering about the world an abundance of other paper fragments, that have not only lasted ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty 3 r ears after he was dead, but which aftertimes will not willingly let die. It was in Strawberry Hill that the every-day thoughts and experiences for the most part centred that have made the letters of Horace Walpole the best record of the manners of the upper ranks during half a century, when very great social changes were working all around. Strawberry Hill and Horace Walpole are inseparably associated in our minds. The house in Arlington Street, from which he sometimes dates, is like most other West- end houses, a thing distinguished only by its number ; and which has no more abiding associations than the * Horace Walpole to Conway, August 5, 1761. Y 2 324 ONCE UPON A TIME. chariot which rolled on from its first drawing-room through the necessary decay of cracked varnish and split panels, until its steps displayed the nakedness of their original iron, and the dirty rag that was once a carpet was finally succeeded by the luxury of clean straw once a week. We cannot conceive Horace Walpole in a house with three windows upon a floor, in a formal row of ugly brick brethren. It is in Strawberry Hill, in the ' little parlour hung with a stone colour Gothic paper, and Jackson's Venetian prints ' — or in the ' charming closet hung with green paper, and water-colour pictures ' — or in ' the room where we always live, hung with a blue and white paper in stripes, adorned with festoons' — that we fancy him writing to Montagu, Mann, Chute, and Conway, in the days when ' we pique ourselves upon nothing but simpli- city,' and Lady Townshend exclaimed of the house, 4 It is just such a house as a parson's, where the children lie at the foot of the bed.' In a few years the owner had visions of galleries, and round towers, and cloisters, and chapels : and then the house became filled with kingly armour, and rare pictures, and cabinets of miniatures by Oliver and Petitot, and Eaffaelle china. Then, when Strawberry Hill came to the height of its glory, the owner kept ' an inn, the sign the Gothic Castle,' and his whole time -was passed in giving tickets for seeing it, and hiding himself while it was seen.* Lastly came the time when the old man was laid up for weeks with the gout, and the build- ing and curiosity-buying was at an end ; and after the Duchess of York had come to see his house in 1793, when he put a carpet on the step of his gate, and matted his court, and presented chocolate upon a salver, he says, here * will end my connexions with courts, beginning with George the First, great-great- great-grandfather to the Duchess of York ! It sounds as if there could not have been above three generations more before Adam.' There never was a place so associated with the memory of one man as Strawberry Hill is with Horace Walpole. * Horace Walpole to Montagu, Sept. 8, 176S. WALrOLE'S WORLD OF FASHIOX. 325 The letters of Horace Walpole cannot at all be regarded as a picture of society in general. He has no distinct notion whatever of the habits of the middle classes. So- ciety with him is divided into two great sections — the aristocracy and the mob. He was made by his times ; and this is one of the remarkable features of his times. The Gallery, Strawberry Hill. With all his sympathy for literature, he has a decided hatred for authors that are out of the pale of fashion. Fielding, Johnson, Sterne, Goldsmith, the greatest names of his day, are with him ridiculous and contemptible. He cannot be regarded, therefore, as a representative of the literary classes of his times. As the son of a great minister he was petted and flattered till his father fell from his power; he says himself he had then enough of flattery. When he mixed among his equals in the political intrigues of the time, he displayed no talent for business or oratory. His feeble constitution compelled him to seek amusement 326 ONCE UPON A TIME. instead of dissipation ; and his great amusement was to look upon the follies of his associates and to laugh at them. He was not at bottom an ill-natured man, or one without feeling. He affected that insensibility which is the ex- clusive privilege of high life — and long may it continue so. When Lord Mountford shot himself, and another Lord re- joiced that his friend's death would allow him to hire the best cook in England, the selfish indifference was probably more affected than real. Walpole himself takes off his own mask on one occasion. When he heard of Gray's death, in writing to Chute he apologises for the concern he feels, and adds, ' I thought that what I had seen of the world had hardened my heart ; but I find that it had formed my language, not extinguished my tenderness.' When he speaks of individuals we may occasionally think that the world had formed his language ; he is too often spiteful and malicious : but when he describes a class he is not likely much to exaggerate. The esprit de corps would render him somewhat charitable : if he did not ' extenuate ' he would not set down ' in malice,' when he was holding up a mirror of himself and of the very people with whom he was corresponding. In the early part of the last century London saw less of the wealth and splendour of the aristocracy than previous to the Kevolution. The great political divisions of the kingdom kept many families away from the Court ; and the habits of the first Elector of Hanover who walked into the ownership of St. James's, and of his son and successor, were not very likely to attract the proud and the discon- tented from the scenes of their own proper greatness. Walpole, writing from Newmarket in 1743, says, 'How dismal, how solitary, how scrub does this town look; and yet it has actually a street of houses better than Parma or Modenal Nay, the houses cf the people of fashion, who come hither for the races, are palaces to what houses in London itse It' were fifteen years ago. People do begin to live again now ; and I suppose in a term we shall revert to York Houses, Clarendon Houses, &c. But from that walpole's world of fashion. 327 grandeur all the nobility had contracted themselves to live in coops of a dining-room, a dark back room, with one eye in a corner, and a closet. Think what London would be if the chief houses were in it, as in the cities in other countries, and not dispersed like great rarity-plums in a vast pudding of country.' It was some time before the large houses of the nobility once more made London the magnificent capital which it subsequently became. In the meantime the lordly tenants of the ' coops ' above de- scribed spent a vast deal of their time in places of public resort. Let us cast a rapid glance at the fashionable amusements of the second half of the last century. The year 1741 presents to us a curious spectacle of the aristocracy and the people at issue, and almost in mortal conflict, not upon a question of corn or taxes, but whether the Italian school of music should prevail, or the Anglo- German. 'The opera is to be on the French system of dancers, scenes, and dresses. The directors have already laid out great sums. They talk of a mob to silence the operas, as they did the French players; but it will be more difficult, for here half the young noblemen in town are engaged, and they will not be so easily persuaded to humour the taste of the mobility : in short, they have already retained several eminent lawyers from the Bear Garden to plead their defence.'* The fight had been going on for nearly twenty years. Everybody knows Swift's epigram, * On the Feuds about Handel and Bononcini. 1 Strange all this difference should he 'Twixt Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee.' Walpole naturally belonged to the party of his ' order.' Handel had produced his great work, the ' Messiah,' in 1741, at Covent Garden. Fashion was against him, though he' was supported by the court, the mob, and the poet of * Horace Walpole to Mann, Oct. 8, 1741. 328 ONCE UPON A TIME. common sense. He went to Ireland ; and the triumph of the Italian faction was thus immortalised by Pope : — * Cara ! Cara ! silence all that train : Joy to great Chaos ! let Division reign : Chromatic tortures soon shall drive them hence, Break all their nerves, and fritter all their sense : One trill shall harmonise joy, grief, and rage, Wake the dull Church, and lull the ranting Stage : To the same notes thy sons shall hum, or snore, And all thy yawning daughters cry encore. Another Phoebus, thy own Phoebus reigns, Joys in my jigs, and dances in my chains. But soon, ah soon, Rebellion will commence, If Music meanly borrows aid frork Sense : Strong in new arms, lo ! giant Handel stands, Like bold Briareus, with a hundred hands ; To stir, to rouse, to shake the soul he comes, And Jove's own thunders follow Mars's drums. Arrest him, empress, or you sleep no more — She heard, and drove him to th' Hibernian shore.'* Handel came back to London in 1742, and the tide then turned in his favour. Horace Walpole shows us how fashion tried to sneer him down ; he is himself the oracle of the divinity. ' Handel has set up an oratorio against the operas, and succeeds. He has hired all the goddesses from farces, and the singers of Eoast Beef from between the acts at both theatres, with a man with one note in his voice, and a girl without ever a one ; and so they sing, and make brave hallelujahs; and the good company encore the recitative, if it happens to have any cadence like what Ihey call a tune.'f The Italian Opera House in the Hay- market itself went out of fashion in a few years, and the nobility had their favourite house in Lincoln's Inn Fields. What the Court then patronised the aristocracy rejected. 1 The late royalties went to the Haymarket, when it was the fashion to frequent the other opera in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Lord Chesterfield one night came into the latter, and was asked if he had been at the other house ? " Yes," * Dunciad, Book IV, f Horace Walpole to Mann, Feb. 24, 1743. WALPOLE S WORLD OF FASHIOX. 329 said he, " but there was nobody but the king and queen ; and as I thought they might be talking business, 1 came away." '* However, amidst all these feuds the Italian Opera became firmly established in London ; and through that interchange of taste which fortunately neither the prejudices of exclusiveness nor ignorance can long prevent, the people began gradually to appreciate the opera, and the nobility became enthusiastic admirers of the oratorio. In the days of Walpole the Theatre was fashionable ; and in their love of theatrical amusements the nobility did not Garrick as Macbeth. affect to be exclusive. In not liking Garrick when he first came out, Walpole and his friend Gray indulged probably in the fastidiousness of individual taste, instead of repre- senting the opinions of the fashionable or literary classes. Gray writes, ' Did I tell you about Mr. Garrick, that the Horace Walpole to Conway, Sept. 25, 17G1. 330 ONCE UPON A TIME. town are horn-mad after ? There are a dozen dukes of a night at Goodman's Fields sometimes ; and yet I am stiff in the opposition.' Walpole, in May, 1742, six months after Garrick's first appearance, says, ' All the run is now after Garrick, a wine-merchant, who is turned player, at Good- man's Fields. He plays all parts, and is a very good mimic. His acting I have seen, and may say to you, who will not tell it again here, I see nothing wonderful in it ; but it is heresy to say so : the Duke of Argyle says he is superior to Betterton.'* From some cause or other, Walpole hated and vilified Garrick all his life. His pride was perhaps wounded when he was compelled to jostle against the actor in the best society. In the instance of Garrick, Pope's strong sense was again opposed to Walpole's super-refinement. The great poet of manners said to Lord Orrery on witnessing Garrick's Richard III., • That young man never had his equal as an actor, and will never have a rival.' As a manager Garrick did not scruple to resent an injustice, however offensive to the leaders of the ton. ' There has been a new comedy, called "The Foundling," far from good, but it took. Lord Hobart and some more young men made a party to damn it, merely for the love of damnation. The Templars espoused the play, and went armed with syringes charged with stinking oil and with sticking plasters ; but it did not come to action. Garrick was impertinent, and the pretty men gave over their plot the moment they grew to be in the right.'f The Templars with their syringes and stinking oil, and Lord Hobart with his ready ' damnation,' give one a notion of the mob legislation of the theatres at that period, for boxes, pit, and gallery constituted one mob. There was a calm awhile, but in 1755 Walpole writes : * England seems returning : for those who are not in Parliament there are nightly riots at Drury Lane, where there is an Anti-Gall ican party against some French dancers. The young men of quality have protected them * Horace Walpole t«> Mann. f Hi March 11, 1748. walpole's world of fashion. 331 till last night, when, being opera-night, the galleries were victorious.' Walpole tells us a most amusing story of the manner in which these things were managed in his earlier days. ' The town has been trying all this winter to beat pantomimes off the stage, very boisterously ; for it is the way here to make even an affair of taste and sense a matter of not and arms. Fleetwood, the master of Drury Lane, has omitted nothing to support them, as they supported his house. About ten days ago he let into the pit great numbers of Bear Garden bruisers (that is the term), to knock down everybody that hissed. The pit rallied their forces and drove them out. I was sitting very quietly in the side-boxes, contemplating all this. On a sudden the curtain flew up, and discovered the whole stage tilled with blackguards, armed with bludgeons and clubs, to menace the audience. This raised the greatest uproar ; and among the rest, who flew into a passion but your friend the philo- sopher ! In short, one of the actors, advancing to the front of the stage to make an apology for the manager, he had scarce began to say, " Mr. Fleetwood " when your friend, with a most audible voice and dignity of anger, called out, " He is an impudent rascal !" The whole pit huzzaed, and repeated the words. Only think of my being a popular orator! But what was still better, while my shadow of a person was dilating to the consistence of a hero, one of the chief ringleaders of the riot, coming under the box where I sat, and pulling off his hat, said, " Mr. Walpole, what would you please to have us do next ?" It is impossible to describe to you the confusion into which this apostrophe threw me. I sank down into the box, and have never since ventured to set my foot into the play- house. The next night the uproar was repeated with greater violence, and nothing was heard but voices calling out, " Where is Mr. W. ? where is Mr. W. ?" In short, the whole town has been entertained with my prowess, and Mr. Conway has given me the name of Wat Tyler.'* The * Horace Walpole to Maim, November 26, 1744. 332 ONCE UPOX A TIME. participation of people of fashion in theatrical rows is a sufficient evidence of the interest which they took in the theatre. They carried the matter still farther in 1751, by hiring Drury Lane to act a play themselves. ' The rage was so great to see this performance, that the House of Commons literally adjourned at three o'clock on purpose.'* Vauxhall and Ranelagh figure in the descriptions of the ' Spectator ' and the ' Citizen of the World,' in the ' Con- noisseur' and in * Evelina. 'f But none of those passages give us an adequate notion of the fashion of Vauxhall and Ranelagh. Addison, and Goldsmith, and Miss Burney, looked upon the great crowd of all ranks as they would look upon life in general. Walpole saw only his own set ; but how graphically has he described them ! The mere surface of the shows, the gilding and varnish of the gaiety, fills the imagination. At Vauxhall we see Prince Lob- kowitz's footmen, in very rich new liveries, bearing torches, and the prince himself in a new sky-blue watered tabby coat, with gold button -holes, and a magnificent gold waistcoat; and Madame l'Ambassadrice de Venise in a green sack, with a straw hat ; and we hear the violins and hautboys, the drums and trumpets, of the Prince of Wales's barges.J Imagine such a sight in our own days ! And then, one-and-twenty years later in life, Walpole is again going to Vauxhall to a ridotto alfresco, with a tide and torrent of; coaches so prodigious, that he is an hour and a half on the road before he gets half way from Arlington Street. ' There is to be a rival mob in the same way at Ranelagh to-morrow ; for the greater the folly and imposi- tion, the greater is the crowd. '§ But for a little quiet, domestic party at Vauxhall, composed of the highest in rank and fashion, Walpole is the most delightful, and, we have no doubt, the most veracious of chroniclers. Mrs, Tibbs and the pawnbroker's widow of Goldsmith are mere pretenders to coarseness by the side of Lady Caroline * Horace Walpole to Mann. f London, vol. i. No. 23. X Horace Walpole to Conway, Jniw 27, 1748. § Horace Walpole to Montagu, May 1 1, 17<>*J. walpole's world OF FASHION". 333 Petersham and Miss Ashe. Walpole receives a card from Lady Caroline in 1750 to go with her to the Gardens. When he calls, the ladies ' had just finished their last layer of red, and looked as handsome as crimson could make them.' All the town had been summoned ; and in the Mall they picked up dukes and damsels, and two young ladies especially, who had been ' trusted by their mothers for the first time of their lives to the matronly care of Lady Caroline.' They marched to their barge with a boat of French horns attending. Upon debarking at Vauxhall they 4 picked up Lord Granby, arrived very drunk from " Jenny's Whim ;" where, instead of going to old Strafford's catacombs to make honourable love, he had dined with Lady Fanny, and left her and eight other women and four other men playing at brag.' ■ Jenny's Whim' was a tavern at Chelsea Bridge. The party as- semble in their booth and go to supper, after a process of cookery which would rather astonish a Lady Caroline of our own day : ' We minced seven chickens into a china dish, which Lady Caroline stewed over a lamp with three pats of butter and a flagon of water, stirring, and rattling, and laughing, and we every minute expecting to have the dish fly about our ears. She had brought Betty, the fruit-girl, with hampers of strawberries and cherries from .Rogers's, and made her wait upon us, and then made her sup by us at a little table. The conversation was no less lively than the whole transaction.' Lady Caroline was not singular in her tastes. Before the accession of George III. it was by no means uncommon for ladies of quality to sup at taverns, and even to invite the gentlemen to be of the company. Walpole says that in 1755 a Frenchman, who was ignorant of the custom, took some liberties with Lady Harrington, through which mistake her house was afterwards closed against him. This practice, which to us seems so startling, was a relic of the manners of a century earlier. The decorum of the court of George III. banished the custom from the upper ranks ; but it lingered amongst the middle classes : and Dr. Johnson thought it not in the 334 ONCE UPON A TIME. slightest degree indecorous to say to two young ladies who called upon him, ' Come, you pretty fools, dine with Maxwell and me at the Mitre ;' to which the ladies, who wished to consult the philosopher upon the subject of Methodism, very readily assented. In the reign of the second George, and perhaps a little later, the great ladies, whether at taverns or in private houses, carried their vivacity somewhat farther than we should now think con- sistent with perfect propriety. Lady Coventry, at a great supper at Lord Hertford's ' said, in a very vulgar accent, if she drank any more she should be muchibus.' How the Americans of our own day must be shocked at the vulgarity of our aristocratic predecessors ; for they will not tolerate even the word drunk, and describe the condition which that word conveys by the pretty epithet excited! We are adopting the term ; and it may be expected that the refinement in our nomenclature may lead to a revival of a little of the old liberty in our practice. Walpole explains that muckibus was ' Irish for sentimental.* He did not foresee the change in our English. He calls things by their right names. He tells us that ' Lord Cornwallis and Lord Allen came drunk to the Opera ;' and, what is harder to believe, that the chancellor, Lord Henley, being chosen a governor of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, * a smart gentle- man who was sent with a staff carried it in the evening when the Chancellor happened to be drunk.' These exhi- bitions were in 1763. We might believe, from the well-known lines of Pope, that the amusement which was invented for the solace of a mad king was the exclusive inheritance of an aged aristocracy :— ' See how the world its veterans rewards, A youth of folly, an old age of cards.' Not so. The cards were a part of the folly of youth as well as of age. Walpole never appears to have had the Marion of a gambler; but we learn from his fifty years' correspondence that he was always well content to dabble walpole's world of fashion. 335 with cards and dice, and he records his winnings with a very evident satisfaction. Thd reign of ombre, whose chances and intrigues interested the great quite as much as the accidents and plots of the reign of Anne, was sup- planted by the new dynasty of whist ; and then whist yielded to the more gambling excitement of loo; to which faro succeeded ; and the veiy cards themselves were at last almost kicked out by the ivory cubes, which disposed of fortunes by a more summary process. In 1742 whist was the mania, though Walpole voted it dull : ' \\ hist has spread a universal opium over the whole nation.' Again : ' The kingdom of the Dull is come upon earth The only token" of this new kingdom is a woman riding on a beast, which is the mother of abominations, and the name in the forehead is Whist ; and the four-and-twenty elders and the woman, and the whole town, do nothing but play with this beast.'* Wbist had a long reign. In 1749 Walpole writes: ' As I passed over the green [Richmond], I saw Lord Bath, Lord Lonsdale, and half-a-dozen more of the White's club, sauntering at the door of a house which they have taken there, and come to every Saturday and Sunday to play at whist. You will naturally ask why they can't play at whist in London on those days as well as on the other five ? Indeed I can't tell you, except that it is so established a fashion to go out of town at the end of the week, that people do go, though it be only into another town.'f Ministers of state, and princes who', had some- thing to do, were ready to relieve the cares of business by gambling, as much as other people gamed to vary their idleness. Lord Sandwich ' goes once or twice a week to hunt with the Duke [Cumberland] ; and as the latter has taken a turn of gaming, Sandwich, to make his court — and fortune — carries a box and dice in his pocket ; and so they throw a main, whenever the hounds are at fault, "upon every green hill, and under every green tree." 'J Five years later, at a magnificent ball and supper at Bedford House, i * Horace Walpole to Mann. t Id., June 4, 1749. t Id., January 31, 1750. o36 ONCE UPON A TIME. the Duke ' was playing at hazard with a great heap of gold before him : somebody said he looked like the prodigal son and the fatted calf, both.'* Amongst the royal and noble gamblers, swindlers par excellence sometimes found their way. There was a Sir William Burdett, whose name had the honour of being inscribed in the betting-room at White's as the subject of a wager that he would be the first baronet that would be hanged. He and a lady, ' dressed foreign as a princess of the house of Branden- burg,' cheated Lord Castledurrow and Captain Rodney- out of a handsome sum at faro. The noble victim met the Baronet at Eanelagh, and thus apostrophised him : ' Sir William, here is the sum I think I lost last night; since that, I have heard that you are a professed pickpocket, and therefore desire to have no farther acquaintance with you.' The Baronet took the money with a respectful bow, and then asked his Lordship the further favour to set him down at Buckingham Gate, and without waiting for an answer whipped into the chariot.f No doubt the Baronet prospered and was smiled upon. W T alpole tells another story of a hanger-on upon the gaming-tables, which has a dash of the tragic in it : ' General Wade was at a low gaming- house, and had a very fine snuff-box, which on a sudden he missed. Everybody denied having taken it : he in- sisted on searching the company. He did : there remained only one man, who had stood behind him, but refused to be searched, unless the General would go into another room alone with him. There the man told him that he was born a gentleman, was reduced, and lived by what little bets he could pick up there, and by fragments which the waiters sometimes gave him. ** At this moment I have half a fowl in my pocket ; I was afraid of being exposed : here it is ! Now, sir, you may search me." Wade was so struck that he gave the man a hundred pounds. 'J The genius of gambling might be painted, like Garrick, between * Horace Waljmle to Bentley, 17.").-). f Horace Walpolo to Maim, 1748. X M-, January 10, 1750. WALPOLE S WORLD OF FASHION. 337 the tragic and the comic Muse. "We turn over the page, and Comedy again presents herself, in an attitude that looks very like the hoyden step of her half-sister, Farce : 1 Jemmy Lumley last week had a party of whist at his own house : the combatants, Lucy Southwell, that curtseys like a bear, Mrs. Prijean, and a Mrs. Mackenzy. They played from six in the evening till twelve next day; Jemmy never winning one rubber, and rising a loser of two thou- sand pounds. How it happened I know not, nor why his suspicions arrived so late, but he fancied himself cheated, and refused to pay. However, the bear had no share in his evil surmises : on the contrary, a day or two afterwards, he promised a dinner at Hampstead to Lucy and her virtuous sister. As he went to the rendezvous his chaise was stopped by somebody, who advised him not to proceed. Yet, no whit daunted, he advanced. In the garden he found the gentle conqueress, Mrs. Mackenzy, who ac- costed him in the most friendly manner. After a few compliments, she asked him if he did not intend to pay her. " No, indeed, I sha'n't, I sha'n't ; your servant, your servant." "Shan't you?" said the fair virago; and taking a horsewhip from beneath her hoop, she fell upon him with as much vehemence as the Empress-Queen would upon the King of Prussia, if she could catch him alone in the garden at Hampstead.'* There was deep philosophy in a saying of George Selwyn's, when a waiter at Arthur's Club-house was taken up for robbery : * What a horrid idea he will give of us to the people in Newgate!' It may be doubted whether the gentlemen -highwaymen' who peopled New- gate at that era had a much looser code of morals than some of the great folks they pillaged. The people of London got frightened about an earthquake in 1750, and again in 1756. There was a slight shock in the first of those years, which set the haunters of White's furiously betting whether it was an earthquake or the blowing-up of the powder- * Horace Walpole to Montagu, May 14, 1761. 338 ONCE UPON A TIME. mills at Hounslow. Bishop Sherlock and Bishop Seeker endeavoured to frighten the people into piety ; but the visitors at Bedford House, who had supped and stayed late, went about the town knocking at doors, and bawling in the watchman's note, 'Past four o'clock and a dreadful earthquake.' Some of the fashionable set got frightened, however, and went out of town ; and three days before the exact day on which the great earthquake was prophesied to happen, the crowd of coaches passing Hyde Park Corner with whole parties removing into the country was something like the procession already described to Vaux- hall. ' Several women have made earthquake-gowns — that is, warm gowns to sit out of doors all to-night. These are of the more courageous. One woman, still more heroic, is come to town on purpose ; she says all her friends are in London, and she will not survive them. But what will you think of Lady Catherine Pelham, Lady Frances Arundel, and Lord and Lady Gal way, who go this evening to an inn ten miles out of town, where they are to play at brag till five in the morning, and then come back — I suppose to look for the bones of their husbands and families under the rubbish?'* AVlien the rulers of the nation on such an occasion, or any other occasion of public terror, took a fit of hypocrisy and ordered a general fast, the gambling-houses used to be filled with senators who had a day of leisure upon their hands. Indifference to public opinion, as well as a real insensibility, drew a line between the people of fashion and the middle classes. Walpolo tells a story which is characteristic enough to be true, though he hints that it was invented : — ' They have put in the papers a good story made on White's : A man dropped down dead at the door, was carried in ; the club immediately made bets whether he was dead or not ; and when they were going to bleed him, the wagerers for his death interposed, and said it would affect the fairness of the bet.'f A great deul of * Horace Walpole to Mann, April 2, 1750. t Id. September 1, 1750. walpole's world of FASHION. 339 this reckless spirit of gambling, which lasted through the century, and which probably has only clothed itself more decently in our own day, must be attributed to the great increase of the wealth of the aristocracy, through the natural effects of the great increase of the profitable in- dustry of the middle classes. But it cannot be denied that much of the increase flowed back to the sources from which it was derived, in the form of bills, bonds, post- obits, and mortgages. The financial maxim of Charles Fox, that a man- need never want money if he was willing to pay enough for it, tended to keep matters somewhat equal. The idea from which we cannot escape when we trace the history of fashion in the middle of the last century, is, that the prevailing tone indicated something like a general moral intoxication. A succession of stimulants appears necessary to the upholding of social existence. This must be always in some degree the case with the rich and idle, whose vocation is chiefly to what they call pleasure. But we have few glimpses in the letters and memoirs of that period of the disposition to those calm domestic enjoy- ments which are principally derived from the cultivation of a taste for reading and the arts, and which, in our own day, equally characterises the middle and the upper classes- Of course, under the loosest state of manners, even in the profligate court of Charles II., there must have been many families of the upper ranks who despised the low vices and unintellectual excitements of their equals in birth ; and under the most decorous and rational system of life there must be a few who would gladly restore a general licence, and who occasionally signalise themselves by some outbreak. But neither of these constitute a class. In the youth and middle age of Walpole the men and women of fashion appear to have lived without restraint imposed by their own sense of decorum, without apprehension of the opinions of their associates, without the slightest con- sideration for the good or evil word of the classes below them. • In a regular monarchy the folly of the prince z2 340 ONCE UPON A TIME. gives the tone ; in a downright tyranny folly dares give itself no airs; it is in a wanton overgrown commonwealth that whim and debauchery intrigue together.'* Every lady or gentleman of spirit was allowed to have a whim, whether it inclined to gambling, or intrigue, or drunkenness, or riots in public places. What Walpole said of the Duke of Newcastle, that he looked like a dead body hung in chains always wanting to be hung somewhere else, gives one a notion of the perpetual restlessness of the fashionable class. The untiring activity of some leaders lasted a good deal longer ; and no doubt occasionally displays itself even now in a preternatural energy, which makes the cheek pale in the season of bloom and freshness. But there is now some repose, some intervals for reflection ; the moral intoxica- tion does not last through sixteen of the four-and-twenty hours. The love of sights, the great characteristic of the vulgar of our own day, was emphatically the passion of the great in the last century. The plague was reported to be in a house in the City ; and fashion went to look at the outside of the house in which the plague was enshrined. Lady Milton and Lady Temple, on a night in March, put on hats and cloaks, and, sallying out by themselves to see Lord Macclesfield lie in state, ' literally waited on the steps of the house in the thick of the mob, while one posse was admitted and let out again for a second to enter.'f The 'mob' (by which Walpole usually means an as- semblage of people of any station below the aristocracy) paid back this curiosity with interest. The two Miss Gunnings lighted upon the earth of London in 1751, and were declared the handsomest women alive. ' They can't walk in the Park or go to Vauxhall, but such mobs follow that they are generally driven away/ It is difficult to understand how a real plebeian mob should know anything about the Miss Gunnings, at a time when there were no ])-• i ra graphs of personality in the meagre newspapers. The Gunning mob was probably a very courtly one. At any * Horace Walpole to Mann. t Horace Walpole to Lord Hertford, Much '27, 1761. WALPOLE S WORLD OF FASHIOX. 341 rate the curiosity was in common between the high and the low. One of these fair ladies became Duchess of Hamilton. « The world is still mad about the Gunnings : the Duchess of Hamilton was presented on Frida}' ; the crowd was so great that even the noble mob in the drawing- room clambered upon chairs and tables to look at her. There are mobs at their doors to see them get into their chairs; and people go early to get places at the theatres when it is known they will be there.'* Ten years later there was another great sight to which all resorted — the Cock-lane Ghost. How characteristic of the period is the following description of a visit to the den of the ghost ! — 4 ^'e set out from the opera, changed our clothes at Northumberland House, the Duke of York, Lady North- umberland, Lady Mary Coke, Lord Hertford, and I, all in one hackney-coach, and drove to the spot : it rained torrents ; yet the lane was full of mob, and the house so full we could not get in ; at last they discovered it was the Duke of York, and the company squeezed themselves into one another's pockets to make room for us. The house, which is borrowed, and to which the ghost has adjourned, is wretchedly small and miserable. A\ hen we opened the chamber, in which were fifty people, with no light but one tallow-candle at the end, we tumbled over the bed of the child to whom the ghost comes, and whom they are murdering by inches in such insufferable heat and stench. At the top of the room are ropes to dry clothes. I asked if we were to have rope-dancing between the acts ? We had nothing. They told us, as they would at a puppet- show, that it would not come that night till seven in the morning, that is, when there are only 'prentices and old women. We stayed, however, till half an hour after one!\ Imagine a prince of the blood, two noble ladies, a peer, and the son of a prime minister, packing in one hackney- coach from Northumberland House on a winter's night, and in a dirty lane near Smithfield watching till half jmst * Horace Walpole to Mann, March 23, 1752. f Horace Walpole to Montagu, February 2, 1762. 342 OXCE UPON A TIME. one by the light of a tallow-candle, amidst fifty of the ' un- washed,' for the arrival of a ghost! In those days the great patron of executions was the fashionable George Selwyn; and this was the way he talked of such di- versions : — ' Some women were scolding him for going to see the execution [of Lord Lovat], and asked him, " how he could.be such a barbarian to see the head cut off?" "Nay," says he, " if that was such a crime, I am sure I have made amends, for I w T ent to see it sewed on again." '* When M'Lean, the highwayman, was under sentence of death in Newgate, he was a great attraction to the fashion- able world. • Lord Mountford, at the head of half White's, went the first day. * * * * But the chief personages who have been to comfort and weep over this fallen hero are Lady Caroline Petersham and Miss Ashe.'f These were the heroines of the minced chickens at Vauxhall ; and we presume they did not visit the condemned cell to metamor- phose the thief into a saint, as is the ■ whim ' of our own times. The real robbers were as fashionable in 1750 as their trumpery histories were in 1840. 'You can't con- ceive the ridiculous rage there is of going to Newgate ; and the prints that are published of the malefactors, ami the memoirs of their lives and deaths set forth with as much parade as — as — Marshal Turenne's — we have no generals worth making a parallel.'^ The visitors had abundant opportunities for the display of their sympathy : — ' It is shocking to think what a shambles this country is grown ! Seventeen were executed this morni)tg.'§ Amidst such excitements, who can wonder that a man of talent and taste, as Walpole was, should often prefer pasting prints into a portfolio, or correcting proofs, at ' poor little Straw- berry !' The reokless and improvident spirit of the period when Horace Walpole was an active member of the world of * Horace Walpole to Conway, April 16, 1747. t Horace Walpole to Mann, August 2, 1750. t Id. October 18, 1750. § Id. March 23, 1752. EJSBBLM/-1 WALPOLE S WORLD OF FASHION. 343 fashion is strikingly shown in the rash, and we may say indecent, manner in which persons of rank rushed into marriage. The happiness of a life was the stake which the great too often trusted to something as uncertain as the cast of a die or the turn-up of a trump. It seems almost impos- sible that in London, eighty or ninety years ago only, such a being as a Fleet parson could have existed, who performed the marriage ceremonial at any hour of the day or night, in a public-house or a low lodging, without public notice or public witnesses, requiring no consent of parents, and asking only the names of the parties who sought to be united. We might imagine, at any rate, that such irreve- rend proceedings were confined to the lowest of the people. The Fleet parsons had not a monopoly of their trade. In the fashionable locality of May Pail was a chapel in which one Keith presided, who advertised in the newspapers, and made, according to Walpole, ' a very bishopric of revenue.' This worthy was at last excommunicated for ' contempt' of the Holy and Mother Church ;' but the impudent varlet retaliated, and excommunicated at his own chapel Bishop Gibson, the Judge of the Ecclesiastical Court, and two reverend doctors. Keith was sent to prison, where he remained many years ; but his shop flourished under the management of his shopmen, called Curates; and the public were duly apprised of its situation and prices : — ' To prevent mistakes, the little new chapel in May Fair, near Hyde Park Corner, is in the corner-house opposite to the City side of the great chapel, and within ten yards of it, and the minister and clerk live in the same comer- house where the little chapel is ; and the licence on a crown stamp, minister and clerk's fees, together with the certificate, amount to one guinea, as heretofore, at any hour till four in the afternoon. And that it may be the better known, there is a porch at the door like a country church porch.'* Keith issued from his prison a manifesto against the Act to prevent clandestine marriages, to which * Daily Post, July 20, 1744; quoted in Mr. Burn's valuable work on ' The Fleet Registers.' 344 ONCE UPON A TIME. we shall presently advert, in which he gravely puts forth the following recommendation of his summary process with reference to the lower classes : — * Another incon- veniency which will arise from this Act will be, that the expense of being married will be so great that few of the lower class of people can afford ; for I have often heard a Fleet parson say that many have come to be married when they have had but half-a-crown in their pockets, and six- pence to buy a pot of beer, and for which they have pawned some of their clothes.'* But exclusive fashion did not care to be exclusive in these practices. Sometimes a petticoat without a hoop was to be led by a bag-wig and sword to the May Fair altar, after other solicitations had been tried in vain. The virtue of the community was wonderfully supported by these easy arrangements, as Walpole tells us, in his best style : ' You must know, then— but did you know a young fellow that was called Handsome Tracy ? He was walk- ing in the Park with some of his acquaintance, and over- took three girls ; one was very pretty : they followed them ; but the girls ran away, and the company grew tired of pursuing them, all but Tracy. He followed to Whitehall Gate, where he gave a porter a crown to dog them : the porter hunted them— he the porter. The girls ran all round Westminster, and back to the Haymarket, where the porter came up with them. He told the pretty one she must go with him, and kept her talking till Tracy arrived, quite out of breath, and exceedingly in love. He insisted on knowing where she lived, which she refused to tell him ; and, after much disputing, went to the house of one of her companions, and Tracy with them. He there made her discover her family, a butterwoman in Craven Street, and engaged her to meet him the next morning in the Park ; but before night he wrote her four love- letters, and in the last offered two hundred pounds a year to her, and a hundred a^ear to Signora la Madre. Griselda * Daily Post, July 20, 1744. walpole's world OF FASHION. 345 made a confidence to a staymaker's wife, who told her that the swain was certainly in love enough to marry her, if she could determine to be virtuous and refuse his offers. " Ay," says she, " but if I should, and should lose him by it !" However, the measures of the cabinet council were decided for virtue ; and when she met Tracy the next morning in the Park, she was convoyed by her sister and brother-in- law, and stuck close to the letter of her reputation. She would do nothing ; she would go nowhere. At last, as an instance of prodigious compliance, she told him, that if he would accept such a dinner as a butterwoman's daughter could give him, he should be welcome. Away they walked to Craven Street : the mother borrowed some silver to buy a leg of mutton, and kept the eager lover drinking till twelve at night, when a chosen committee waited on the faithful pair to the minister of May Fair. The doctor w;ts in bed, and swore he would not get up to marry the king ; but that he had a brother over the way who perhaps would, and who did.'* But * the butterwoman's daughter ' had no lack of high example to teach her how to make a short step into the matrimonial * ship of fools.' The Fleet Registers, and those of May Fair, are rich in the names of Honourables and even of Peers. For example: 'February 14, 1752, James Duke of Hamilton and Elizabeth Gunning/ Walpole has a pleasant comment upon this entry. • The event that has made most noise since my last, is the extempore wedding of the youngest of the two Gunnings, who have made so vehement a noise About a fortnight since, at an immense assembly at my Lord Chesterfield's, made to show the house, which is really most magnificent, Duke Hamilton made violent love at one end of the room, while he was playing at faro at the other end ; that is, he saw neither the bank nor his own cards, which were of three hundred pounds each : he soon lost a thousand Two nights afterwards, he found himself so impatient, that he * Horace Walpole to Montagu, Sept. 3, 1748. 346 ONCE UPON A TIME. sent for a parson. The doctor refused to perform the ceremony without licence or ring : the Duke swore he would send for the Archbishop. At last they were married with a ring of the bed-curtain, at half an-hour after twelve at night, at May Fair chapel.'* The people of rank at last grew frightened at their own practices. The Act against Clandestine Marriages came into operation on the 26th of March, J 754. On the 25th there were two hundred and seventeen marriages at the Fleet entered in one register ; and on the same day sixty- one ceremonies of the like agreeable nature took place at May Fair. After the Act was passed in 1753 there was to be an interval of -some months before its enactments were to be law. Walpole says, ' The Duchess of Argyle harangues against the Marriage Bill not taking place im- mediately, and is persuaded that all the girls will go off before next Lady Day.'f * Horace Walpole to Mann, Feb. 27, 1752. f Horace Walpole to Montagu, July, 17, 1753. ( 347 ) Horace Walpoli HORACE WALPOLE'S WORLD OF LETTERS. Let us seat ourselves with Horace Walpole in his library at Strawberry Hill, and see the relation which the clever man of fashion bears to literature, and to the men of letters his contemporaries. There he sits, as he was painted by the poor artist Muntz, whom he patronised and despised, lounging in a luxurious arm-chair, soft and bright in its silk and embroidery, the window open, through which he occasionally looks on the green meadows and the shining river, in which he feels a half-poetical delight. He turns 348 ONCE UPOX A TIME. to his elegant room, where ' the books are ranged within Gothic arches of pierced work, taken from a side door-case to the choir in Dugdale's St. Paul's.' The books themselves are a valuable collection, some for use and some for show ; and it is easy to perceive that for the most part they have not been brought together as the mere furniture of the bookcases, but have been selected pretty much with re- ference to their possessor's tastes and acquirements. He is a man, then, of fortune, chiefly derived from sinecures bestowed upon him by his father ; of literary acquirements far beyond the fashionable people of his day ; with abun- dance of wit and shrewd observation ; early in his career heartily tired of political intrigue, and giving up himself to a quiet life of learned leisure mixed with a little dissipa- tion ; and yet that man, pursuing this life for half a century, appears to have come less in contact with the greatest minds of his day than hundreds of his contemporaries of far inferior genius and reputation. With the exception perhaps of General Conway, Walpole has no correspondence with any of the really eminent public men of his time ; and the most illustrious of his literary friends, after Gray is gone, are Cole, the dullest of antiquaries, and Hannah More. Warburton, in a letter to Hurd, terms Walpole ' an insuffer- able coxcomb ;' and we have no doubt the bold churchman was right. Walpole was utterly destitute of sympathy, perhaps for the higher things of literature, certainly for the higher class of literary men. He had too much talent to be satisfied with the dullness and the vices of the people of fashion with whom he necessarily herded ; but he had not courage enough to meet the more intellectual class upon a footing of equality. For the immediate purpose of this paper, it is of veiy little consequence what Walpole himself individually thinks of literature and men of letters ; but it is of importance to show the relation in which the men of letters stood to the higher classes, and the lofty tone in which one whose passion was evidently the love of literary fame spoke of those to whom literature was a profession, and not an affair of smirking amateurship. walpole's world of letters. 349 Pope had been dead two or three years when Horace Walpole bought Strawberry Hill : they were not therefore neighbours. In 1773, Walpole, speaking depreciatingly of his contemporaries, says, ' Recollect that I have seen Pope, and lived with Gray ;' but he writes not a word to any one of what he had seen of Pope, and the only notice we have (except a party account of the quarrel between Pope and Bolingbroke) is, in 1742, of Gibber's famous pamphlet against Pope, which subsequently raised its author to be the hero of the ' Dunciad.' Walpole is evidently rubbing his hands with exultation when he says, 4 It will notably vex him.' Pope died in 1744. Of the small captains who scrambled for the crowns of the realms of poetry, after the death of this Alexander, there was one who founded a real empire — James Thomson. Walpole sa}*s, 'I had rather have written the most absurd lines in Lee, than Leonidas or The Seasons ; as I had rather be put into the round-house for a wrong-headed quarrel, than sup quietly at eight o'clock with my grandmother. There is another of these tame geniuses, a Mr. Akenside, who writes Odes : in one he has lately published he says, " Light the tapers, urge the fire." Had not you rather make gods jostle in the dark, than light the candles for fear they should break their heads ?'* Gray, as every one knows, was Walpole's friend from boyhood. The young men quarrelled upon their travels, and after three years were reconciled. Walpole, no doubt, felt a sort of self-important gratification in the fame of Gray as a poet ; yet, while Gray was alive, Walpole thus described his conversation : ' I agree with you most absolutely in your opinion about Gray ; he is the worst company in the world. From a melancholy turn, from living reclusely, and from a little too much dignity, he never converses easily ; all his words are measured and chosen, and formed into sentences : his writings are admirable ; he himself is not agreeable. 'f Yet Walpole was furious when Bos well's book came out, and Johnson is * Horace Walpole to Mann, March 29, 1745. f Horace Walpole to Montagu, Sept. 3, 1748, 350 OXCE UPON A TIME. made to say of Gray, ' Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull everywhere : he was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him great : he was a me- chanical poet.' In 1 791 Walpole writes, ' After the Doctors death, Burke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Boswell sent an ambling circular letter to me, begging subscriptions for a Johnson. From a Portrait by Sir J. Reynold*. monument for him— the two last, I think, impertinently, as they could not but know my opinion, and could not suppose I would contribute to a monument for one who had endeavoured, poor soul ! to degrade my friend's super- lative poetry. I would not deign to write an answer, but sent down word by my footman, as I would have done to parish officers with a brief, that I would not subscribe.'* Walpole, we have little doubt, considered himself as the patron of Gray, and Johnson's opinion was an attack upon * Horace Walpole to Miss Berry, May 26, 1791. walpole's world of letters. 351 his amour-propre. His evident hatred of Johnson probably belonged as much to the order as to the individual. The poor man of genius and learning, who, by his stern resolves and dogged industry, had made himself independent of patronage, was a dangerous example. The immortal letter to Chesterfield on the dedication of the Dictionary was an offence against a very numerous tribe. It is easy to understand from Walpole's letters, how an author, however eminent, was looked upon in society, except he had some adventitious quality of wealth or birth to recommend him. In 1760 Walpole thus writes to Hume : 4 You know, in England, we read their works, but seldom or never take any notice of authors. We think them suffi- ciently paid if their books sell, and, of course, leave them to their colleges and obscurity, by which means we are not troubled with their vanity and impertinence. In France they spoil us, but that was no business of mine. I, who am an author, must own this conduct very sensible ; for, in truth, we are a most useless tribe.' It is difficult to under- stand whether this passage is meant for insolence to the person to whom it is addressed : for what was Hume but an author ? ' We read their works ' — ice, the aristocratic and the fashionable — to which class Hume might fancy he be- longed, after he had proceeded from his tutorship to a mad lord into the rank of a charge d'affaires. But then ' in France they spoil us ; here the aristocrat is coquetting with the honours of authorship in the face of his brother author. Perhaps the whole was meant for skilful flattery. Walpole's real estimate of the literary class is found in a letter to Cole, who was too obtuse to take any portion of the affront to himself: — 'Mr. Gough wants to be introduced to me! He is so dull, that he would only be troublesome ; and, be- sides, }'ou know I shun authors, and would never have been one myself, if it obliged me to keep such bad company. They are always in earnest, and think their profession serious, and dwell upon trifles, and reverence learning. I laugh at all those things, and write only to laugh at them and divert myself. . . . Mr. Gough is very welcome to 352 ONCE UPON A TIME. see Strawberry Hill, or I would help him to any scraps in my possession that would assist his publication ; though he is one of those industrious who are only re-burying the dead : but I cannot be acquainted with him. It is contrary to my system and my humour I have no thirst to know the rest of my cotemporaries, from the absurd bombast of Dr. Johnson, down to the silly Dr. Goldsmith ; though the latter changeling has had bright gleams cf parts, and the former had sense till he changed it for words, and sold it for a pension. Don't think me scorn- ful. Recollect that I have seen Pope, and lived with Gray.'* Walpole was too acute not to admire Fielding ; yet he evidently delights to lower the man, in the gusto with which he tells the following anecdote : — ' Pigby and Peter Bathurst t'other night carried a servant of the latter's, who had attempted to shoot him, before Fielding ; who, to all his other vocations, has, by the grace of Mr. Lyttelton, added that of Middlesex justice. He sent them word he was at supper — that they must come next morning. They did not understand that freedom, and ran up, where they found him banqueting, with a blind man, a, . and three Irishmen, on some cold mutton and a bone of ham, both in one dish, and the dirtiest cloth. He never stirred nor asked them to sit. Pigby, who had seen him p so often come to beg a guinea of Sir C. Williams, and Bathurst, at whose father's he had lived for victuals, understood that dignity as little, and pulled themselves chairs, on which he civilised.'f Scott, in his life of Fielding, suggests that something of this anecdote may belong to the ' aristocratic exaggeration ' of Walpole ; and that the blind man might have been Fielding's brother, who was blind. In the same Way the three Irishmen might not necessarily have been denizens of St. Giles's; and the female, whom Walpole designates by the most opprobrious of names, might have been somewhat more respectable than his own Lady Caro- * Horace Walpole to Colo, April 27, 177 t Horace Walpole to Montagu, May 18, walpole's world of LETTERS. 353 line. We are not sure that, under the worst aspect, the supper at Fielding's was more discreditable than the ban- quet of minced chickens at Vauxhall. Fielding at this period, when his crime was a dirty table-cloth, thus writes of himself : — ■ By composing, instead of inflaming, the quarrels of porters and beggars, and by refusing to take a shilling from a man who most undoubtedly would not have had another left, I had reduced an income of about five hundred a year, of the dirtiest money upon earth, to little more than three hundred ; a considerable portion of which remained with my clerk.' Walpole himself, in the outset of his literary career, ap- pears, as was to be expected from his temperament and education, miserable under what was then, and is now, called criticism. After the publication of the ' Royal and Noble Authors/ he writes, ■ I am sick of the character of author ; I am sick of the consequences of it ; I am weary of seeing my name in the newspapers; I am tired with reading foolish criticisms on me, and as foolish defences of me ; and I trust my friends will be so good as to let the last abuse of me pass unanswered.'* If he had lived in these times, he might have been less thin-skinned. Those were not the days of critical newspapers ; there was only an ■ Evening Post,' and one or two other starveling journals. Those were the days when the old Duchess of Kutland, being told of some strange casualty, says, ' Lucy, child, step into the next room and set that down.' ■ Lord, Madam,' says Lady Lucy, * it can't be true.' ' Oh, no matter, child, it will do for news into the country, next post.'f Horace Walpole might well have compounded for a little of the pert criticism of the reviews of his day, to be exempt from the flood of opinion which now floats the straws and rushes over the things which are stable. Fortunate was it for him and for us that he lived before the days of newspapers, or half he has told us would have been told in a perishable form. A Strawberry Hill man could not have existed in * Horace Walpole to the Rev. Henry Zoucb, May 14, 1759. f Horace Walpole to Msnn, Dec. 23, 1742. 2 A 354 ONCE UPON A TIME. the glare of journalising. He would have been a slave in the Republic of Letters, although he affected to despise Court slavery. He must, in the very nature of things, have been president and member of council of some half-dozen of the thousand and one societies with which London now abounds ; and he would have had the satisfaction of walking in the conversazione horsemill of hot rooms and cold coffee three times a week during the season, amidst the same round of masks, all smiling, envious, jobbing, puffing, and be- puffed.* He was only familiar with one Society, the Anti- quarian ; and he thus speaks of it : — * I dropped my attend- ance there four or five years ago, from being sick of their ignorance and stupidity, and have not been three times amongst them since.' The Antiquarian Society then con- sisted of a few harmless and crotchety people, who wrote dull books which nobody read but themselves. But the dull men in time came to understand the full value of gregariousness ; the name of Society at length became Legion ; and literary and scientific London resolved itself into one mighty coterieship, in which the ninety-nine dwarfs are put upon stilts, and the one of reasonable stature con- sents to move amongst them, and sometimes to prescribe laws, in the belief that he himself looms larger in the pro- vincial distance. This clever organisation came after Walpole's time. Possibly he might have liked the in- dividual men of letters better, if the pretenders to literature, appending all sorts of cabalistic characters to their names, had set him up as their idol. As it was, there was a frank genial intercourse between the best men of his time, which was equally independent of puffing and patronage. The club life of the Burkes and Johnsons was precisely the opposite of the society life of our own days. We of course see nothing of the club life in Walpole's writings ; but it is a thing which has left enduring traces. Walpolo was not robust enough to live in such an element. * Tliis was written twelve wars ago. Special Societies, where men of real knowledge work harmoniously, have rtflocmofl the name of Society tioin being synonymous with oJ WALTOLE's WORLD OF LETTERS. 355 In the days when periodical criticism was in its nonage, men of letters naturally wrote to each other about the merits of new works. There is probably less of this in Walpole than in any other letter- writer equally voluminous ; yet he sometimes gives us an opinion of a book, which is worth comparing with that more impartial estimate which is formed by an after-generation, when novelty and fashion have lost their influence, and prejudice, whether kind or hostile, ceases to operate. We may learn from the mistakes of clever men, as to the merits of their contemporaries, to be a little humble in forming our own opinions. Let us hear what Walpole has to say of Sterne : — ' At present, no- thing is talked of, nothing admired, but what I cannot help calling a very insipid and tedious performance : it is a kind of novel, called ' The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy ;' the great humour of which consists in the whole narration always going backwards. I can conceive a man saying that it would be droll to write a book in that manner, but have no notion in his persevering in executing it. It makes one smile two or three times at the beginning, but in recompense makes one yawn for two hours. The characters are tolerably kept up, but the humour is for ever attempted and missed.'* Gray, who by nature had a keen relish for humour, formed a juster opinion of Sterne, though he scarcely did him justice : — ' There is much good fun in " Tristram," and humour sometimes hit, and sometimes missed.' Goldsmith, who was probably jealous of the Yorkshire wit's sudden reputation, called him ' a very dull fellow,' which Johnson denied ; but Johnson himself dis- paraged Sterne almost as much as Walpole. Were any of these eminent men quite right in the matter ? There were many reasons why Sterne should offend Johnson — reasons which have condemned him in our own day to neglect. But for real creative comic power he was never exceeded, but by one Englishman of our own day : his humour, as well as his pathos, has its roots in a rich poetical soil. Walpole, * Horace Walpole to Sir David Dahymple, April 4, 1760. 2 A 2 356 ONCE UPON A TIME. however, did not always set up nil admirari as his motto. Thirty years after, Darwin arose ; and he at once mounted like a balloon into the empyrean of popularity, and there collapsed. Walpole thus raves about the * Botanic Garden :' — ' I send you the most delicious poem upon earth. If you don't know what it is all about, or why, at least you will find glorious similes about everything in the world, Darwin. and T defy you to discover three bad verses in the whole stack. Dryden was but the prototype of the " Botanic Garden " in his charming " Flower and Leaf ;" and if he had less meaning, it is true he had more plan ; and I must own, that his white velvets and green velvets, and rubies and eme- ralds, were much more virtuous gentlefolks than most of the flowers of the creation, who seem to have no fear of Doctors' Commons before their eyes. This is only the Second Tart ; for, like my king's eldest daughter in the " Hieroglyphic Tales," the First Part is not born yet : — no matter. I can read this over and over again for ever ; for, though it is so excellent, it is impossible to remember anything so dis- jointed, except you consider it as a collection of short en- chanting poems — as the Circe at her tremendous devilries in a church ; the intrigue of the dear nightingale and rose ;. WALPOLE S WORLD OF LETTERS. 357 and the description of Medea ; the episode of Mr. Howard, which ends with the most sublime of lines — in short, all, all, all is the most lovely poetry.'* Darwin has utterly perished, and can never be resuscitated : his whole system of art was false. Walpole admired him because he was bred up in a school of criticism which regarded style as the one thing needful, and considered that the most poetical language which was the farthest removed from the language of common life : hence in some respects his idolatry of Gray, and his contempt of Thomson. Cowper, the only one poet of his later j r ears who will live, is never once mentioned by him. The mode in which he addresses himself to Jephson, the author of ■ Braganza,' and several other mouthing tragedies, appears to us now inexpressibly ridi- culous : ' You seem to me to have imitated Beaumont and Fletcher, though your play is superior to all theirs You are so great a poet, sir, that you have no occasion to labour anything but your plots.'f This is the natural result of Walpole being brought up in the French school of criticism. His correspondence with Voltaire shows the process by which he was led to think that such a word- spinner as Robert Jephson, captain of foot, and a nominee of Lord Townshend in the Irish Parliament, imitated Beau- mont and Fletcher, and produced a play superior to all theirs. In the preface to the second edition of ' The Castle of Otranto,' Walpole thus expressed himself in defence of his introduction into a serious romance of domestics speak- ing in common language : ' That great master of nature, Shakspeare, was the model I copied. Let me ask if his tragedies of " Hamlet" and " Julius Ca3sar " would not lose a considerable share of their spirit and wonderful beauties if the humour of the grave-diggers, the fooleries of Polonius, and the clumsy jests of the lioman citizens were omitted, or vested in heroics ? Is not the eloquence of Antony, the nobler and affectedly-unaffected oration of Brutus, artificially exalted by the rude bursts of nature from the mouths of * Horace Walpole to the Miss Berrys, April 28 , 1789. t Horace Walpole to Robert Jephson, Esq., October 17, 1777. 358 ONCE UPON A TIME. their auditors? These touches remind one of the Gre- cian sculptor, who, to convey the idea of a Colossus within the dimensions of a seal, inserted a little boy measuring his thumb. No, says Voltaire, in his edition of Corneille, this mixture of buffoonery and solemnity is intolerable. Voltaire is a genius — but not of Shakspeare's magnitude/ Three or four years after this Voltaire wrote a civil letter to Walpole on the subject of his ' Historic Doubts,' and Walpole, in reply, took occasion to apologise for the remarks he had made on Voltaire in the ' preface to a trifling romance.' Voltaire replied, defending his criti- cism ; and the vindicator of Shakspeare is then prostrate at the feet of the Frenchman : ' One can never, sir, be sorry to have been in the wrong, when one's errors are pointed out to one in so obliging and masterly a manner. \\ hat- ever opinion I may have of Shakspeare, I should think him to blame if he could have seen the letter you have done me the honour to write to me, and yet not conform to the rules you have there laid down. When he lived, there had not been a Voltaire both to give laws to the stage, and to show on what good sense those laws were founded. Your art, sir, goes still further ; for you have supported your argu- ments without having recourse to the best authority, your own works. It was my interest, perhaps, to defend bar- barism and irregularity. A great genius is in the right, on the contrary, to show that when correctness, nay, when perfection is demanded, he can still shine, and be himself, whatever fetters are imposed on him. But I will say no more on this head : for I am neither so unpolished as to tell you to your face how much 1 admire you ; nor, though I have taken the liberty to vindicate Shakspeare against your criticism, am I vain enough to think myself an adversary worthy of you. I am much more proud of receiving laws from you, than of contesting them. It was bold in me to dispute with you, even before I had the honour of your acquaintance : it would be ungrateful now, when you have not only taken notice of me, but forgiven me. The ad- mirable letter you have been so good as to send me is a walpole' s world of letters. 359 proof that you are one of those truly great and rare men who know at once how to conquer and to" pardon.'* It is evident from this letter that it was the merest egotism which originally led Walpole to set up for the defender of Shakspere. Voltaire, in common with all the then French school, held that the language of princes and heroes must be sublime and dignified ; or, in other words, they must utter a language not formed naturally and fitly either for the development of exalted passions or ordinaiy sentiments. Introduce the simple language of common life amongst this conventional dialogue, and an essential discord is necessarily produced. Voltaire, as all the other French dramatists have done, entirely banished the natural lan- guage, and fitted the waiting-maid with the same form of raving for the white handkerchief as they bestowed upon the princess. This was consistent. They fancied Shak- spere was inconsistent and barbarous when the comic came in contact with the serious, and the elevated was blended with the familiar. They did not see the essential difference between their heroic and his heroic. He never takes the i sublime and the terrible out of the natural ; and in the most agonising situation we encounter the most common images. Neither did Walpole see this essential distinction ; and thus he has his ready echo of ' barbarism and irregularity.' Had he understood Shakspere, he would not have yielded his position. In his first letter to Voltaire, Walpole says, 'Without knowing it, you have been my master ; and perhaps the sole merit that may be found in my writings is owing to my having studied yours.' The adroit Frenchman must have laughed a little at this compliment. Walpole was thinking of his letters, of which the world had then no knowledge. If Voltaire had turned to the works of the Strawberry Hill press, he would have seen little imitation either of his philosophy or of his style. Voltaire, the most subtle of scoffers, was upon occasions an enthusiast. He * Horace Walpole to Voltaire, July 27, 1756. 360 ONCE UPON A TIME. had a heart. Walpole, even to his most intimate friends, was a scoffer and a scandal-monger ; never moved to any- thing like warmth, except when talking about the consti- tution (by which he meant the protection of certain privi- leged persons in the exclusive enjoyment of public wealth and honour) ; and only growing earnest in his old age when he was frightened into hysterics about the French Eevolution, having in his greener years called the death- warrant of Charles I. ' Charta Major.' He hates authors, as we have seen, because ' they are always in earnest, and think their profession serious.' If this be a true description of the authors of Walpole's time, the world has lost some- thing by a change ; for in our own day a writer who is in earnest is apt to be laughed at by those who conceive that the end of all literature is to amuse, and that its highest reward is to have, as Sterne had, ' engagements for three months ' to dine somewhere, always provided that there is a lord's card to glitter in the exact spot of the library or drawing-room where the stranger eye can best read and admire. This is fame, and this is happiness. But the silent consolation of high and cheerful thoughts, — the right of entering at pleasure into a world filled with beauty and variety, — the ability to converse with the loftiest and purest spirits, who will neither ridicule, nor envy, nor betray their humble disciple, — the power of going out of the circle of distracting cares into a region where there is always calm and content, — these great blessings of the student's life, whether they end or not in adding to the stock of the world's knowledge, are not the ends which are most proposed ac- cording to the fashion of our day to a writer's ambition. The ' earnest author ' is too often set down for a fool — not seldom for a madman. To the class of writers that Walpole shunned Rousseau belonged, with all' his faults. Walpole's adventures with this remarkable man are characteristic enough of the indi- vidual and of tlio times. His first notice of Rousseau is in a letter from Paris to Lady Hervey, in 17GC : — ' Mr. Hume carries this letter and Rousseau to England. I wish the walpole's world of letters. 361 former may not repent having engaged with the latter, who contradicts and quarrels with all mankind in order to obtain their admiration. I think both his means and his end below such a genius. If I had talents like his, I should despise any suffrage below my own standard, and should blush to owe any part of my fame to singularities and affectations.' Walpqle committed a mistake in not seeing that the singu- larities and affectations were an essential part of the man, and in not treating them therefore with charity and for- bearance. After Rousseau had left Paris, Walpole, the hater of impostures, the denouncer of Chatterton as a forger and liar, wrote a letter, purporting to be from the King of Prussia to Rousseau, which had prodigious success in the French circles, and of course got into all the journals of Europe. This was at a time when the ' genius ' was proscribed and distressed. Walpole was very proud to his confidential friends of the success of this hoax : — ' I enclose a trifle that I wrote lately, which got about and has made enormous noise in a city where they run and cackle after an event, like a parcel of hens after an accidental husk of a grape.' # Walpole had no objection to Rousseau's principles ; he in- sulted him because he was a vain man who affected singu- larity, or, what was more probable, could not avoid being singular. There was honesty at least in Johnson's denun- ciation of him : — ' I think him one of the worst of men ; a rascal, who ought to be hunted out of society, as he has been. Three or four nations have expelled him, and it is a shame that he is protected in this country. Rousseau, sir, is a very bad man. 1 would sooner sign a sentence for his transportation than that of any felon who has gone from the Old Bailey these many years. Yes, I should like to have him work in the plantations.' Johnson would have banished Rousseau to the plantations in talk, but assuredly would have given him a dinner in Bolt Court, and, if his poverty had become extreme, would have admitted him amongst his odd pensioners. Walpole's success in the pre- * Horace Walpole to Chute, January, 1766. 362 ONCE UrON A TIME. tended letter was complete. He writes to Conway: 'As you know, I willingly laugh at mountebanks, political or literary, let their talents be ever so great The copies have spread like wildfire ; et me void d la mode V Eousseau, in deep affliction, wrote a letter to the editor of the ' London Chronicle,' in which the fabrication had been printed, de- nouncing it as ' a dark transaction.' The vanity of Walpole, in regard to this letter, which consists of twenty lines in decent French, in which there is very little humour and no wit, is almost as insane as the vanity of Eousseau. He writes to Chute, to Conway, to Cole, to Gray, to all man- kind, to tell of his wonderful performance. To Cole he says, ' You will very probably see a letter to Eousseau, in the name of the King of Prussia, writ to laugh at his affec- tations. It has made excessive noise here, and I believe quite ruined the author with many philosophers. When I tell you I was the author, it is telling you how cheap I hold their anger.'* When Eousseau had quarrelled with Hume, six months after, it was one of the unhappy man's suspicions that Hume was concerned in the letter from the King of Prussia ; and then Walpole thus writes to Hume : ' I cannot be precise as to the time of my writing the King of Prussia's letter; but I do assure you with the utmost truth that it was several daj T s before you left Paris, and before Eousseau's arrival there, of which I can give you a strong proof; for I not only suppressed the letter while you stayed there, out of delicacy to you, but it was the reason why, out of delicacy to myself, I did not go to see him, as you often proposed to me, thinking it wrong to go and make a cordial visit to a man, with a letter in my pocket to laugh at him.'f We have a suspicion that Walpole's delicacy was sometimes measured by his cowardice. Warburton, writing to Hurd, took a just view of the whole transaction : ' As to Roufift >au. I entirely agree with you that his long letter to his brother philosopher) Hume, shows him to be a frank lunatic. His passion of tears, his suspicion of his friends in the midst of * Horace Walpole to Cole, January 18, 1766. f Horace Walpole to Hume, July 26, 1766. walpole's world of letters. 363 their services, and his incapacity of being set right, all consign him to Monro. Walpole's pleasantry npon him had baseness in its very conception. It was written when the poor man had determined to seek an asylum in England, and is, therefore, justly and generously condemned by D'Alembert. This considered, Hume failed both in honour and friendship not to show his dislike ; which neglect seems to have kindled the first spark of combustion in this mad- man's brain. However, the contestation is very amusing, and I shall be sorry if it stops, now it is in so good a train. I should be well pleased, particularly, to see so seraphic a madman attack so insufferable a coxcomb as Walpole ; and I think they are only fit for one another.' There can be no doubt that Walpole's coxcombity must have been ' insufferable' in his own day, except amongst a favoured few. It is perfectly clear, from his letters, that he had no reverence for anything — but himself. His affec- tation was as excessive as that of Eousseau ; but it went in another direction. He fancied that he could afford to speak contemptuously of all political men ; although, whilst himself a politician, he was the merest tool of party, and never made a single honest attempt to earn one penny of the thousands which the nation bestowed upon him. As a man of fashion, he was eternally holding up his friends to ridicule ; though he went quite as far in their follies as a feeble frame would carry him. As a man of letters, he affected to despise nearly all other men of letters : what is there but affectation in thus writing to Hume — ' My letter hinted, too, my contempt of learned men and their miserable conduct. Since I was to appear in print, I should not have been sorry that that opinion should have appeared at the same time. In truth, there is nothing I hold so cheap as the generality of learned men.'* What is the secret of all this affectation? He wanted a heart, and he thought it very clever to let the world know it ; for he was deeply imbued with the low philosophy of his age, which thought * Horace Walpole to Hume, November 6, 1766. 364 ONCE UPON A TIME. it wisdom to appear to love nothing, to fear nothing, to reverence nothing. The world in Walpole's own day took up an opinion which it will not easily part with — that he behaved heart- lessly to the unfortunate Chatterton. In March, 1769, when Chatterton was little more than sixteen years old, he addressed a letter from Bristol to Horace Walpole, offering to supply him with accounts of a succession of painters who had flourished at Bristol, which accounts, he said, had been discovered with some ancient poems in that city, specimens of which he enclosed. It was about six months before this that Chatterton had communicated to Felix Farley's ' Bristol Journal' his celebrated 'Description of the Friars first passing over the old bridge, taken from an ancient manu- script ;' and very soon after the publication of that remark- able imitation of an ancient document, he produced, from time to time, various poems, which he attributed to Rowley, a priest of the fifteenth century, and which became the subject of the most remarkable literary controversy of modem times. Walpole replied to Chatterton's first com- munication with ready politeness ; but when Chatterton solicited his assistance in quitting a profession which he disliked, his application was neglected, and the poor boy threw himself upon the world of London without a friend. He then demanded his manuscripts, in a letter which was too manly and independent to receive from Walpole any other name than ' impertinent.' The manuscripts were re- turned in a blank cover. This was the extent of Walpole's offence ; and, looking at the man's character, it is impossible to think he could have acted otherwise. He probably doubted the ability of the friendless boy to furnish the in- to n nation he required; he suspected that the papers sent to him were fabricated. When Chatterton wrote to him as one man of letters has a right to address another, he could not brook the assumed equality; and he revenged himself by the pettiness of aristocratic insolence. Had he sought out the boy who had given this evidence of his spirit as well as of his talent, he would not have been Horace walpole' s world of letters. 365 Walpole. The unhappy boy ' perished in his pride ' in August, 1770. Walpole was assailed for many years for his conduct towards Chatterton, and he seems at times to have felt the charge very keenly. He thus addresses him- self to the editor of Chatterton's Miscellanies : * Chatterton was neither indigent nor distressed at the time of his cor- respondence with me ; he was maintained by his mother, and lived with a lawyer. His only pleas to my assistance were, disgust to his profession, inclination to poetry, and communication of some suspicious MSS. His distress was the consequence of quitting his master, and coming to London, and of his other extravagances. He had depended on the impulse of the talents he felt for making impression, and lifting him to wealth, honours, and fame. I have already said that I should have been blameable to his mother and society if I had seduced an apprentice from his master to marry him to the nine Muses ; and I should have encouraged a propensity to forgery, which is not the talent most wanting culture in the present age.' In 1777, when the ' Monthly Eeview' had been attacking him on the sub- ject of Chatterton, he thus wrote to Cole : * I believe M'Pherson's success with "Ossian" was more the ruin of Chatterton than I. Two years passed between my doubting the authenticity of Rowley's poems and his death. I never knew he had been in London till some time after he had undone and poisoned himself there. The poems he sent me were transcripts in his own hand, and even in that cir- cumstance he told a lie : he said he had them from the very person at Bristol to whom he had given them.' In this letter he adds, ' I think poor Chatterton was an astonishing genius.' Walpole does not appear to have seen that he was in this dilemma : either the poems which he had received from Chatterton were authentic, and, if so, the greatest curiosities in our language ; or they were fabricated by an ' astonishing genius.' Walpole, we believe, did not see the extraordinary merit of the poems. His taste was not of the highest quality. When the world agreed that a great spirit had been amongst them, and had perished untimely, Wal- 366 ONCE UPON A TIME. pole, in self-defence, dwelt upon his ' forgery ' and his ' im- positions.' He probably forgot that a work had been pub- lished in 1765, under the following title — 'The Castle of Otranto, a Story translated by William Marshal, Gent., from the original Italian of Ouphrio Mural to, Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas at Otranto :' and that the preface to this translation from the Italian thus commences — * The following work was found in the library of an ancient Catholic family in the north of England. It was printed at Naples, in the black letter, in the year 1529.' Who can say that, if Chatterton had lived, he would not have avowed the Eowley poems to be his own, as Walpole afterwards acknowledged the ' Castle of Otranto ?' And where, then, would have been the forgery any more than in the fabri- cation of the ' Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas ?' Ten years after Chatterton' s death Walpole quieted his conscience by continuing to call the marvellcms charity- boy ' young villain ' and ' young rascal ;' but an occasion rose in which genius might be patronised without in- curring the risk of an impertinent letter. Miss Hannah More had found a milk- woman at Bristol who wrote verses ; and they were just such verses as Hannah More and Horace Walpole would think very wonderful ; so a sub- scription is to be raised for the milk-woman, Mistress Ann Yearsley. ' Her ear,' according to a letter of Wal- pole to Miss More in 1784, 'is perfect,' her 'taste' is un- exceptionable. Walpole prescribes her studies : ' Give her Dryden's " Cock and Fox," the standard of good sense, poetry, nature, and ease. ..... Trior's " Solomon " (for I doubt his "Alma," though far superior, is too learned for her limited reading) would be very proper. . . . Read and explain to her a charming poetic familiarity called the "Blue-stocking Club."' Imagine that poor Chatterton had been more unfortunate than he really was — had been patronised by Horace Walpole, permitted a garret to sleep in, advanced to the honours of the butler's table, and taught by the profound critic, that Spenser was wretched stuff, and Shakspere's ' Midsummer Night's Dream ' ' forty walpole's world of letters. 367 times more nonsensical than the worst translation of any Italian opera-books.'* The milk-woman became restive under the control of Hannah More, and she quarrelled with her patroness, upon which afflicting occurrence AVal- pole thus condoles with his friend : ' You are not onl y benevolence itself, but, with fifty times the genius of a Yearsley, you are void of vanity. How strange that vanity should expel gratitude! Does not the wretched woman owe her fame to you, as well as her affluence ? I can testify your labours for both. Dame Yearsley reminds me of the Troubadours, those vagrants whom I used to admire till I knew their history; and who used to pour out trumpery verses, and flatter or abuse accordingly as they were housed and clothed, or dismissed to the next parish. Yet you did not set this person in the stocks, after pro- curing an annuity for her !'f It is impossible to have a clearer notion of what Walpole and such as Walpole meant by patronage. The Baron of Otranto would have thought it the perfection of benevolence to have housed and clothed a troubadour ; but the stocks and the whipping-post would have been ready for any treasonable assertion of independ- ence. The days of chivalry are gone, and, heaven be praised, those of patronage are gone after them ! "Walpole, like many other very clever men, could not perfectly appreciate the highest excellence, and yet could see the ridiculous side of the pretenders to wit and poetry. He laughs, as Gifford laughed, at ' Delia Crusca ;' and he has told the follies of Batheaston with his characteristic liveliness : — ' Y r ou must know that near Bath is erected a new Par- nassus, composed of three laurels, a myrtle-tree, a weeping- willow, and a view of the Avon, which has been new- christened Helicon. Ten years ago there lived a Madam Eiggs, an old rough humourist who passed for a wit ; her daughter, who passed for nothing, married to a Captain Miller, full of good-natured officiousness. These good * Horace Walpole to Bentley, February 23, 1755. f Horace Walpole to Hannah More, October 14, 1787. 368 ONCE UPON A TIME. folks were friends of Miss Rich, who carried me to dine with them at Batheaston, now Pindus. They caught a little of what was then called taste, built and planted, and begot children, till the whole caravan were forced to go abroad to retrieve. Alas ! Mrs. Miller is returned a beauty, a genius, a Sappho, a tenth Muse, as romantic as Mademoiselle Scuderi, and as sophisticated as Mrs. Vesey. The captain's fingers are loaded with cameos, his tongue runs over with virtu, and, that both may contribute to the improvement of their own country, they have introduced houts-rimes ! as a new discovery. They hold a Parnassus fair every Thursday, give out rhymes and themes, and all the flux of quality at Bath contend for the prizes. A Roman vase, dressed with pink ribbons and myrtles, re- ceives the poetry, which is drawn out every festival ; six judges of these Olympic games retire and select the brightest compositions, which the respective successful acknowledge, kneel to Mrs. Calliope Miller, kiss her fair hand, and are crowned by it with myrtle —with — I don't know what. You may think this is fiction or exaggera- tion. Be dumb unbelievers ! The collection is printed, published. Yes, on my faith, there are bouts-rimes on a buttered muffin, made by Her Grace the Duchess of Northumberland ; receipts to make them, by Corydon the venerable, alias George Pitt ; others, very pretty, by Lord Palmerston ; some by Lord Carlisle ; many by Mrs. Miller herself, that have no fault but wanting metre ; and immortality promised to her without end or measure. In short, since folly, which never ripens to madness but in this hot climate, ran distracted, there never was anything so entertaining or so dull — for you cannot read so long as I have been telling.'* When poetry was essentially ;m affair of ■ hearts ' and ' darts,' it was no wonder that a mob of silly fashionable people set up for poets. The whole age was wanting in taste : it was not poetical because it was superficial. * Horace Walpok to Conway, Jan. 15, 1775. walpole' s world of letters. 369 The intercourse between Hannah More and Horace Wal- pole began in 1781. It was an odd intimacy; but compli- ments freely received and bestowed made it agreeable, no doubt, to both parties. Here is a pretty note from Horace Walpole, written with a crowquill pen upon the sweetest- scented paper : ■ Mr. Walpole thanks Miss More a thousand times, not only for so obligingly complying with his re- quests, but for letting him have the satisfaction of possess- ing and reading again and again her charming and very genteel poem, the " Bas Bleu." He ought not, in modesty, to commend so much a piece in which he himself is flat- tered ; but truth is more durable than blushing, and he must be just, though he may be vain.'* Walpole could bear flattery better than Dr. Johnson : ' Mrs. Thrale then told a story of Hannah More, which, I think, exceeds in its severity all the severe things I have yet heard of Dr. Johnson's saying. When she was introduced to him, not long ago, she began singing his praise in the warmest manner, and talking of the pleasure and the instruction she had received from his writings, with the highest en- comiums. For some time he heard her with that quiet- ness which a long use of praise has given him : she then redoubled her strokes, and, as Mr. Seward calls it, peppered still more highly, till at length he turned suddenly to her, with a stern and angry countenance, and said, " Madam, before you flatter a man so grossly to his face, you should consider whether or not your flattery is worth his having." 'f As Miss More grew older she, no doubt, grew wiser ; and Walpole himself, with a very prevailing inclination to ridicule what he called her saintliness, came to respect her for her virtues, instead of continuing to burn incense to her genius. The last indication of their friendship appears in his giving her a Bible, which she wished he would read himself. * Horace Walpole to Hannah More, May 6, 1784. t Madame d'Arblay's Diary, vol. i. p. 103. 2 B 370 ONCE UPON A TIME. Boswell. FANNY BURNEY AT COURT. It is 1779. There is an amusing scene in Mr. Thrale's villa at Streatham. The house, as usual, is full of com- pany. Mr. Boswell, who has recently arrived in London, comes for a morning visit ; and what was then called a ' collation ' is ordered. The sprightly hostess takes her seat, with Dr. Johnson on her right. Next him is a vacant chair, which Boswell is about to occupy, according to his wont, as the umbra of his illustrious friend. Mr. Seward interferes with — ' Mr. Boswell, that seat is Miss Burney's.' Into the chair slides * the little Burney ;' and the good Doctor rolls about, and glares upon Fanny with his large one eye, and caresses her as he would a petted child. Boswell is mad with jealousy. He will not eat ; he takes no place at the table; but seizes a chair, and plants himself behind the sage and his protegee. There is a laugh and a whisper about ' Bozzy,' when another wig is FANNY BUKNEY AT COURT. 371 thrust between the Doctor's wig and the lady's powdered toupet. Terrible is the reproof : ' What do you do here, sir ? Go to the table, sir. One would take you for a Brangton.' — ' A Brangton, sir ? What is a Brangton, sir ?' — ' What company have you kept not to know that, sir?' Poor Boswell is soon informed. Brangton is the name of a vulgar family in ' Evelina ;' and the little lady who has dispossessed him of the place of honour is the authoress of that novel. Four years pass on, and Boswell knows his cue better. He calls at Johnson's house, and finds him at tea with ' the celebrated Miss Burney.' He is evidently in the way. Johnson, in answer to something about , parliamentary speakers, says, ' Why do you speak here ? Either to in- struct or entertain, which is a benevolent motive ; or for distinction, which is a selfish motive.' The canny Scot disarms him — he mentions * Cecilia;' and then Johnson, with an air of animated satisfaction, as the biographer records — ' Sir, if you talk of " Cecilia," talk on.' The gentleness to Fanny, and the roughness to Bozzy, are all over. Johnson has pressed her hand for the last time, and said ' Ah, priez Dieu pour moi.' It is the 16th of December, 1785, and * the celebrated Miss Burney' is on a visit to Mrs. Delany, at Windsor. This is the widow of Dr. Delany, the friend and panegy- rist of Swift ; so that she formed a link between the times of George the Third and the times of Anne. The King had given Mrs. Delany the occupation of a small house close by the Eoyal Lodge at Windsor; and he would occasionally walk in for a gossip with the ancient lady. The Queen, too, would sometimes come. Fanny Burney had been in a flutter for many days about these visits, ready to fly off if any one knocked at the street door. On this wintry afternoon she is in the drawing-room, with Mrs. Delany's niece, and a little girl, playing at puss-in- the-corner. Without any announcement, the door opens, and a large man, in deep mourning, enters, shutting the door himself. The niece exclaims, ' Aunt, the King, the 2 b 2 372 ONCE UPON A TIME. King ;' and the kittens rush to the sides of the room, as if they had been mice, and a real grimalkin had appeared amongst them. Fanny is planted against the wall, and she says, that she hoped to glide out of the room ; but Majesty asks, ' Is that Miss Burney ?' And then, Miss Burney — standing against the wall, as everybody else stood, with the -exception of the venerable lady — had, after sundry George III. royal monologues about James's powder, and whooping- cough, and rheumatism, the happiness (for who can doubt that it was happiness ?) to hear the King begin to talk about 'Evelina;' and how she never told her father about the book. Then the King, coming up close, said, ■ But what ? what? how was it?' — 'Sir!' — 'How came you? how happened it ? what ? what ?' — ' I — I — only wrote, sir, for my own amusement, only in some odd idle hours.' — ' But your publishing, your printing, how was that ?' — ' That was, sir, only because ' ' What ?' — ' I thought, sir, it would look very well in print.' — ' Ha ! ha ! very fair, indeed ! that's being very fair and honest !' FANNY BURNEY AT COURT. 373 Now comes the Queen — and then the King repeats all that he had said, and all that Miss Burney had said — and coming np to the bewildered maiden again, asks, ' Are you musical ?' — ' Not a performer, sir.' The King crosses to the Queen, and communicates the fact. But the royal curiosity is not quite satisfied. 'Are you sure you never play? never touch the keys at all ?' — ' Never to acknowledge it, sir.' — ' Oh that's it ;' and he imparts to the Queen, ' She does play, but not to acknowledge it.' There is then a great deal of talk in the middle of the room — while those against the wall answer if spoken to — when the Queen, in a low voice, says, ' Miss Burney ;' — and upon Miss Burney coming up to her, whispers — M But shall we have no more — nothing more ?' and Fanny cannot but understand her, and shakes her head. We see the shadow of 'little Burney,' as she writes twenty pages of her diary on that eventful evening, smiling with ineffable happiness, and, we almost fear, forgetting that she had lived with those whose commendation was worth — shall we say it ? — almost as much as ' the excessive condescension ' to the authoress standing against the wall in Mrs. Delany's drawing-room. In July 1786, Miss Burney has attained, in the view of the world, a high promotion. She is of the Queen's house- hold. She has a drawing-room and a bed-room in the Lodge at Windsor ; a footman, and two hundred a year. Is the authoress of ' Evelina ' a confidential amanuensis, — or English reader — or instructress of a Princess ? We see her shadow in the unvarying course of her daily life. Fanny rises at six o'clock. She dresses in a morning- gown and cap, and waits her first summons. What sum- mons her ? A bell. ' The celebrated Miss Burney,' for a considerable time, can never hear that bell without a start, and a blush of conscious shame at her own strange degra- dation. These are her own words. Poor little Burney ! Your father, we would fain believe, forced you to wear these chains of servitude ; or perhaps you thought that to 374 ONCE UPON A TIME. wait upon a ' sweet Queen ' as a lady's maid — yes, Fanny, a lady's maid, nothing more nor less — was to be a bright fairy dressing a born princess all in silk and diamonds for a ball, where the fairy herself might sometimes dance. It is really very prosaic work. Miss Burney has a helper — one Mrs. Thielky ; but there is also a lady above her in Queen Charlotte. office, one Mrs. Schwellenberg. Between seven and eight o'clock there is the Queen's morning dressing. Mrs. Thielky hands ' the things,' and Fanny puts them on. At a quarter before one begins the dressing for the day. Fanny ought to be dressed herself before she enters the royal presence ; but, we grieve to say, she is often unpunctual and half- unpowdered. Perhaps she has been musing over the re- membrance of the wisdom of Burke, or the kindness of Keynolds, rapt in a dream of the old familiar faces. The bell rings, and she must go. Mrs. Schwellenberg is there, and Mrs. Thielky ; and they help the Queen off with her gown, and on with her powdering things, and then the hair-dresser is admitted ; the Queen reading the newspaper during the operation. At three o'clock the ceremony is finished; and 'the celebrated authoress' has actually two FANNY BURNEY AT COURT. 375 hours of freedom. Is she jotting down notes for ' Camilla,' or does she get a breezy walk in the Little Park, shaded from that July sun by those o'er-arching elms, solemn as a cathedral aisle — as solemn, but how much more sweet ! Poor Fanny! she also has had to put on her powdering things — the hair-dresser has been with her also a little after noon, and she has had no leisure to read the newspaper. She must sit still, lest the curls should be deranged, till she goes to dine with cross Mrs. Schwellenberg, punctually at five. No wonder that she gives way to dejection of spirits, and mopes over her diary. For three hours Fanny is tete-a- tete with the superior lady of the dressing-room mysteries, who propitiates the novice after this fashion : ■ I tell you once, I shall do for you what I can ; you are to have a gown. The Queen will give you a gown ! The Queen says you are not rich.' Fanny pouts : ' I have two new gowns, and therefore do not require another.' — * Miss Bernar, I tell you once, when the Queen will give you a gown, you must be humble, thankful.' Poor little Burney ! At eight o'clock the Equerry-in-waiting comes to tea in Mrs. Schwellen berg's room, and with him any gentlemen that the King or Queen may have invited for the evening. Fanny, for an hour, is in good society, as the world terms it ; but it is not quite the society to which she has been accustomed. There is General Bude, with a sneer in his smile that looks sarcastic ; but Major Price is kind and good-humoured ; and Colonel Goldsworthy, although a man of but little cultivation or literature, delights in a species of dry humour. An occasion arrives for the ' celebrated authoress ' to form a ' grand de- sign.' Her superior is left in London, and the presidency of the tea-tabl e devolves upon Miss Burney. She determines to cut the Equerries, and goes out; she had no official commands to make tea for them. The man of little litera- ture is angry, and Miss Burney gets through the affair very awkwardly. Fanny ! you are tethered, you had better not tug at the chain. The ' sweet Queen ' is very condescend- ing ; but she rarely lets Miss Burney forget that she is ther as the servant, and not as the novel-writer. The Queen 876 ONCE UPON A TIME. has gone out early with the King, and Miss Burney thinks she may have a long walk : she is too late for the noon-tide dressing ; but she rushes into the room where Majesty is already under the hands of the hair-dresser, with no Burney to have disrobed her. ' Where have you been, Miss Burney ?' It was small compliment to the authoress of 'Evelina,' when the thunder-cloud had passed, to be told to look at Lady Frances Howard's gown, and see if it was not very pretty. But the poor thing receives it as kindness, and dries her tears. It was kindness. The Queen is really kind to her ; but, within that circle, there is an end of free will. The condition of existence in those dreary walls is unmitigated slavery. The very highest are the slaves of their own forms ; their attendants, from the Lady of the Bedchamber to Miss Burney ' the dresser,' — from the Lord Chamberlain to Colonel Goldsworthy the Equerry — are equally slaves. The man of dry humour thus describes the life which would have killed Major Price, if he had not resigned : 4 Riding, and walking, and standing, and bowing, — what a life it is ! Well ; it's honour ! that's one comfort : one has the honour to stand till one has not a foot left • and to ride till one's stiff, and to walk till one's ready to drop ; and then one makes one's lowest bow, d'ye see, and blesses one's-self with joy for the honour.' Fanny is never invited to hear the evening concert ; but Colonel Goldsworthy tells her how those who do hear it have to stand in an outer room for two hours. To be able to stand for hours without dropping, to walk out of a room backwards, and never to cough or sneeze — these were the qualifications for a court life, in the absence of which no talent and no virtue would be equivalents. We see the shadow of Fanny Burney, as, on two occasions, separated by an interval of less than three months, she walks on Windsor Terrace. On the 21st of May, 1786— five months after the intro- duction to royalty at Mrs. Delany's — Doctor Burney, who is desirous to be appointed Master of the King's Band when the decease should ensue of the then master, is thus advised : FANNY BURNEY AT COURT. 377 ' Take your daughter in your hand, and walk upon the terrace ; the King will understand.' The King was well experienced in such hints. Was the Bishop of A ' in declining health,' — unquestionably the Very Reverend the Dean of B would be on Windsor Terrace with his daughter. Was ' Gold Stick ' confined to his bed — ' Silver Stick' would soon be shining on Windsor Terrace. We have seen the process in our boyhood, some twenty-five years later than the Sunday evening on which Miss Bumey stood to attract notice in this ' Vanity Fair.' It was a curious scene. About five o'clock, carriage after carriage began to roll up the Castle hill. That hill was then a sort of street, with house after house, close up to the ugly barrack, called the Lodge, which Sir William Chambers had erected opposite the great southern gate of the Castle. That lodge was the seat of Fanny Burney's griefs. It was separated from the road to the terrace by an enclosed lawn. The eastern terrace was the great point of attraction. Here the aspirants for royal smiles clustered on benches placed under the Castle windows, whilst the commonalty were happy to get a seat on the low wall that looked down upon what was then a smooth turf, but now a garden. There is a sudden hush ; a door is opened, and Majesty is seen de- scending the steps. The bands burst out with ' God save the King!' the multitude are uncovered. Fanny has not arrived quite in good time ; but she is brought with Lady Louisa Clayton, and a place is obtained. Up and down walk the King and Queen, and the Princesses, and the Equerries ; the crowd squeeze themselves into the narrowest space as they come, and close in after they have passed. Fanny is shy, and draws her hat over her face; she thinks her real errand will be suspected ; but her chaperon puts her forward. The King has his how d'ye do — and when did you come — and how long shall you stay — and when do you come again — and — happy little Burney — 'Pray, how goes on the Muse ?'— ' Not at all, sir.'—' No ! But why ? why not ?' — ' I — I — I am afraid, sir.' — ' And why ? of what ?' — and the King pokes his head under her hat — ' Oh ! she's 378 ONCE UPON A TIME. afraid.' Doctor Burney had no word— and he didn't get the place. It is the 7th of August of the same year — the birthday of the little Princess Amelia. All the royal family are ' new dressed ;' people of distinction come to the terrace as to a drawing-room. Miss Burney, too — who is now one of the Queen's attendants — is new dressed ; and why should she not go to the terrace ? She does go with Mrs. Delany. The King stops to speak to the good old lady — and he once or twice addresses her companion. The Queen — when her attendant catches her eye — expresses, by one look of sur- prise, that she ought not to have been there. Fanny, in a flutter, kisses the little Princess of three years old — and before the people of distinction, too ! In truth, Miss Burney, you are much too impulsive ; three months have made a great difference in your position, which you rather fail to comprehend. A mischievous Quarterly Eeviewer — who found out that you were five-and-twenty, and not seventeen, when you wrote ■ Evelina ' — says, with the courtliest of airs, that your chief if not sole recommendations to the royal favour were your ' literary merits,' and your ' personal manners!' No doubt, you presumed upon those qualities, sometimes — and it was long before you were aware that they were^not wanted in your position. ' Literary merits ' have not very often public recognition, and when a demonstration comes it is generally embarrass- ing. There was a time when Miss Burney, with the Montagues and Thrales about her, would have sat calmly in a box at the theatre, and received, without much blushing, a tribute to her reputation. She is now in the Equerries' box — the balcony box — at one of the great theatres, in the front row ; the Royal Family and their suite immediately opposite. The second Lady of the Robes has been kindly permitted a few hours of relaxation. Miss Farren comes on to speak the epilogue to a new play. Fanny leans forward with her opera-glass, intent upon the graceful actress. There is a compliment to female writers, and she listens with breathless attention. What? Is it herself— who FANNY BURNEY AT COURT. 379 has been doomed to hear, from rude Mrs. Schwellenberg, that she ' hates all novels ' — to whom these two lines apply ? ' Let sweet Cecilia gain your just applause, Whose every passion yields to Nature'^aws.' ; The King raises his opera-glass to look at her, and laughs immoderately ; the Queen looks up too ; the Princesses look ; the maids of honour look. Fanny puts up her fan, and sits back for the rest of the night. Popular applause — and that midnight ' bell ' when she returns to the palace ! We have read the 'Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay,' with a real feeling of pity for her in those Miss Burney days at Windsor, and Kew, and Buckingham Palace. Never was a flattered and petted lady — the most successful writer of fiction in an age when authoresses were few — subjected to such bitter mortifications, as in those two or three years of her imprisonment in that waiting-maid life. We see her restless shadow as she enters, with the royal cortege, an unbidden guest, into the halls of Nuneham ; no servant to show her to her room — no welcome — no oifered refreshment. Plain Mrs. Schwellenberg gives her a pre- monition when, with her own pretensions as Miss Burney, she tells the German lady that she has been introduced to Lord Harcourt at Sir Joshua Reynolds's : — ' Oh ! it is the same — that is nothing — : when you go with the Queen, it is enough; they might be civil to you for that sake. You might go quite without no, what you call, fuss ; you might take no gown but what you go in ; that is enough — you might have no servant — for what? You might keep on your riding-dress. There is no need you might be seen. I shall do everything I can to assist you to appear for no- body.' Literary merits, and personal manners ! — put them up in lavender, Miss Burney ; they will not wear well here with the new gown that the Queen gives you. It is the 1st of January, 1787, and Fanny Burney is entering a wise resolve in her diary : ' I opened the new year with what composure I could acquire. I considered 380 ONCE UPON A TIME. it as the first year of my being settled in a permanent situation, and made anew the best resolutions I was equal to forming, that I would do what I could to curb all spirit of repining, and to content myself calmly, unresistingly at least, with my destiny.' She has mistaken the real nature of the ' permanent situation.' It is no fault of hers that she is unfitted for it ; it is no fault of her royal benefactors — rfor they.wished to be so — that her promotion is degrada- tion. Her destiny is an unnatural one, and she must repine. The habitues of a court have their own exclusive associations of rank and ambition, of fashion and parade, to console them for the inconveniences of the ' honour ' in which they live. But the literary lady's-maid — what sympathy has she ? The Queen is condescending, but reserved ; the King has his what ? what ? as he has with every one ; the Princesses are affable ; the Equerries are polite ; celebrities, though of a somewhat heavy character, come sometimes to the tea- room — Mr. De Luc the geologist, Mr. Bryant the mytho- logist, and Dr. Herschel the astronomer. But she meets Thomas Warton, the poet, in a hasty walk, and she must turn a deaf ear to his raptures, for she dare not ask him to her room. No man must come there ; no lady, not in the permitted list. Her correspondence with Madame de Genlis ' is forbidden. She is allowed to attend one day at the trial of Warren Hastings. Edmund Burke — a name that then stank in the court nostrils — espies, her, and places himself by her side. Oh, Fanny, there are eyes upon you ! You stammer as your old friend — the greatest man of his time — looks in your unaccustomed face with a familiar look of sincere affection. The tie is broken. He is the same ; but you must wear a mask. We see the shadow of Fanny Burney as illness gradually steals upon her. It must come. If she does not send that letter of resignation so often proposed, there will be a tear or two in the Lodge at Windsor for the little woman that was so clever and so pleasant, and yet so fidgety and un- happy. What could have ailed her ? She had ' two new gowns and everything handsome ' about her. The letter FANNY BURNEY AT COURT. 381 was sent ; and Fanny soon grew well at Norbury park, and wrote ' Camilla,' and married a pleasant emigre, and had a cottage of her own in the lovely valley of the Mole, and died at near ninety. AYe hope she was more at home in a foreign land than in that ugly Lodge at Windsor, of which, most happily, not a brick is left. 382 ONCE UPON A TIME. THE FARMER'S KITCHEN. Does any one now read ' The Farmer's Boy,' by Bobert Bloomfield? I have before me the edition of 1803, at which time it is recorded that twenty-six thousand copies had been sold since the first publication of the poem in 1800. Byron has left a contemptuous notice of Bloomfield in the * English Bards.' But ' The Farmer's Boy,' for all that, will not be wholly forgotten. It is a truthful poem, founded upon accurate observation of common things, and describing the most familiar incidents and feelings with a rare fidelity — rare, amidst the conventional generalities of the verse- making of that day. At a very early age I had means of testing the truth of its descriptions. Let me give, from my own recollections, a picture of a farmer's household, not long after the time when Bloomfield's poem was first pub- lished. On one of the roads from "Windsor to Binfield, in the parish of Warfield, stands, or stood, a small farm-house, with gabled roof and latticed windows. A rude woodbine- covered porch led into a broad passage, which would have been dark had not the great oaken door generally stood open. To the right of the passage was a large kitchen, beyond which loomed a sacred room — the parlour — un- opened except on rare occasions of festivity. To this grange I travelled in a jolting cart, on a spring afternoon, seated by the side of the good wife, who had carried her butter and eggs and fowls to market, and was now returning home, proud of her gains, from whose accumulations she boasted that she well-nigh paid the rent of the little farm. I was in feeble health ; and a summer's run was decreed for me, out of the way of school and books. My life for six months was very like playing at Farmer's Boy. THE FARMER S KITCHEN. 383 That small bed-room where I slept, with its worm-eaten floor and undraperied lattices, was, I suspect, not very per- fect in its arrangements for ventilation ; but then neither door nor window shut close, and the free air, redolent of heath and furze, found its way in, and did its purifying offices after an imperfect fashion. The first morning began my new country life — and a very novel life it was. It was Sunday. The house was quiet ; and when I crept down into the kitchen, I found my friend the farmer's wife pre- paring breakfast. On one side of that family room was a large oaken table covered with huge basins, and a mighty loaf; over a turf fire hung an enormous skillet, full to the brim with simmering milk. One by one three or four young men dropped in, jauntily dressed in the cleanest smock-frocks — the son of the house had a smart Sunday coat, with an expansive nosegay of daffodils and wallflowers. They sat quietly down at the oak table, and their portions of milk were distributed to each. Now entered the farmer — of whom I still think with deep respect — a yeoman of simple habits but of large intelligence. He had been in the household of the Governor of Pennsylvania before the War of Independence ; and could tell me of a wonderful man named Franklin, whom he had known ; and of the Torpedo, on which he had seen Governor Walsh make experiments ; and of lightning drawn from the clouds. The farmer, his wife, and the little boy who had come to dwell with them, sat down at a round table nearer the fire. Sunday was a great day in that household. There was the cheerful walk to church ; the anticipations of the coming dinner, not loud but earnest ; the promise of the afternoon cricket. Returned from church, the kitchen had been somewhat changed in appearance since the morning ; the oak table was moved into the centre, and covered with a coarse cloth as white as the May-blossom ; the turf fire gave out a fierce heat, almost unbearable by the urchin who sat on a low stool, turning, with no mechanical aid, the spit which rested upon two andirons, or dogs, and supported in his labour by the grateful fragrance of the steaming beef. To that Sunday 384 ONCE UPOX A TIME. dinner — the one dinner of fresh meat for the week — all sat down; and a happy meal it was, with no lack even of dainties : for there was a flowing bowl of cream to make palatable the hard suet pudding, and a large vinegar-bottle with notches in the cork to besprinkle the cabbage, and a Dutch cheese — and if I dream not, a taste from a flask that immerged mysteriously from a corner cupboard. Then came the cricket and trap-ball of Southern England, yawns in the twilight, a glimmering candle, the chapter in the Family Bible, and an early bed. The morning of Monday was a busier scene. I was roused at six ; but the common breakfast was over. The skillet had been boiled at five ; the farmer was off to sell a calf; the ploughmen had taken their teams a-field. The kitchen was solitary. I should have thought myself alone in that world, but for a noisy companionship of chickens and ducklings, that came freely in to pick the crumbs off the floor. I wandered into the farm-yard, ankle deep in muck. In a shed I found my hostess, not disdaining to milk her petted cows. Her hand and her eye were every- where — from the cow-stall to the dairy, from the hen's nest to the fatting-coop. Are there any such wives left amongst us ? Bloomfield has described the mil king-time, pretty much as I saw it in those primitive days : — 1 Forth comes the Maid, and like the morning smiles ; The Mistress, too, and follow'd close by Giles. A friendly tripod forms their humble seat, With pails bright scour'd and delicately sweet. Where shadowing elms obstruct the morning ray — Begins their work, begins the simple lay ; The full-charg'd udder yields its willing streams ; While Mary sings some lover's amorous dreams ; And crouching Giles beneath a neighbouring tree Tugs o'er his pail, and chants with equal glee ; Whose hat with tatter 'd brim, of nap so bare, From the cow's side purloins a coat of hair, A mottled ensign of his harmless trade, An unambitious, peaceable cockade. As unambitious too that cheerful aid The Mistress yields beside her rosy Maid ; THE FARMERS KITCHEN. 385 With joy she views her plenteous reeking store, And bears a brimmer to the dairy door ; Her cows dismiss'd, the luscious mead to roam, Till eve again recall them loaded home.' After the milking-time was the breakfast for the good wife and for 'Mary.' Twice a week there was churning to be done ; and as the butter came more quickly in the warmth of the kitchen the churn was removed there in that chilly spring-time. There was no formal dinner on week-days in that house. The loaf stood upon the table, with a vast piece of bacon, an abundant supply of which rested upon a strong rack below the ceiling. Some of the men had taken their dinner to the distant field ; another or so came carelessly in, and cutting a huge slice of the brown bread and the home-cured, pulled out what was called a pocket-knife, and despatched the meal with intense enjoyment. At three, the ploughmen returned home. That was an hour of delight to me, for I was privileged to ride a horse to water in a neighbouring pond. The afternoon, as far as I remember, was one of idleness. In the gloaming (why should we not Anglicise the word?) the young men slid into the kitchen. The farmer sat reading, the wife knitting. There was a corner in the enormous chimney, where 1 dwelt apart, watching the turf -smoke as it curled up the vast chasm. There was no assumption of dignity in the master when a song was called for. How well do I remember that song of Dibdin — 1 1 left my poor plough to go ploughing the deep !' That song told of a war-time, and of naval dangers and glories ; and the chorus was roared out as if * the inconstant wind' was a very jolly thing, and 'the carfindo' who tempted the ploughman ' for to go and leave his love behind,' not at all a bad fellow. I read ' The Farmer's Boy ' after I was familiar with the farmer's kitchen. It is worth reading now, if it were only for its picture of a past age. Even at that time the Harvest Home was becoming ungenteel : — 2 c 386 ONCE UPON A TIME. 1 Here once a year Distinction lowers its crest, The master, servant, and the merry guest, Are equal all ; and round the happy ring The reaper's eyes exulting glances fling, And, warcn'd with gratitude, he quits his place, With sun-burnt hands and ale-enliven 'd face, Refills the jug his honour'd host to tend, To serve at once the master and the friend ; Proud thus to meet his smiles, to share his tale, His nuts, his conversation, and his ale. Such were the days— of days long past I sing, When Pride gave place to Mirth without a sting ; Ere tyrant customs strength sufficient bore To violate the feelings of the poor ; To leave them distanc'd in the madd'ning race, Where'er Refinement shows its hated face : Nor causeless hated ; — 'tis the peasant's curse, That hourly makes his wretched station worse ; Destroys life's intercourse ; the social plan That rank to rank cements, as man to man : Wealth flows around him, Fashion lordly reigns; Yet poverty is his, and mental pains. ***** Our annual feast, when Earth her plenty yields, When crown'd with boughs the last load quits the fields, The aspect still of ancient joys puts on ; The aspect only, with the substance gone : The self-same Horn is still at our command, But serves none now but the plebeian hand ; For home-brew'd Ale, neglected and debased, Is quite discarded from the realms of taste. Where unaffected Freedom charm'd the soul, The separate table and the costly bowl, Cool as the blast that checks the budding Spring, A mockery of gladness round them fling.' Were I to see that homestead once more, I have no doubt I should find, like the grandsire of Crabbe's poem, that ' all is changed.' The scenes which live in my recollection can never come back; nor is it fitting that they should. With the primitive simplicity there was also a good deal of primitive waste and carelessness. Except in the dairy, dirt and litter were the accompaniments of the rude house- keeping. The fields were imperfectly cultivated ; the THE FARMER S KITCHEN. 387 headlands were full of weeds ; there was one meadow close to the house, called the Pitle (still a Norfolk word), in which I assiduously, but vainly, worked with a little hoe at defying thistles. I have no doubt that ' all is changed,' or the farm would be no longer a farm. The neglect be- longed to the times of the dear loaf. The ' refinement ' of Bloomfield really means the progress of improvement. 2 C 2 388 ONCE UPON A TIME. Sir John Dinely. WINDSOE, AS IT WAS. My earliest recollections of Windsor are exceedingly de- lightful. I was born within a stone's throw of the Castle gates ; and my whole boyhood was passed in the most un- restrained enjoyment of the venerable and beautiful objects by which I was surrounded, as if they had been my own peculiar and proper inheritance. The king and his family lived in a plain barrack-looking lodge at his castle foot, which, in its external appearance and its interior arrange- WINDSOR, AS IT WAS. 389 ments, exactly corresponded with the humble taste and the quiet domestic habits of George III. The whole range of the castle, its terrace, and its park, were places dedicated to the especial pleasures of a schoolboy. Neither warder, nor sentinel, nor gamekeeper interfered with our boisterous sports. The deserted courts of the upper quadrangle often re-echoed, on the moonlight winter evenings, with our ichoo-ichoop ; and delightful hiding-places indeed there were amongst the deep buttresses and sharp angles of those old towers. The rooks and a few antique dowagers, who had each their domicile in some lone turret of that spacious square, were the only personages who were disturbed bj* our revelry; — and they, kind creatures, neVer complained to the authorities. But if the inner courts of Windsor Castle rang with our sports, how much more noisy was the joy in the magnificent playground of the terrace ! Away we went, fearless as the chamois, along the narrow wall ; and even the awful height of the north side, where we looked down upon the tops of the highest trees, could not abate the rash courage of follow my leader. In the pauses of the sport, how often has my eye reposed upon that magnificent landscape which lay at my feet, drinking in its deep beauty, without a critical thought of the picturesque ! Then, indeed, I knew nothing about ' The stately brow Of Windsor's heights,' — nor could I bid the stranger 1 Th' expanse below Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey.' My thoughts, then, were all fresh and vivid, and I could enjoy the scenes amongst which I lived, without those artificial and hackneyed associations which make up the being of the man. Great, too, was my joy, when laying my eye to the edge of the eastern wall, and looking along a channel cut in the surface, I saw the dome of St. Paul's looming through the smoke at twenty miles' distance. Then, God be praised, my ear had not been shattered, nor my 390 ONCE UPON A TIME. heart hardened, by dwelling under the shadow of that dome : — and I thought of London, as a place for the wise and the good to be great and happy in — and not as an especial den in which ' All creeping creatures, venomous and low,' might crawl over and under each other. The Park ! what a glory was that for cricket and kite- flying. No one molested us. The beautiful plain imme- diately under the eastern terrace was called the Bowling Green; — and, truly, it was as level as the smoothest of those appendages to suburban inns. We took excellent care that the grass should not grow too fast beneath our feet. No one molested us. The king, indeed, would sometimes stand alone for half an hour to see the boys at cricket ; — and heartily would he laugh when the wicket of some confident urchin went down at the first ball. But we did not heed his majesty. He was a quiet good-humoured gentleman, in a long blue coat, whose face was as familiar to us as that of our writing-master ; and many a time had that gracious gentleman bidden us good morning, when we were hunting for mushrooms in the early dew, and had crossed his path as he was returning from his dairy to his eight-o'clock breakfast. Every one knew that most respectable and amiable of country squires, called His Majesty ; and truly there was no inequality in the matter, for his majesty knew every one. This circumstance was a natural result of the familiar and simple habits of the court. There was as little parade as can well be imagined in all the movements of George III. and his family ; and there was infinitely more state at such places as Stowe and Alnwick, than in the royal lodge at Windsor. The good man and his amiable family, perhaps, as a matter of policy, carried this freedom of manners to a little excess; — and it was from this cause that the constant attacks of Peter Pindar, in which the satire is levelled not only against the most amiable of weaknesses, but against positive virtues, were so popular during the French revo- WINDSOR, AS IT' WAS. 391 lutionary war. But, at any rate, the unrestrained inter- course of the king with those by whom he was surrounded, is something which is now very pleasant to look back upon. I have now no recollection of having, when a child, seen the king with any of the appendages of royalty, except when he went to town, once a week, to hold a levee ; and then ten dragoons rode before and ten after his carriage, and the tradesmen in the streets through which he passed duly stood at their doors, to make the most profound reverences, as in duty bound, when their monarch looked ' every inch a king.' But the bows were less profound, and the wonder- ment none at all, when twice a week, as was his wont during the summer months, his majesty with all his family, and a considerable bevy of ancient maids of honour and half-pay generals, walked through the town, or rode at a slow pace in an open carriage, to the Windsor theatre, which was then in the High Street. Header, it is impossible that you can form an idea of the smallness of that theatre, unless you have by chance lived in a country town, when the assembly-room of the head inn has been fitted up with the aid of brown paper and ochre, for the exhibition of some heroes of the sock and buskin, vulgarly called strollers. At the old Windsor theatre, her majesty's apothecary in the lower boxes might have almost felt her pulse across the pit. My knowledge of the drama commenced at the early age of seven years, amidst this royal fellowship in fun ; — and most loyally did I laugh when his majesty, leaning back in his capacious arm-chair in the stage-box, shook the house with his genuine peals of hearty merriment. Well do I remember the whole course of these royal play -goings. The theatre was of an inconvenient form, with very sharp angles at the junctions of the centre with the sides. The stage-box and the whole of the left or 0. P. side of the lower tier were appropriated to royalty. The house would fill at about half-past six. At seven precisely, Mr. Thornton, the manager, made his entrance backwards, through a little door, into the stage-box, with a plated candlestick in each hand, bowing with all the grace that his gout would permit. S\)2 OXCE UPON A TIME. The six fiddles struck up ' God save the King ;' the audience rose ; the king nodded round and took his seat next the stage; the queen curtseyed, and took her arm-chair also. The satin bills of their majesties and the princesses were then duly displayed, and the dingy green curtain drew up. The performances were invariably either a comedy and farce, or more frequently three farces, with a plentiful interlarding of comic songs. Quick, Suett, and Mrs. Mat- tocks were the reigning favourites ; and, about 1800, Elliston and Fawcett became occasional stars. But Quick and Suett were the king's especial delight. When Lovegold, in ' The Miser,' drawled out ■ a pin a day '• a groat a year/ the laugh of the royal circle was somewhat loud ; but when Dicky Gossip exhibited in his vocation, and accompanied the burden of his song ' Dicky Gossip, Dicky Gossip is the man,' with the blasts of his powder-puff, the cachin nation was loud and long, and the gods prolonged the chorus of laughter till the echo died away in the royal box. At the end of the third act, coffee was handed round to the court circle ; and precisely at eleven the performances finished, — and the flambeaux gleamed through the dimly-lighted streets of Windsor, as the happy family returned to their tranquil home. There was occasionally a good deal of merriment going forward at Windsor in these old days. I have a dim recollection of having danced in the little garden which was once the moat of the Round Tower, and which \\ ashington Irving has been pleased to imagine "existed in the time of James I. of Scotland. I have a perfect remem- brance of a fete at Frogmore, about the beginning of the present century, where there was a Dutch fair, — and I iay making very agreeably performed in white kid gloves by the belles of the town, — and the buck-basket scene of 'The Merry Wives of Windsor,' represented by Fawertt and Mrs. Mattocks, and I think Mrs. Gibbs, under the colonnade of the house in the open day — and variegated lamps— and transparencies — and tea served out in tents, with a magnificent scramble for the bread and butter. 303 There was great good humour and freedom on all these occasions ; — and if the grass was damp and the young ladies caught cold, and the sandwiches were scarce and the gentlemen went home hungry — I am sure these little draw- backs were not to be imputed to the royal entertainers, who delighted to see their neighbours and dependants happy and joyous. A few years passed over my head, and the scene was somewhat changed. The king and his family migrated from their little lodge into the old and spacious castle. This was about 1804. The lath and plaster of Sir William Chambers was abandoned to the equerries and chance visitors of the court ; and the low rooms and dark passages that had scarcely been tenanted since the days of Anne, were made tolerably habitable by the aid of diligent upholstery. Upon the whole, the change was not one which conduced to comfort: and I have heard that the princesses wept when they quitted their snug boudoirs in the Queen's Lodge. Windsor Castle, as it was, was a sad patchwork affair. Elizabeth took great pains to make it a royal residence, according to the notions of her time ; but there were many difficulties in converting the old fortress into a fit scene for the gallantries of Leicester and Essex. I have seen, in the State Paper Office, a Report of the Surveyors of the Castle to Lord Burleigh, upon the subject of certain necessary reparations and additions, wherein, amongst divers curious matters illustrative of the manners of that age, it was mentioned that the partition separating the common passage from the sleeping-room of the queen's maids of honour needed to be raised, inasmuch as the pages looked over the said partition before the honourable damsels had arisen, to the great scandal of her majesty's most spotless court, &c. Charles II. caused Verrio to paint his crimson and azure gods and goddesses upon the ceilings in the state-rooms of Windsor ; and he converted the old Gothic windows into hideous ones of the fashion of Versailles. Anne lived a good deal at the castle, but comfort was little understood even in her day ; and from 394 ONCE UPON A TIME. her time, till that of George IV., Windsor was neglected. The castle, as it was previous to the recent complete remodelling, was frightfully incommodious. The passages were dark, the rooms were small and cold, the ceilings were low, and as one high window gave light to two floors, the conversation of the lower rooms was distinctly heard in the upper. George III. took a fancy to occupy the castle himself, from finding James Wyatt the solitary inhabitant of some magnificent apartments on the north side. The architect gave up his spacious studio ; the work of repara- tion began ; and the king, in his declining years, took possession of a palace full of splendid associations with the ancient records of his country, but in itself a sufficiently dreary and uncomfortable abode. He passed very~ few years of happiness here ; and it subsequently became to him a prison under the most painful circumstances which can ever attend the loss of liberty. The king and his famity had lived at Windsor nearly thirty years, before it occurred to him to inhabit his own castle. The period at which he took possession was one of extraordinary excitement. It was the period of the threatened invasion of England by Napoleon, when, as was the case with France upon the manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick, 'the land bristled.' The personal character of the king did a great deal towards giving the turn to public opinion. His unconquerable perseverance, which some properly enough called obstinacy — his simple habits, so flattering to the John Bullism of the day — his straight- forward and earnest piety — and the ease with which he appeared to put off the farmer, and put on the soldier, — each and all of these qualities were exceedingly in accord- ance with the temper of the times. The doings at Windsor were certainly more than commonly interesting at that period ; and I was just of an age to understand something of their meaning, and partake the excitement. Sunday was especially a glorious day ; and the description of one Sunday will furnish nn adequate picture of those of two of three years. WINDSOR, AS IT WAS. 395 At nine o'clock the sound of martial music was heard in the streets. The Blues and the Stafford Militia then did duty at Windsor ; and though the one had seen no service since Minden, and most undeservedly bore the stigma of a past generation, and the other was composed of men who had never faced any danger but the ignition of a coal-pit, they were each a remarkably fine body of soldiers, and the king did well to countenance them. Of the former regi- ment George III. had a troop of his own, and he delighted to wear the regimentals of a captain of the Blues ; and well did his burly form become the cocked hat and heavy jack- boots which were the fashion of that fine corps in 1805. At nine o'clock, as I have said, of a Sunday morning, the noise of trumpet and of drum was heard in the streets of Windsor ; for the regiments paraded in the castle quad- rangle. The troops occupied the whole square. At about ten the king appeared with his family. He passed round the lines while the salute was performed ; and many a rapid word of inquiry had he to offer to the colonels who accompanied him. Not always did he wait for an answer — but that was after the fashion of royalty in general. He passed onwards towards St. George's Chapel. But the military pomp did not end in what is called the upper quadrangle. In the lower ward, at a very humble distance from the regular troops, were drawn up a splendid body of men, ycleped the Windsor Volunteers ; and most gracious were the nods of royalty to the well-known drapers, and hatters, and booksellers, who had the honour to hold commissions t in that distinguished regiment. The saluta- tions, however, were short, and onwards went the cortege, for the chapel bell was tolling in, and the king was always punctual. I account it one of the greatest blessings of my life, and a circumstance which gave a tone to my imagination which I would not resign for many earthly gifts, that I lived in a place where the cathedral service was duly and beautifully performed. Many a frosty winter evening have I sat in the cold choir of St. George's Chapel, with no congregation but 396 ONCE UPOX A TIME. two or three gaping strangers, and an ancient female or so in the stalls, lifted up to heaven by the peals of the sweetest of organs, or entranced by the divine melody of the Nunc Dimittis, or of some solemn anthem of Handel or Boyce, breathed most exquisitely from the lips of Vaughan. If the object of devotion be to make us feel, and to carry away the soul from all low and earthly thoughts, assuredly the grand chants of our cathedral service are not without their use. I admire — none can admire more — the abstract idea of an assembly of reasoning beings, offering up to the Author of all good their thanksgivings and their petitions in a pure and intelligible form of words ; but the question will always intrude, does the heart go along with this lip-service ? — and is the mind sufficiently excited by this reasonable worship to forget its accustomed association with the business, and vanities, and passions of the world? The cathedral service does affect the imagination, and through that channel reaches the heart ; and thus I can forgive the solemnities of Catholicism, (of which our cathedral service is a relic,) which act upon the mind precisely in the same way. The truth is, we Church of England people have made religion a cold thing by entirely appealing to the understanding ; and then Calvinism comes in to supply the place of high mass, by offering an excitement of an entirely different character. — But where am I wandering ? St. George's Chapel is assuredly the most beautiful gem of the later Gothic architecture. It does not impress the mind by its vastness, or grandeur of proportions, as York— or by its remote antiquity, as parts of Ely; but by its perfect and symmetrical beauty. The exquisite form of the roof — elegant yet perfectly simple, as every rib of each column which supports it spreads out upon the ceiling into the most gorgeous fan — the painted windows — the rich carving of the stalls of the choir — the waving banners — and, in accordance with the whole character of the place, its complete preservation and scrupulous neatness — all these, and many more characteristics which I cannot describe, render it a gem of the architecture of the fifteenth century. WINDSOR, AS IT WAS. 397 As a boy I thought the Order of the Garter was a glorious thing : and believed, — as what boy has not believed ? — that * The goodly golden chain of chivalry,' as Spenser has it, was let down from heaven to earth. I did not then know that even Edward the Black Prince was a ferocious and cruel spoiler of other men's lands, and that all his boasted meekness and magnanimity was a portion of the make-believe of those ages when tlw people were equally trampled upon by the victor and the vanquished. When, too, in the daily service of St. George's Chapel I heard the words, 'God bless our gracious sovereign, and all the Imightfl companions of the most honourable and noble Order of the Garter,' — though I thought it was a little impious to parade the mere titles <>{* miserable humanity before the footstool of the Most High, I still considered that the honourable and noble persona, BO especially prayed for, were the choicest portion of humanity — the very ' salt of the earth,' — and that heaven would forgive this pride of its creatures. I saw the Installation of 1805; and I hated these words ever after. The old King marched erect ; and the Prince of Wales bore himself proudly (he did not look so magnificent as Kemble in Coriolanus) ; but my Lord of Salisbury, and my Lord of Chesterfield, and my Lord of Winchilsea, and half-a-dozen other lords — what a frightful spectacle of fat, limping, leaden supporters of chivalry did they exhibit to my astonished eyes ! The vision of ' throngs of knights and barons bold ' fled for ever ; and I never heard the words again without a shudder. But I am forgetting my old Sunday at Windsor. Great was the crowd to see the king and his family return from chapel ; for by this time London had poured forth its chaises and one, and the astonished inmates of Cheapside and St. Mary Axe were elbowing each other to see how a monarch smiled. They saw him well, and often have I heard the disappointed exclamation, < Is that the King ?' They saw a portly man, in a plain suit of regimentals, and 398 OXCE UPON A TIME. no crown upon his head. What a fearful falling-off from the king of the story-books ! The terrace, however, was the great Sunday attraction ; — and though Bishop Porteus remonstrated with his Ma- jesty for suffering people to crowd together, and bands to play on these occasions, I cannot think that the good-tempered monarch committed any mortal sin in walking amongst his people in their holiday attire. This terrace was a motley scene. The barber from Eton and his seven daugh- ters elbowed the judge, who rented his back parlour when he was in the" sixth form. , The dowager who presented her niece at the last Drawing-room struggled for the front rank with the rosy landlady of the Eed Lion at Brentford. The prime minister waited quietly amidst the crush till the royal party should descend from their dining-room, — smiling at, if not unheeding, the anxious inquiries of the stockbroker from Change Alley, who wondered if Mr. Pitt would cany a gold stick before the King. The only time I saw that minister was under these circumstances. It was the year before he died. He stood firmly and proudly amongst the crowd for some half-hour till the King should arrive. The monarch, of course, immediately recognised him : the contrast in the demeanour of the two personages made a remarkable impression upon me — and that of the minister first showed me an example of the peifect self- possession of men of great abilities. After a year or two of this sort of excitement the King became blind ; — and painful was the exhibition of the led-horse of the good old man, as he took his accustome'd ride. In a few more years a still heavier calamity fell upon him — and from that time Windsor Castle became, comparatively, a mournful place. The terrace was shut lip ; — the ancient pathway through the park, and under the castle walls, was diverted; — and a somewhat Asiatic state and stillness seemed to usurp the reign of the old free and familiar intercourse of the sovereign with the people. I was proud of Windsor; and my great delight was to WINDSOR, AS IT WAS. 390 show the lions to strangers. There were always two staple commodities of this nature — the Round Tower and the State Apartments of the castle, which were not affected by any of the changes of the times. The Round Tower has an historical interest of a certain kind about it, from having been the prison of the captive Kings of France and Scotland in the reign of Edward III. As we grow older this sort of charm becomes very worthless ; — for, after all, there is just as much philosophical interest in the wars of the Fantees and the Ashantees, as in those of the French and the English for the disputed possession to a crown, the owner or pretender to which never dreamt that the possession or the winning imposed the least obligation to provide for the good of the people from whom they claimed allegiance. However, I used to feel this sort of interest in the place ; — and when they showed me the armour of John of France and David of Scotland (as genuine, I dare say, as any of those which Dr. Meyrick has consigned to ple- beian shoulders, and much later eras), I felt very proud of my country for having sq gloriously carried fire and sword to the dwellings of peaceful and inoffensive lieges. The Round Tower was a miserably furnished, dreary sort of place, and only repaid a visit by the splendid view from its top. But it once had a charm which, like many other charms of our boyhood, has perished for ever. There was a young lady, a dweller within ' the proud Keep,' to whom was intrusted the daily task of expounding to inquiring visitants the few wonders of the " place. Amongst the choicest of them was some dingy tapestry, which for aught I know still adorns the walls, on which were delineated various passages of the piteous story of Hero and Leander. The fair guide thus discoursed thereon, with the volubility of an Abbe Barthelemy, though with a somewhat different measure of knowledge : — ' Here, ladies and gentlemen, is the whole lamentable history of Hero and Leander. Hero was a nun. She lived in that old ancient nunnery which you see. There you see the lady abbess chiding Hero for her love for Leander. And now, ladies and 400 ONCE UPON A TIME. gentlemen, look at Leander swimming across St. George's Channel, while Hero, from the nunnery window, holds out a large flambeau. There you see the affectionate meeting of the two lovers— and then the cruel parting. Ladies and gentlemen, Leander perished as he was swimming back. His body was picked up by Captain Vanslom, of his Majesty's ship Britannia, and carried into Gibraltar, where it was decently buried. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the true history of Hero and Leander, which you see on that tapestry.' — Alas ! for the march of intellect j such guides are every day getting more and more scarce ; and we shall have nothing for our pains in the propagation of knowledge, but to yawn over sober sense for the rest of Our lives. The pictures in the State Eooms at Windsor were alwaj r s worth seeing ; but the number exhibited had diminished from year to year. I remember the Cartoons there ; and also remember that I did not know what to make of them. The large men in the little boat, in the Miraculous Draught of Fishes, were somewhat startling; but then again, the Paul preaching at Athens, and the Ananias, filled me full 'of awe and wonder. I have a remembrance of a Murillo (a Boy and Puppies), which used to hang at the end of Queen Elizabeth's Gallery; and I was amazingly taken with those two ancient pictures, the Battle of Spurs (I think) and the Field of the Cloth of Gold, which after- wards went to the Society of Antiquaries, and are now gone to Hampton Court. I never could thoroughly ad- mire King Charles's Beauties. — I dare say they were ex- cellent likenesses ; for amongst them all, from Lady Denham to the Duchess of Cleveland, there was a bold meretricious- air — anything but the retiring loveliness which always finds a place in the dreams of youth. The Misers is a favourite picture with everybody, for its truth of delineation and force of character : and yet there is no g!va.f skill of the artist in this celebrated work of the Blacksmith of Antwerp. It certainly looks very like what it is represented to be — the work of a self-taught 401 genius, labouring with irrepressible enthusiasm for a great object. I wonder if he painted as well after he married the maiden, whose hand he is said to have won by this proof of his dedication to love as well as to art. St. George's Hall, about which so much has been talked, was sadly out of character with its chivalrous associations. Verrio, with the wretched taste of his age, had painted a Eoman triumph on the walls, in which the principal personages were Edward the Black Prince and his royal prisoner of France ; and with the same spirit of absurdity, and with a more hateful spirit of gross flattery, he had scrawled the ceilings of the whole palace with gods and goddesses, welcoming Charles II. to their banquets. In one respect he was right ; for this most mean and heartless profligate was a fit companion for the scoundrels of the Mythology — for the tyrant and the sensualist, the betrayer and the "pander, whether called by the names of Jupiter or Bacchus, of Mercury or Mars. And yet this Verrio (in- solent puppy !) had written up in this banqueting-room, set apart for high and solemn festivals — ' Antonius Verrio, Neapolitanus, Non ignobili stirpe natus, Molem hanc Felicissima Manu decoravit.'* The double conceit of the Italian, — his pride of birth, and his pride of skill in his art — was altogether too lu- dicrous. Next to St. George's Hall there was a Guard Chamber, with matchlocks and bandoleers, and such-like curiosities, and a rapid sketch of the Battle of Nordlingen, painted for a triumphal arch by Eubens, worth all the works of Verrio, plastered as they are with real ultramarine. They say it was painted in four-and-twenty hours. Certainly genius can do great things. The last time I saw this Guard Chamber was on a solemn occasion ; but I shall never for- get the scene which it presented. In costume, in arrange- * ■ Antonio Verrio, a Neapolitan, born of a not ignoble race, adorned this building with a most happy hand.' 2 D 402 ONCE UPOX A TIME. ment, in every particular, it carried the imagination back three centuries. That occasion was when George III. closed his long years of suffering, and lay in state previous to interment. This chamber was tenanted by the yeomen of the guard. The room was darkened — there was no light but that of the nickering wood fire which burnt on an ancient hearth, with dogs, as they are called, on each side of the room ; on the ground lay the beds on which the yeomen had slept during the night: they stood in their ancient dresses of state, with broad scarves of crape across their breasts, and crape on their halberds ; and as the red light of the burning brands gleamed on their rough faces, and glanced ever and anon amongst the lances, and coats of mail, and tattered banners that hung around the room, all the reality connected with their presence in that place vanished from my view, and I felt as if about to be ushered into the stern presence of the last Harry — and my head was uneasy. In a few moments I was in the chamber of death, and all the rest was black velvet and wax lights. ( 403 ) CKABBE'S MODEKN ANTIQUES. It is seventy years ago since George Crabbe published his poem of • The Village.' His age was twenty -nine. He was then in orders, and was domestic chaplain to the Duke of "Rutland. But what a life the young man had passed through, before he had attained that social position ! — Born in what was then a wretched fishing hamlet, Aid- borough— roughly brought up — imperfectly educated — apprenticed to a surgeon, without means to complete his professional studies — lingering hopelessly about his native place, — he at last resolved to cast himself upon the wide ocean of London, and tempt the fearful dangers that be- longed to the career of a literary adventurer. Here he straggled and starved for a year. During the first three months of his London life he sent manuscript poems to the booksellers, Dodsley and Becket, which they civilly declined. He addressed verses to Lord Chancellor Thurlow, who informed him that his avocations did not leave him leisure to read verses. He sold his clothes and his books, and pawned his watch and his surgical instruments. His one coat was torn, and he mended it himself. He was reduced at last to eightpence, but the brave man never despaired. He had a strong sense of religion, and he was deeply attached to one who became his wife after thirteen years of untiring constancy. His faith and his love held him up, and kept him out of degradation. At last he wrote a letter to Edmund Burke. It contained this passage : ' In April last I came to London, with three pounds, and flattered myself this would be sufficient to supply me with the common necessaries of life till my abilities should pro- cure me more ; of these I had the highest opinion, and a poetical vanity contributed to my delusion.' Burke saved Crabbe from the fate of many a one who perished in those 2d2 404 OXCE UPON A TIME. days, when patronage was dying out ; and the various re- sources for the literary labourer that belong to the extension of reading had scarcely begun to exist. Burke persuaded Dodsley to publish ' The Library ;' and the Bishop of Norwich to ordain its author, without a degree. His lot in life was fixed. Thurlow invited him to dinner, and telling him he was 'as like Parson Adams as twelve to a dozen,' gave him two small livings. He published * The Village ' in 1783, and * The Newspaper' in 1785. From that time to 1807, the world had forgotten that a real poet, of very original talents, had appeared, for a short season, and was no more heard of. When Crabbe was fifty -three years of age, he again published a poem. This was * The Parish Register.' ' The Borough ' speedily followed. His • Tales ' were in the same vein. Their success was triumphant. The author, whose worldly means were reduced to eight- pence in 1780, sold the copyright of his poems, in 1817, to Mr. Murray for three thousand pounds. During these twenty -five years, when Crabbe was living in the seclusion of unpretending duty, he was gathering materials for works which are among the most valuable pictures of English life, as it existed in a generation that is recently past. It is the object of this paper to trace some of those representations of Classes that may now be termed obsolete. Old Aubrey says of Shakspere — ' His comedies will remain wit as long as the English language is under- stood, for that he handles mores hominum.' It is the same with Crabbe. He rarely deals with those individual pecu- liarities which the early writers used to term ' humours.* His satire and his pathos are essentially generic. He paints individual characters, and their costume is peculiar ; but it is not the mere caprice of the sitter that has settled the costume. It tells of past manners and modes of thought. It is historical. Sir Roger de Coverley is an individualised portrait ; — so Parson Adams ; — so my Uncle Toby ; — but they are each great general representatives of human nature in their particular age and position. Thus, Crabbe did not wear a cassock, or choose a footman for his travelling com- crabbe's modern antiques. 405 panion ; but in his simplicity and knowledge, Thurlow saw his resemblance to Parson Adams. Inferior masters paint coxcombities that have no relation to universal modes of thought or action. Shepherds say, that out of a thousand sheep no one face is like another; but then, no one face is so peculiar that it is unlike the face of a sheep. Nature, in her individualization, cleaves to the general. So does all high art. 1 The Village ' of Crabbe is really his native * Borough ' of Aldborough, in Suffolk. It was such a ' Borough ' as England tolerated within the last quarter of a century. Its population, seventy years ago, has been described in lines which forcibly contrast with the Arcadian pictures in Goldsmith's ' Deserted Village.' • Where are the swains, who, daily labour done, With rural fBUfli play'd down the setting sun ; Who struck with matchless force the bounding ball, Or made the ponderous quoit obliquely fall ; While some huge Ajax, terrible and strong, Engag'd some artful stripling of the throng, And fell beneath him, foil'd, while far around Hoarse triumph rose, and rocks return'd the sound? Where now are these? — Beneath yon cliff they stand," To show the freighted pinnace where to land ; To load the ready steed with guilty haste, To fly in terror o'er the pathless waste, Or, when detected, in their straggling course, To foil their foes by cunning or by force ; Or, yielding part (which equal knaves demand), To gain a lawless passport through the land/ Amongst such scenes lived the young Poet ; — amongst ' a bold, artful, surly, savage race ; Who, only skill'd to take the finny tribe, The yearly dinner, or septennial bribe,' watched the tossed vessel from the shore, rejoicing in the prospect of a wreck. Smuggler, wrecker, venal elector — all are gone from Aldborough. The ' Borough ' is disfran- chised ; wise revenue laws have put an end to the smuggler's 406 ONCE UPON A TIME. vocation. With the smuggler vanished the pedlar who carried about contraband goods : — ' Dawkins, a dealer once, on burthen 'd back Bore his whole substance in a pedlar's pack ; To dames discreet, the duties yet unpaid, His stores of lace and hyson he convey 'd.' They are gone. Will the time never arrive when wise laws shall consign the poacher to the same oblivion ? Crabbe has described the sorrows of the poor, in verses which may have done something to lead us to mitigate the labourer's lot, by benefits more enduring than what is mis- called Charity. He has described, too, the Poor-house, such as it existed in those days : — 1 Theirs is yon House that holds the parish poor, Whose walls of mud scarce bear the broken door ; There, where the putrid vapours, nagging, play, And the dull wheel hums doleful through the day, — There, children dwell who know no parents' care.' That wretched parish workhouse is gone. No walls of mud — no broken door — no naked rafters — no patched panes — no pestilent vapours in badly- ventilated rooms. The parentless children are taught far better than many who do know the parents' care. Society is doing its duty to stop the growth of pauperism, and to succour real destitution. There are two obsolete portraits connected with the Poor, which we may happily contrast with the same official per- sons in our own times. And first, the Parish Apothecary, who struts into the wretched bedroom of the old Workhouse, where ' The drooping wretch reclines his languid head.' The Apothecary comes : — ' But soon a loud and hasty summons calls, Shakes the thin roof, and echoes round the walls ; Anon, a figure enters, quaintly neat, All pride and business, bustle and conceit; With looks unalter'd by these scenes of woe, With speed that, entering, speaks his haste to go, crabbe's modern antiques. 407 He bids the gazing throng around him fly, And carries fate and physic in his eye : A potent quack, long versed in human ills, Who first insults the victim whom he kills ; Whose murd'rous hand a drowsy Bench protect, And whose most tender mercy is neglect. Paid by the parish for attendance here, He wears contempt upon his sapient sneer ; In haste he seeks the bed where miseiy lies, Impatience mark'd in his averted eyes ; And, some habitual queries hurried' o'er, Without reply, he rushes on the door ; His drooping patient, long inured to pain, And long unheeded, knows remonstrance vain ; He ceases now the feeble help to crave Of man ; and silent sinks into the grave.' Jeffrey, writing in the Edinburgh Eeview in 1807, says : ' The consequential apothecary, who gives an impatient attendance in these homes of misery, is admirably de- scribed.' If Jeffrey had reviewed Crabbe thirty years later, he must have said that such a character was a creature of pure imagination. Let any person who knows of the labours of the medical officer of a Poor Law Union say if there be one now in the charge of an English parish, 1 Who first insults the victim whom he kills ;' who is protected by ' a drowsy Bench ;' 1 And whose most tender mercy is neglect.' In these our days, happier in many respects, the medical officer, overworked as too many official and non-official people are, can rarely be accused of want of zeal. He rides from cottage to cottage ; he is ready at all hours by day or by night ; a thousand eyes are upon him. People of all ranks know that neglect of the poor is visited upon the rich. But his discharge of his duty is the result of what has become an esprit de corps. He has deep responsibilities which ' bustle and conceit ' will not shuffle off. He must know, and he must act. His ministry is one of benevolence ; and he must work it out, even in the face of his own danger 408 ONCE UPON A TIME. and suffering. If fever strike down the poor man, ' the doctor,' as the poor man calls him, must be at his side. There is no ' drowsy Bench ' to tell him to stay away ; for more vigilant administrators know that if the sick man die there are orphans to be provided for. The whole tone of society has changed in its estimate of the Poor and the duties which we owe to them. No wonder that Crabbe's Parish Apothecary is as obsolete as the Physician's muff of a century ago. I approach, with equal confidence, the obsolete portrait of the Parish Priest — he who is summoned to the pauper's bed to impart the last consolations : — 1 But ere his death some pious doubts arise, Some simple fears, which " bold bad men " despise ; Fain would he ask the parish priest to prove His title certain to the joys above : For this he sends the murmuring nurse, who calls The holy stranger to these dismal walls : And doth not he, the pious man appear, He, " passing rich with forty pounds a year?" Ah! no: a shepherd of a different stock, And far unlike him, feeds this little flock : ' A jovial youth, who thinks his Sunday's task As much as God or man can fairly ask ; The rest he gives to loves and labours light, To fields the morning, and to feasts the night ; None better skill'd the noisy pack to guide, To urge their chase, to cheer them or to chide ; A sportsman keen, he shoots through half the day, And, skill'd at whist, devotes the night to play : Then while such honours bloom around his head, Shall he sit sadly by the sick man's bed, To raise the hope he feels not, or with zeal To combat fairs that e'en the pious feel V That Priest has followed the Parish Apothecary to ob- livion. But I have seen the man, even in my time. I have seen an honourable and reverend gentleman pacing down the main street of a country town, with gun in hand, and mob at heel, to a pigeon-match. Are there such ministers left? I believe not. They are with tho Parson Trullibers of a century ago. Simple indifference, to say crabbe's modern antiques. 409 nothing of more unseemly attributes of the clerical cha- racter, has passed away. The clergyman's office, by a happy appropriation of a true English word, is called his * duty.' The modern clergyman knows that ' to do duty ' is to do something more than preach once a week — that he is called to be the friend and the civilizer wherever he is placed. The meaning of the word ' duty ' was very much forgotten, by more classes than the clerical, when a sentence went forth that, Heaven be praised, need not be sculptured upon pedestals of brass — f England expects every man to do his duty.' These memorable words have sunk into the national heart. But there is another official character, whose business is with Parishes and Poor ; and he is also fast becoming ob- solete. Crabbe has well described him : — 1 There is a doubtful Pauper, and we think 'Tis not with us to give him meat and drink : There is a Child ; and 'tis not mighty clear Whither his mother lived with us a year : A road's indicted, and our seniors doubt If in our proper boundary or without: But what says our Attorney ? He, our friend, Tells us 'tis just and manly to contend. " What ! to a neighbouring parish yield your cause, While you have money, and the nation laws ? What ! lose without a trial, that which, tried, May — nay, it must — be given on our side ? All men of spirit would contend ; such men Than lose a pound would rather hazard ten. What ! be imposed on ? No ! a British soul Despises imposition, hates control." ' How truly has the Poet recorded the wordy debates, and high resolves, that followed in the wake of the « doubtful pauper!' How Churchwarden, Overseer, Justice, Con- stable, and Attorney, revelled in the prospect of a Settle- ment Appeal ! What post-chaises of witnesses they car- ried to the Sessions ! How they stopped at the Half-way House, for a preliminary dinner, to prepare them for the coming fatigues ! How they sp^nt the evening before the 410 ONCE UPON A TIME. trial-day in going over all the points with the Attorney's Clerk ! How the most learned of the Overseers quoted Burn's Justice, whilst the impatient Clerk, held by the button, assented and sneered. How they lingered about in the county town, nothing loth, for three days of en- thusiasm and feasting ! How the awful moment at last came on! How the witnesses were catechised in the entrance of the County Hall ! How they blundered and broke down ; or swore bravely that the ten-pound-a-year tenement was a fictitious rental, or that the apprentice ran away in the last week of his servitude. It was a glorious scene, whoever conquered. One of the set of combatants went home with blue ribbons in their hats ; and the rival attorneys took a secret bottle together, before they parted, to settle how the costs should be managed. And these good old times are gone too ; and the Parish Attorney is for the most part as obsolete as the law which branded the pauper in the shoulder with R. or V. Where is the ancient Mayor gone — he of the close Corpo- ration of the little Borough ? • Him in our Body-Corporate we chose, And once among us, he above us rose ; Stepping from post to post, he Yeach'd the Chair, And there he now reposes — that's the Mayor.' Where shall I find the Olympian Jupiter of my own young days ? He is gone for ever. The only possible relic of the race is a London Alderman — who is also travelling to the limbo of all ignorance and corruption. Let me solace my memory with the shadow of my Corporator. He was a retired shopkeeper, who, finding the struggle to ascend into the atmosphere of gentility perfectly hopeless, sat himself quietly down to lord it over his former equals for the rest of his life. As he took his morning walk to the Coffee-room — (that was our only Literary and Scientific Institution), I could recognise him at a street's length by the dignity of his gait. His greeting of an old brother of the scales was suited to the publicity of the place in which crabbe's modern ANTIQUES. 411 they met ; but with the Rector or the Captain he was ever familiar. Yet he did not spend his time in greetings in the market-places. He was a busy man. He was on his legs at every Vestry ; it was essential that every one should know his opinion. He supported the powers that be, from the Lord Chancellor to the watchman. He never moved without a precedent. Any one who doubted him was a Radical — (that was the word of opprobrium in those days). "When he saw a chance of serious discussion he rose to 1 Order.' If the malcontents persisted in thinking the public business involved some necessity for discussion, he appealed to the meeting to support the Chair — and thus the Ayes had it. Nevertheless he was an Orator. I have heard him at a public dinner, when the Corporation was toasted, rise and say : — • Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, for myself and my worthy colleagues I beg leave to thank you for the honour you have done us in drinking our healths, and beg leave, in return, to drink all your good healths.' It produced a wonderful impression. At an Election his genius luxuriated. He was seen arm- in-arm with the ministerial Candidate on his canvass, and sat on his right hand at dinner. On the day of Election he always seconded the nomination of the ■ The Honourable Richard Overdo, commonly called Lord Overdo.' Though an orator and a literary man — for he delighted to call upon the printer of the provincial newspaper to tell him that he had put an e for a c, or a q for a p — he hated the spread of intelligence. He hated National Schools — but he pa- tronised the old Free Schools, which distributed the arts of reading and writing like prizes in the lottery. I knew him not in the secret councils of the Body Corporate ; but I knew that in or out of office he was the great wheel of the machine. He and any two were a majority. His sole policy was to keep that illustrious Body, and the in- habitants of his Borough, perfectly distinct. He delighted that the Body should have the start of the Town in an address to Royalty. He held that the Body was bound to 412 OXCE UPON A TIME. give no account of its proceedings. To do him justice, he 1 derated no private misappropriation of the Corporate funds. They were for the solace and dignity of the Body. It was an uncorrupt Corporation ; but it never did any- thing for the Public good. And he, too, is gone — in the Provinces. Of the same family as the ancient Corporator was the obsolete Justice of the Peace : — 1 In contest mighty, and of conquest proud, Was Justice Bolt, impetuous, warm, and loud ; His fame, his prowess, all the country knew, And disputants, with one so tierce, were few.' The Justice was greatest in his Monthly Club. The Head Inn where the Club was held is described by Crabbe ; its ample yards, its ready chaise, and smart driver. AVho of my times does not recollect the lordly host, who looked after the travelling arrangements with his • first turn-out/ and k hi8 pompous bow as you drove from the door ? A\ ho can forget the lady-hostess, who welcomed the Justice to the Club with 'your honour,' and left Mr. Smith, who walked in with a carpet-bag, to find his own way to a chair and a fire ? The landlord is gone, and eke the landlady. Railroads have ruined the Head Inn. If you enter it now you find it dilapidated. There is half a fowl and a ham- bone in the larder. You shudder when you order dinner, and are told you can have ' anything? You wait an hour for a chop, in a room fifty feet long, with a large cracked chimney glass and a dingy chandelier. The carpet is faded ; the curtains are musty ; the tables are rickety. You ask for Port, and you cannot drink it. Y r ou ask for your bill, and you are puzzled by its items and its total. In its old days the Justice was proud of the Head Inn, — ' Where rector, doctor, and attorney pause, First on each parish, then each public cause; Indicted roads, and rates that still increase, The murmuring poor, who will not fast in }>eace; Election zeal, ami friendship since declined, — A tax commuted, or a tithe in kind.' crabbe's modern antiques. 413 The Justice never missed the Club. He was perpetual Chairman of the Club. How he would talk at the Club ! ' In private business his commands prevail ; On public themes his reasoning turns the scale : Assenting Silence soothes his happy ear, And, in or out, his party triumphs bere.' His great party, in or out, was the anti-educational party. A younger man would sometimes argue with him ; but he was soon discomfited. Such dialogue is stereotyped, as it were, in my memory ; for the time is not very distant when its echo was common enough in the land : — The wise man talked of that arch -deist, Joseph Lan- caster, who set up his schools in the days of George III. He asked where our servants were to come from, if all learnt to read ? He held that all the reading in the world would not heat out the gin-shop. These opinions were not peculiar to the Justice forty years ago. But the schools went on; and when the people could read they wanted books ; and a few Mechanics' Institutes were established. Then waxed our friend more and more wroth at the Club. 1 1 think there is a general improvement of manners pro- duced by education,' says a timid rebel; 'you scarcely ever hear an ill word from a mechanic in the streets.' ' No,' says Justice Bolt, ' they are too cunning for that ; they have learnt to be sly ; they don't give you a good round volley of oaths, like their honest fathers ; they can blaspheme enough when they get by themselves in their pot-houses, with their cards, and their dice, and their flash songs. I know all about that. Do you think I nevei heard of the Dcg and Duck, and the Bull in the Pound, and the Blue Cat ?' The educator has one more word : — 1 They go now to Literary and Scientific Institutions.' 1 Oh ! Literary and Scientific Institutions ! literature and science for a working man! Sir, if you come to that I have done. Improve their taste did you say ? what have the house-painter, and the mason, and the carpenter, and the weaver to do with taste ? Do their work better, will 414 ONCE UPON A TIME. they ? They won't work at all, sir. I should have been ruined, sir, if I had known anything about taste. Hold your tongue. I did hope we might have been able to save ourselves, in spite of reading and writing. But literature, and science, and taste ! Come, sir, you stop the bottle.' Thus talked the Justice. But his tongue is silent now. The enemies of education have passed away. Higher prin- ciples, better examples, than belonged to thirty or even twenty years ago, have grown up amongst us. The anti- educators are gone out with the horn-books. I am told that Messrs. Longman, the eminent publishers, have suc- ceeded in obtaining a Horn-Book, which they preserve as a relic of English literature. How truly did that little in- strument, which consisted of the alphabet pasted upon a board, and curiously preserved by a semi-transparent horn, represent the state of knowledge ; when even the A, B, C, was mistily exhibited, and covered over as a rare thing. There were gingerbread alphabets, too, in those days ; and they were devoured as the good child's rewards. The horn-books and the gingerbread alphabets were for the few. If all the children under instruction learnt now in horn- books, where should we find cattle enough to produce the horn ? In the old time the supply was proportioned to the demand. The objectors to the education of the Poor were answered even in their own days ; and Schools went on and prospered. But the school education for all did not fit all, or any, for the understanding of the most simple fundamental principles upon which their own happiness essentially depended. The poor were not taught to go alone. Are they yet adequately taught ? The manufacturing classes spend a few millions every two or three years in fruitless strikes. Where have they been taught to understand the true relation between Profits and Wages ? Capitalists, no doubt, are as ignorant of many great economical truths as Labourers are. When will they both learn that their interests can never be sepa- rated ? But if the Education of the Toor was scant and wretched CR abbe's modern antiques. 415 in the past days, what was the Education of the Eich ? The flogging schoolmaster was becoming a disgrace even in Crabbe's time : — t He was, it seem'd, a tyrant of the sort Who make the cries of tortured boys his sport; One of a race, if not extinguish'd, tam'd, The flogger now is of the act asham'd ; But this great mind all mercy's calls withstood, This Holofernes was a man of blood. " Students," he said, " like horses on the road, Must well be lash'd before they take the load ; They may be willing for a time to run, But you must whip them ere the work be done." ' Yet the schoolmaster clung, unabashed, to his system, especially in our great public schools. Flogging was like the capital punishments of the State. It was cherished as an instrument of governing with the greatest amount of ease to those having the responsibilities of government. It stood in the place of watchfulness and affection. There were no proportions observed in the application of this paltry and inefficient discipline. Dullness and wickedness, theoretically, came under the same stripes ; but, practically, dullness made a bad copy of verses, and was infallibly punished, while wickedness committed every excess that could disgrace the uneducated, and escaped untouched, because undiscovered. What did a boy of average intellect learn at a Public School five-and-twenty-years ago, besides an imperfect acquaintance with the words and phrases of antiquity, with little appreciation of its literature ? It is nothing for Eton to point to its Wellesley and its Canning, and Harrow to its Peel and its Byron. Great intellects will always assert themselves, in spite of the circumstances which surround them. The question here, as in all other questions of education, is, what is the average amount of enlightenment in a school, as in a nation ? If a system existed under which the greater number of boys might, without disgrace, possess not the slightest knowledge of mathematics, — escape learning any modern language, — have no perception of the distinction between the Tudors- 416 ONCE UPON A TIME. and the Stuarts, —fancy America an island, — and cherish an indistinct notion that there had been a dispute whether the earth went round the sun, or the sun round the earth, and didn't care how it was settled, — that system, however fashionable, was not education. Arnold came, the greatest of schoolmasters, and the system has been reformed. Some- thing still remains to be done. The ten precious years that a boy spent at the great classical schools were wasted upon hexameters and penta- meters. The same time was then equally wasted at the ordinary boarding-schools, upon text-hand and small-hand, and holiday pieces, on which the writing-master flourished swans and angels. Of ladies' education I do not venture to speak. At the ' seminaries ' for young gentlemen, the boy who stayed till sixteen, and was then placed in a house of business, found that he had to learn to compose the most ordinary letter ; and though he had been through every rule in Walkinghame's Arithmetic, he had yet to penetrate the mysteries of practical book-keeping. Very few left school with any knowledge of decimals. But in no class of schools were young people taught to prepare for the public duties which all Englishmen have to perform. The lad grew into a man, and was put into office. He did exactly what others had done before him. The surveyorof the roads knew nothing of road-making, besides carting a load of stones to a rutty place, and leaving the rest to fate. The overseer, resolved that John Gubbins should marry Jane Humphreys, put up the banns. The churchwarden in- sisted that Farmer Williams should turn away his most trusty and honest ploughman, because he had only two children, and employ the laziest rascal in the parish, who was blessed, with four. And the squire, who ruled surveyor, overseer, and churchwarden, took to ordering parish pay at the rate of two shillings a head for every child, and doubling the allowance for bread in times of scarcity. It is marvellous that we ever got out of this Slough of De- spond ; for Ignorance put us there, and there Ignorance held us. crabbe's modern ANTIQUES. 417 Crabbe has well described the condition of his ' Borough,' as to one prevailing ignorance of rich and poor : — 1 Between the roadway and the walls, offence Invades all eyes, and strikes on every sense. There lie, obscene, at every open door, Heaps from the hearth and sweepings from the floor ; And, day by day, the mingled masses grow As sinks are disembogued and kennels flow.' Those matters, which we now call Nuisances, disturbed no complacency, and suggested no duty, thirty years ago. What an Auggean stable was my native town of Windsor ! In the playing-fields of the town, the Bachelors' Acre, was a vast open cesspool, fed with drains from every street, and constantly encroaching upon the cricket-ground. That WW a happy spot for healthful recreation ! On every road-side was what was familiarly termed 'the black ditch.' In every alley was a lesser black ditch. I could walk nowhere without encountering a black ditch. Yet the Court lived amongst this filthy reek — and no one heeded. Once or twice there was a talk that something must be done — and then, Authority was eloquent against innovation. A poor man dies of typhus : * Well, Dobson is dead, and the wife and six children must go to the house.' The rash apothe- cary ventures to say — ' There's a horrible ditch at the back of Garden Court — the common drain — poisonous enough to breed fever in every family.' Authority looks awful : ' Ditch, sir ! don't talk to me of ditch. W 7 e have always had ditches, sir. I never heard before that people died of ditches. Dobson's father lived there all his life. Cheaper to make sewers, is it ? Who's to pay for the sewers ? Everybody knows that Garden Court doesn't smell of roses ; but what of that ? The people don't mind,— and why should we ?' And then Authority chuckles, and whispers to brother Authority — ' Poor Dobson won't get his ten pounds at the next election ; look out for a tenant, or a vote will be lost.' We have done something, since those times, to raise the physical condition of the whole population ; and this exer- 2 E 418 ONCE UPON A TIME. tion, shortcoming as it may be, ought to produce a moral elevation. Are we morally improved ? That is a great and solemn question. I think we are. There are many . evils to be corrected — social and private evils. But the aggregate character of society is improved. Look at Hogarth's print of ' The Cockpit.' Hogarth truly painted a peer and a chimney-sweep, a doctor and a horse-jockey, all busily engaged in the same pursuit. If there be such brutalities now, they are private vices. There may be men whom society calls respectable, who have badger-baiting in their own gardens ; and entertain their friends with the old scenes of the Westminster pit, while liveried pages take away the dead rats, and hand about the champagne : but the exhibitions of such atrocities are at an end, or they are secret. Fifty years after Hogarth, Crabbe described a cock- fight :— ' Here his poor bird th' inhuman cocker brings, Arms his hard heel, and clips his golden wings ; With spicy food th' impatient spirit feeds, And shouts and curses as the battle bleeds. Struck through the brain, deprived of both his eyes, The vanquish'd bird must combat till he dies ; Must faintly peck at his victorious foe, And reel and stagger at each feeble blow : When fallen, the savage grasps his dabbled plumes, His blood-stain'd arms for other deaths assumes ; And damns the craven fowl, that lost his stake, And only bled and perish 'd for his sake.' Well ! The peasant cocker has followed the lordly cocker to oblivion. Even the colliers of Staffordshire, once the great seat of cocking, have forsaken the sport. I have blushed, as a youth, to hear the * Wednesbury Cock- ing ' — a famous slang song— encored by worshipful men at a public dinner ; the mildest of its brutalities being that * Billy, he whack'd his own feyther.' Police reports daily familiarise us with more hateful cruelties, such as our poet has described — ' the curse, the cries Of beaten wife, perverse in her replies.' But nobody makes a joke of such things. There are not crabbe's modern antiques. 419 more of such crimes now than formerly ; but they come into the broad daylight of publicity. Let us ask ourselves what would have been the amount of such evils of passion and intemperance, had the whole mass of the people remained uninstructed and neglected? The publicity that is in- evitable now has its useful though painful results, in telling us we must go on to destroy the evil at its root. Crabbe has described the newspapers of 1784, when there were only seventy -nine newspapers in Great Britain and Ireland, instead of the hundreds of this time ; and when the village reader would * Stay for tidings till they're three days old.' The poet had no love for newspapers : — ■ ' Here Scandal whets her quill, And Slander shoots unseen, whene'er she will : Here Fraud and Falsehood labour to deceive, And Folly aids them both, impatient to believe.' Seventy years ago, the newspaper-press had no high character to sustain ; and Crabbe was perhaps right. At this day there is nothing in the world comparable to the general honesty of the British newspapers. The paper that would build its sale on 'fraud and falsehood' — as a few obscure journals have attempted, till they were hooted out of existence — would not be prosecuted now ; it would be despised and die. Newspapers may offend in our days, but they rarely corrupt. They may be prejudiced in their own opinions ; but they give the opinions of others with perfect fairness. Public men speak to the public through the newspapers ; and thus the saying of Burke, that he who read one paper for a year would be of the opinion of the writer, has ceased to be a truth. It is remarkable how soon a demagogue — ' the obscene bird of night,' — ceases to fly in the sunlight of modem newspapers. Strong writers, as they used to be called, who united the ' venom of the shaft' to the ' vigour of the bow,' would now write in vain against the evidence of silent facts. Wilkes and Junius were for other times. 2e2 420 ONCE UPON A TIME. Crabbe has given me a text for a few concluding remarks upon popular literature. Let me endeavour to recollect something of my early experience of what was to me popular literature. From the circumstance of my position, I lived amongst books, ancient and modern. T had the unrestricted range of a large collection of old books. I could help myself to every novel, from ' The Grand Cyrus ' to the ' Mysteries of Udolpho.' I knew a few great books tolerably well — books which belong to all time. In my course of desultory read- ing I had sense enough to know that ' a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and trea- sured up on purpose to a life beyond life.'* But I wanted, as every young man wants, something especially suited to my own times. I wanted good elementary books, particu- larly of a scientific character. Where was I to find them ? I tried to set myself task-work with dry books of the day ; but, oh, how I wearied ! For the union then was. com- plete between the useful and the repulsive in knowledge. I had nothing to lead me by pleasant paths into the high- road of information. I had to scramble through bogs and thickets before I was in the right way. I had no * Penny Magazine,' no i Chambers' Journal,' no * Household Words !' If I wanted a laugh, I had no * Punch.' There was no Jerrold in those days to show how the comic could blend with the earnest. There was not a cheap weekly miscellany to be had that was not infamous. No wonder that I hun- gered for fiction. I devoured the old standard dishes again and again. Who could be satiated with ■ Robinson Crusoe,' and ■ Don Quixote,' and ' The Arabian Nights ?' I read * Gulliver's Travels,' without knowing how crushing and heartless that book was. I read ' Tom Jones ' and ' Roderick Random,' without shrinking from their indelicacy ; for, in truth, I heard coarse things enough spoken aloud in what was called decent society. But I wanted something of fiction that should come nearer the manners and thoughts of my own generation. Crabbe shall tell what I got— with * Milton : ■ Areopagitica.' crabbe's modern antiques. 421 a few exceptions, such as the novels of Godwin and Hol- croft — out of the circulating library : — • When all our childish books were set apart, The first I read was " Wanderings of the Heart ;" It was a story, where was done a deed So dreadful, that alone I fear'd to lead. The next was " The Confessions of a Nun," — 'Twas quite a shame such evil should be done ; Nun of — no matter for the creature's name, For there are girls no nunnery can tame : — Then was the story of the Haunted Hall, Where the huge picture nodded from the wall, When the old lord look'd up with trembling dread, And I grew pale, and shudder'd as I read : Then came the tales of Winters, Summers, Springs, At Bath and Brighton, — they were pretty things ! No ghosts or spectres there were heard or seen, But all was love and flight to Gretna-greeu.' The very titles of these staple productions of ' The Minerva Press' are quite sufficient to suggest a contrast with the fiction that is now popular. Some of the novelists that have written since those days have taken their place amongst the Classics of our language. We have had Edge- worth, and Austen, and Scott ; we have Bulwer, and Thack- eray, and Dickens. Are we improved, then, in our Popular Literature — the literature that will always be most popular — that of the story-teller ? We have done, I think, with the ghost school and the Gretna-green school. The Newgate school is gone out, too. We have done with that historical school, which was far more dull than any real history. We have done with the men-and-manners school, which painted such men as never lived, and such manners as never were shown in real life. We have done with the silver-fork school, which despised everything universal, and pretended to show how Lord Booby's house was furnished, and how Lady Grizzle talked in the Opera-box. All are gone. I doubt if we shall see any of them again. One word more of my early reading. 422 ONCE UPON A TIME. Of Poetry my new stores were not very alluring. I tried Hayley's ' Triumphs of Temper,' and I may truly say with Byron, ' they triumph'd over mine.' There were ' Scenes of Infancy,' and ' Scenes of Youth,' and ' Village Scenes,' but I could not live in those ' Scenes,' I read • The Farmer's Boy,' for I knew its truth. * The Minstrel ' was my school prize-book. But I could not stand Pratt, or Bishop, or Holloway, or Harrop. I suppose nobody now has ever heard of these popular authors ; and I trust they will never be embalmed in Johnsonian prefaces, as some earlier verse- makers, equally worthless, have been consigned to posterity. From such as these, I went back to my Shakspere and my Pope, my Burns and my Cowper. Rogers and Campbell, indeed, shone amidst the darkness, each ' a bright particular star.' ' The Lay of the Last Minstrel ' had scarcely then come hot-pressed into life ; Wordsworth had not entered into the popular mind ; Coleridge was mentioned, by the few who knew his name, as a sleepy mystic ; Southey was voted dangerous ; and Moore was hidden under the sofa- cushions. Byron had not arisen to make a poetical revolu- tion. Crabbe himself was scarcely resuscitated. Keats was exalted to the heavens by one set of critics, and con- signed to the Bathos by another ; and Shelley was feared and neglected. Tennyson and Browning were in the womb of time. My range of Poetry, in 1807, and for several years after, was narrower than yours, my young friend. In running over the names of the illustrious of modern Poetry, and modern Romance, it is of the first importance to recollect that we appreciate what we have gained dur- ing this half-century. We have got high poetry, and we know that we have got it. Wordsworth became popular when cheap knowledge was presented to the people. We have got Fiction that is the mirror of reality. Dickens spoke to the People when they were beginning to get cheap knowledge ; and how they welcomed him ! As the aggre- gate intelligence of a nation is raised, the dull and the mischievous amongst authors soon find their place. Patron- crabbe's modern antiques. 423 age and fashion can do nothing. The rapid communication, too, between one people and another people, alike tends to the universal, — upon which all enduring Literature must be built, whatever be its individual form. It is a fortunate circumstance that the most popular things in all literature must be essentially based upon the cultivation of the best parts of our intellectual nature — upon the power of render- ing sound knowledge attractive, or of stirring the imagina- tion by fictitious narrative or description that is pleasurable in proportion to its purity and truth. There is really no permanent power in literature but what is universal — and there is nothing universal that is tainted with the desire to gratify a morbid taste in any class of readers, be they high or low. I have attempted some delineations of past character. The equality of ranks, in the common pursuits of intellect, now gives a tone of uniformity to the aspects of ordinary life, which destroys some individual characteristics : — > ' Society is smoothed to that excess That manners hardly differ more than dress.'* But the great characteristics of Classes will always prevail. The callous Doctor, the sporting Parson, the litigious At- torney, the pompous Corporator, the bullying Justice, the flogging Schoolmaster — these who in their power of good or evil moulded, in a large degree, the temper of their times — these are Modern Antiques. Such varieties of the old anti- progressive species are gone. But other varieties will arise, and buzz through their little day. Out of the democratic element may perhaps come as great nuisances as the exclu- sive has bred amongst us. Knowledge has produced essential changes in one generation. It is ' a Fountain, such as it is not easy to discern where the issues and streams thereof will take and fall.'f But one thing is clear — Know- ledge can never produce half the amount of evil which Ignorance has produced ; and it may reasonably be doubted whether real Knowledge was ever productive of evil. The * Byron, f Bacon. 424 ONCE UPON A TIME. wise man, Lord Bacon, who termed Knowledge ' a Foun- tain,' calls upon us ■ to rule and guide the course of the waters, by setting down this position, namely, that all Knowledge is to be limited by Eeligion, and to be referred to use and action.' To limit Knowledge thus is not to narrow it ; for its boundaries are the extremest range of God's creation, to be reverently discovered, step by step, by man's reason. I have no fear of Knowledge. I consider it my especial happiness to have lived in a progressive condition of society — progressive as regards the outward prosperity of the country — progressive in respect of the intellectual advancement of the People. There have been, and there still are, many evils in the transition state through which we are passing. We may have lost some of the simplicity of ' the antique world.' There are strong contrasts of manners, as I have shown in some particulars, between the beginning and the middle of the half-century. There is more display — I fear there is more selfishness. * Plain living and high thinking ' have to be sought as a distinction amongst some of the more ambitious classes. But there never was a time when the great bulk of the community — in spite of many mistakes and omissions of duty — were more true to their inheritance of ' titles manifold ' amongst the nations : — • Sound healthy children of the God of Heaven.'* * Wordsworth. ( 4 23 THE LEADING PROFESSION". [The following paper was written before we had a Preventive Police ; before Prisons were regulated upon some system, however imperfect ; and when the terror of Capital Punishments — always threatened, but capriciously inflicted — was the sole principle upon which crime was sought to be repressed. We m in many respects wiser than we were thirty years ago ; but a considera- tion of what we have amended may lead us to meditate upon what we have still to amend.] Tin-: choice of a profession was at all times an affair of difficulty, and it has become peculiarly so at a period when the avenues to success, whether in the walks of theology, of law, or of -medicine, are blocked up by a crowd of eager competitors. Nor is the path to wealth, by the more beaten track of commercial pursuits, less impeded by the struggles of rivalry, the intrigues of connection, or the overwhelming preponderance of enormous capital. For adventurous young men, not cursed by nature with a modest or studious turn, and who are impatient to take the post of honour by a coup-de-main, a state of war offers an ample field for the profession of arms; but in a time of peace that field is narrowed to a very aristocratic circle, and the plebeian spirit learns to be tamed in the never-ending rebuffs of the Horse Guards and of the Admiralty. All things considered, and with a due regard to the necessary education, the certain rewards, and the few chances of failure, it appears to us that the profession which involves the least individual expense in its necessary studies, the aspirants being constantly trained at the public cost — which is supported by the greatest excitement of popular observation so as to satisfy the most insatiate appetite for fame — which presents 426 ONCE UPON A TIME. z the most open field for exertion, so as to leave the ad- venturer the largest choice of opportunities — and which is fenced round from the attacks of private envy or revenge s/ by the most powerful support of individual functionaries — that most cherished and honoured profession is that of a thief ! And, first, of the education of this profession. We will imagine a youth to whom the honours of his calling are not hereditary. He has been brought up, as other youths are, either in absolute ignorance of the world which has preceded him, and the world which is before him ; or with such an acquaintance with the tendencies of mankind as they are learned in the book of history, or the safer volumes of experience, as will satisfy him that the least successful of the sons of men are the most conscien- tious. If he be utterly uninstructed in book-learning, and yet have a tolerable acquaintance with the things around him, he will see (if he open his eyes) that the one thing needful is money ; — that cunning has a much surer grasp of that summum bonum than wisdom ; — and that the contempt of society is only reserved for the poor. Hence poverty, as Talleyrand said of the execution of the Due d'Enghien, is worse than a crime — it is a blunder. If he derive his knowledge from the half-truths, half-fables of his species, he will discover that fraud and violence have always secured to themselves a much larger portion of what are called the blessings of life — competency, luxury, high station, influence, command — than sincerity and modera- tion. If he live in the country, he has constantly presented to his eyes the condition of a vast many miserable people, who are reduced to the utmost extremity of perpetual suffering — their honest pride trampled upon, their affections outraged, their commonest wants unsupplied, — and for no personal demerit that he can perceive, but because they are laborious, patient, inoffensive, easily satisfied, content to do their duty in the station to which they are born. If he abide in a city, he discovers that most direct modes of obtaining a living are ill paid — that squalid filth follows THE LEADING PROFESSION. 427 the scanty earnings of the mechanic — that the tradesman who vends an honest commodity cannot compete with the quack and the puffer — that insolent vice always thrusts modest virtue into the kennel. In either case he perceives that mankind, directly or indirectly, spend their lives in endeavours to abstract more than they have a right to abstract from the property of their neighbours. He com- mences, by dint of hard reasoning, a professional career of resolving to practise that philosophy which teaches him that the institutions of society are chains only for the weak. If he be a peasant, he tries his hand at poaching ; if a London blackguard, at picking pockets. In either case the law soon takes charge of his further education ; and he is duly sent to that most instructive Alma Mater, — a prison. The care which is now bestowed upon the nurture of his infant hopes is prodigious. He has abundant leisure for the cultivation of his faculties ; he has no anxiety about the events of the passing day ; he is introduced to the full enjoyment of the society of the most careless, enthusiastic, and undaunted men in existence, as well as to the ablest instructors in his peculiar art. All knowledge, but that which is to lead him to excel- lence in the profession which he now must choose, is despised ; — all views of the social state, but those which regard man as a predatory animal, are held to be low and unattractive ; — all employments of the talents of the human race, but those which present themselves to the lion heart in the shape of burglary, and to the cautious understand- ing in the not less attractive forms of coining and shop- lifting, are pronounced to be mean and ungratifying. The facility with which the profession of a thief is acquired is a wonderful recommendation of its excellent and manifold advantages. In this college, the honours are bestowed after an examination for which the previous study is very inconsiderable — the ' wooden spoon ' feels that his rank is by no means settled in the estimation of his examiners, but that a successful adventure may place him 428 ONCE UPON A TIME. in the first degree of the beloved of Bow-street ; — and even he that is ' plucked ' for wanting in the reckless qualities by which excellence is attained, may hope to prepare him- self next session (the 'term' of our houses of felonious maintenance) for the most distinguished companionship of that fraternity, which, above all others, generously delights in imparting its blessings to novices by the most unremitting system of proselytism.. Xor is it any derogation from the agreeable nature of this education (when compared to education in general) to say, that the student often receives bodily chastisement in the progress of his willing labours. The laws have no punishments which touch his mind. If he be remanded to his prison, he is only condemned to a further acquaintance with the agreeable society to which he was introduced when he first entered its walls. He has formed friendships which will last for life ; he is secure of patronage when he comes out again upon the stirring world ; he will, in future, have no lack of counsellors and abettors. Admit that he is sentenced to be privately whipped ; in this he does not differ an ounce from the highest of the land. The boys of the middle classes have been gradually becoming more exempt from the terrors of indecent bodily chastisement ; but inflictions upon the person are still the peculiar privi- lege of the noble students of Westminster and Eton, and the not less ambitious denizens of Newgate and Brixton. Long may they each enjoy these ancient and politic rights, which have such a decided influence upon the destinies both of the statesman and of the felon ! From the moment that our aspirant leaves his first prison, he becomes a public man. His preparation for the duties of life is complete. He rushes at once into hig stimulating career,— -and he reaps a full harvest of profit and of fame. Less fortunate candidates for distinction may waste an existence in obtaining a single puff of the newspapers. Thousands of authors die for lack of criticism ; painters go off by scores, because no obscure scribbler ever echoes their names : the finest of women have been THE LEADING PROFESSION. 429 figurantes at the opera for twenty seasons, without having attained to the recorded dignity of a pas seul at the Surrej'- ; and ostentatious citizens have given dozens of dinners, to which some gentlemen of the press were duly invited, and yet never once saw their magnificence, under the head of ' Court and Fashion,' in the * Morning Post.' But the very first adventure of a thief is fame. Is a watch snatched out of a window in the Strand? ten daily papers, and two hundred and fifty weekly, immediately describe the astonishing incident in the most glowing colours ; — is a -pocket picked in the pit entrance of Drury-lane? the embryo hero of the evening sees his fame duly chronicled in the morning journals ; and, lastly, if by some error in judgment he appear before Sir Richard Birnie, he excites ihe sympathy of all mankind, being • a remarkably good-looking and interesting young man, attired* (yes, attired is the phrase) ' in the highest style of fashion, and his hair elegantly arranged.' Who can resist such flatteries as these? After such encouragements, what candidate for the final honours of the New Drop would abandon his stimulating career, and retire (if he could) to the prose of common life, ' Content to dwell in decencies for ever?' The legislative care which is bestowed upon the common- wealth of thieves must be abundantly gratifying to every member of the profession. Their calling never cankers by neglect ; they must have a perpetual vigilance as to what laws are enacted and what are repealed ; what is grand larceny to-day, and petty larceny to-morrow. The statistics of their realm, too, are known and registered with the greatest accuracy. The condition of their palaces forms the constant object of magisterial and parliamentary solicitude ; and societies are specially constituted in aid of all this official vigilance, to see that their apartments are airy, and their provisions wholesome. The most affec- tionate care of their health is duly taken ; and if, at any period of their lives, foreign travel is recommended, a 430 ONCE UPON A TIME. country, which is admitted on all hands to be the finest in the world, is specially appropriated for their enjoyment. All this is highly stimulating. But the great encouragement to the adoption of this branch of the profession of the Bar consists in the rich endowments which society has provided for its cultivation. All the property, and with it all the gratifications, of this earth, are the patrimony of the judicious thief. For him the covetous man gathers his pelf, and the ostentatious man his plate and jewels. In his case there is no tedious waiting for employment; no sighing for years for" a ' maiden brief,' as in the law — no starving for life upon a Welsh curacy, as in the Church — no wearing away the best years of life in the sickness of ' hope deferred,' as with a subaltern or a midshipman — no walking the world for a day's work, as with the starving Irish labourer. In this privileged profession, the supply always keeps pace with the demand. The active world is a community of bees, but the thief gets the honey. His business is 'to rove abroad, centum puer artium, to taste of every dish, and sip of every cup.' He has no care for the morrow, because he knows that for him the heads and hands of innumerable servants are doing his bidding. He has only to walk forth and choose. He lives in a perpetual belief that the world was made for him, — and he is as right as Alexander was. The times are past when thieves were persecuted. This may appear a paradox to those who look only upon the surface, — who hear of a score of unfortunates perishing annually at the Old Bailey, or behold the Eecorder of London pouring into the ear of sovereignty the tale of their sorrow and their crimes. To believe that the admini- strators of the laws are in earnest in their endeavour to repress the honest labours of the commonwealth of plun- derers is a mere delusion — a mental hallucination — a prejudice which is cultivated with infinite care, for the sole object of rendering the legal possessors of property easy in their minds. It is a pleasing and satisfying belief — • amabilis insania, et mentis gratissimus error. 1 The thieves and THE LEADING PROFESSION. 431 the police magistrates know better. The profession is most diligently patronised by the administrators of the laws ; not to speak it profanely, there are regular articles of coparceny between the thief and those who are falsely imagined to be his pursuers. ' Latro is arraigned and fur sits on the bench.' Those who affect to be hunting out the criminal are the dignitaries of the commonwealth of crime. The mistaken people who, in general, are hanged, or transported, or immured in solitary cells, or whipped, are not registered in the University of Larceny. They are fools who attempt to do business in a small way, without regard to the corporate rights of Bow-street and Union Hall. They have not graduated, and they must pay the penalty. But a prudent adventurer never enters the higher walks of the profession without protection. He incurs no risks ; he surrenders a handsome portion of his profits to enjoy the remainder in peace ' under his own fig- tree.' To such, the police is not an affair of discovery or of prevention, but of regulation. There is no affectation of a want of union in the several callings of the thief and the officer. They have grown together in happy relationship since the days of Jonathan Wild. A poet of the last century says, • My evenings all I would with sharpers spend, And make the thief -catcher my bosom friend.' And indeed they are very pretty companions together over their claret. The dignitary sits with his feet under the same mahogany with the returned convict; or he is Vice to the Eothschild of the flash-house, who at that moment is negotiating with the partners of the Bristol Bank, touching the return of twenty thousand pounds' worth of abstracted bills, for the honourable consideration of fifty per cent, and no prosecution. Civilisation was very little advanced when the common- wealth of thieves was really persecuted. The present administration of the laws against felony is the keystone that binds the arch of depredation. Without magistrates 432 ONCE UPON A TIME. and officers, who do not prevent crime, but nurse it, men individually would peril their lives against those who invade their property. But all this possible bloodshed is now saved. A well-ordered police, the stipendiaries at once of the public and those who ease the public of their superfluous possessions, accommodates all difficulties; and, gradually, the rights of thieves are as effectually recognised as the rights of any other painstaking class of the com- munity. Look at this 'arrangement, and see, not only how much it has contributed to the respectability of the pro- fession of larceny, but what an insurance of their lives it gives to society, by rendering robbery a quiet gentle- manly art, in which violence is only the argument of bunglers, and which is carried to the highest point of perfection by that division of labour, upon which all excellence, whether mental or mechanical, must be built. It occasionally happens that the most brilliant example of professional success is apprehended, convicted, and hanged. This is part of the contract by which the common- wealth of thieves has purchased its charter. The compact is — for the police, a share of profits, and no trouble ; — for the sons of Mercury, protection in general, and a very sparing selection of needful victims. When the time arrives that the career of individual happiness and friend- ship is to close, there is no shrinking. The ripened felon is a soldier, under the orders of a commander whom he honours ; and it is to him a gratification to look back upon the years of comfort he has secured by this compromise with power, instead of being perpetually hunted into some pitiful occupation, which the world calls honest, by a vigilance which should never sleep. At last he dies. Well ! in the latest moment he is a privileged being. Fame hovers around him, from the bar to the gallows. He exhibits great composure on his trial ; leaves his defence, with a dignified satisfaction, to his counsel ; bows to the judge, when he pronounces sentence ; and * is fashionably dressed in a complete suit of black/ Then come the con- solations of spiritual friends. In the interval between the THE LEADING PROFESSION. 433 condemnation and the Kecorder's report, he becomes perfectly satisfied that he is purified from every stain ; — after the fatal mandate arrives, he declares that his only anxiety is to die, lest he should fall into his former errors ; and he leaves the world with such exultations of pious people attending him, as martyrs were wont to monopolize, — bowing to the admiring crowd, and ' sucking an orange till the drop falls !' 2f 434 ONCE UPOX A TIME. DEAK AND CHEAP. On the 2nd November, 1667, the pleasure-hunting Samuel Pepys, Esq., goes to the King's Playhouse, where he saw * Henry the Fourth ;' — and there he saw something which he deems as worthy of record as Cartwright's acting : ' The house full of Parliament-men, it being holiday with them ; and it was observable how a gentleman of good habit, sitting just before us, eating of some fruit in the midst of the play, did drop down as dead, being choked ; but with much ado Orange Mall did thrust her finger down his throat, and brought him to life again.' Orange Mall was a person of energy and discretion ; and as she sold her oranges to Parlia- ment-men in the boxes of the King's Playhouse, which they sucked without a compromise of their gentility, she im- parted many a piece of scandal, and joined in many an aristocratic laugh which was louder than the voices of the players. In another entry of his * Diary,' Pepys says, ' Sir W. Pen and I had a great deal of discourse with Mall, who tells us that Nell is already left by my Lord Buckhurst.' Some sixty years after, Hogarth painted the Orange Malls of his time, in ■ The Laughing Audience.' One of these ladies in the boxes is presenting her fruit to an admiring beau in a bag-wig ; whilst another, reach- ing up from the pit, is touching DEAR AND CHEAP. 435 his ample sleeve, to call attention to her basket. Those were the days of dear oranges; when the fruit was an exclusive luxury for the rich. They had been cried in the streets in the days of Ben Jonson ;* and in the time of Orange Mall, London heard the cry of ' Fair lemons and oranges — oranges and citrons.' It did not follow that they were cheap. Hogarth's orange-women carry very small baskets. At the end of the last century the orange-seller of the streets was a barrow-woman, described by Porson in his song of ' Pizarro :' — * As I vvalk'd through the Strand so cheerful and gay, I met a young girl a-wheeling a barrow ; " Fine fruit, sir," says she, " and a bill of the play." ' The orange-woman of the streets has passed away. The fruit is now so universal that its shops and stalls are to be found in every quarter. It is the fruit of London — the cheap luxury that rapid communica- tion has placed within the reach of all ranks. Its pro- gress from the Antilles to the markets of England is a sug- gestive fact. The January sun rises brightly over the North Atlantic. It will be a busy day in Terceira and Fayal, and Saint Michael. The" orange-trees are bending under their golden produce. The ships are waiting for their lading. The gatherers have been busy in the orange-gar- dens, and there are piles of the half-ripe fruit heaped up in readiness for the packers. Laughing groups of children and men, merry as haymakers in June, are seated amidst Oranges.— 1841. * See * Trivia,' p. 316. 2 F 2 436 ONCE UPON A TIME. these fragrant heaps, surrounded by large chests, and by stacks of the dry sheaths of Indian corn. A boy sits amongst the calyx -leaves, and, snatching one with a quickness that nothing but habit can give, passes it on to another child, who hands it to a man who sits by the oranges. In a second the sheath is wrapped round a single orange, and handed on to another man, who sits with a chest between his legs, in which he places the protected fruit. The chest is filled with inconceivable rapidity — moved away — covered over with thin boards — tied with a willow-band, and carried to the store by a patient ass, who is burthened with many a hundredweight before his day's work is done. It is a bitterly cold morning in London at the beginning of March. The north-east wind whistles through the narrow streets, or drives along a cloud of blinding dust through the more open spaces. The sun vainly struggles to pene- trate the fog. It is twelve o'clock. A flock of boys tumble over each other as they rush out of the ragged school of Lamb and Flag Alley. One urchin, more heedful than the rest, sees a horseman looking for a house. The bridle is committed to his care for a few minutes — a penny is his reward. The treasure is safely clutched in his hand, for his pockets are treacherous. How is it to be spent ? He has tempting recollections of slices of pudding in the window of a little shop — and much does he need some sub- stantial food. But at the corner of the next street appears a Jew boy. He has a basket of oranges — irresistible, at three a penny. Some of these were in that garden of Saint Michael, suddenly ripening under the January sun. They are damaged; and are separated from their companion oranges, who are dignified as ' choice fruit ' in Covent- garden. The bargain is ratified. The ragged-school boy, like too many of us, has preferred a luxury to a necessity. But he is not wholly selfish. He recollects his home. In a damp and close room a sick woman is slowly recover- ing from a low fever. Her eyes are dim, her lips parched. The boy thinks his remaining orange would do her good. She shakos her head; but looks, and looks again, at the DEAR AND CHEAP. 437 treat of happier days. The good son peels it. The fra- grance is decisive. Her thin hand lifts the orange to her mouth. She is refreshed ; she is better. A child's tender- ness is perhaps as reviving as the fruit of the fertile Azores. It is midnight of the same bleak day in March. Carriages are rolling about the realms of fashion ; lights glance from many a window. Music floats from one of those temples of gaiety. Out of the crowded ball-room a youth conducts his heated partner to the calmer regions of wines and ices. But there, too, are the oranges of Saint Michael, looking as brilliant in porcelain baskets, under the glare of wax-lights, as when they peeped forth out of their own green and glossy leaves to hail their native January sun. They are as welcome to the daughter of a ducal house as to the ragged-school boy and his sick mother. Our annual importations of oranges exceed four hundred thousand chests, which contain three hundred millions of the fruit — a wondrous example of the benefits that are daily developing in the unrestricted interchange of the products of the world. Communication, freed from prohibitory and restrictive laws, necessarily becomes rapid communication. Steam has made the orange as completely our own as are the apples of Herefordshire, or the cherries of Kent. My school- boy recollection of the orange was that of a pale and sour fruit — a sickly-looking thing that was dangerous to eat and not very agreeable. The oranges of those days were packed green, and gradually acquired some degree of ripeness, or rottenness, during a tedious voyage from Portugal. Steam now brings the orange to our doors fresh and ripe as the strawberries of Twickenham. What certainty and rapidity of communication have done for the commerce of oranges, and all other perishable com- modities, it has also done for tea. Commerce has had to struggle against oppressive duties ; but Commerce held her own, when she freed herself from monopoly. Taxation has worked hard for two centuries to make tea dear : but Com- 438 ONCE UPON A TIME. merce worked for cheapness in spite of Taxation; — and Taxa- tion has at last fonnd ont that it would be wiser to make a partnership with Commerce, than continue to carry on an unequal fight. About ten years after we have any distinct record of the public or private use of tea in England — that is, in 1670 — a tax was imposed upon liquid tea, of eighteen-pence per gallon. In 1660 our invaluable friend Pepys writes, 'I did send for a cup of tea (a China drink) of which I never had drank before.' In 1667 the herb had found its way into his own house : * Home, and there find my wife making of tea ; a drink which Mr. Pelling, the Potticary, tells her is good for her cold and defluxions.'" Mrs. Pepys making her first cup of tea is a subject to be painted. How carefully she metes out the grains of the precious drug, which Mr. Pelling, the Potticary, has sold her at a most enormous price — a crown an ounce at the very least. She has tasted the liquor once before ; but then there was sugar in the infusion — a beverage only for the highest. If tea should become fashionable, it will cost in housekeeping as much as their claret. However, Pepys says, the price is coming down ; and he produces the hand- bill of Thomas Garway, in Exchange Alley, which the lady peruses with great satisfaction ; for the worthy merchant says, that, although * tea in England hath been sold in the leaf for six pounds, and sometimes for ten pounds, the pound weight,' he 'by continued care and industry in obtaining the best tea,' now ' sells tea for 165. to 50s. a pound.' Garway not only sells tea in the leaf, but ' many noblemen, physicians, merchants, &c, daily resort to his house to drink the drink thereof.' The coffee-houses soon ran away with the tea-merchant's liquid customers. They sprang up all over London ; they became a fashion at the Universities. Coffee and tea came into England as twin brothers. Like many other foreigners, they received a full share of abuse and persecution from the people and the state. Coffee was denounced as ■ hell broth,' and tea as 1 poison.' But the coffee-houses became fashionable at DEAR AND CHEAP. 439 once ; and for a century were the exclusive resorts of wits and politicians. ' Here,' says a pamphleteer of 1673, • haberdashers of political small wares meet, and mutually abuse each other and the public with bottomless stories and headless notions.' Clarendon, in 1666, proposed either to suppress them, or to employ spies to note down the conver- sation. In 1670 the liquids sold at the coffee-houses were to be taxed. We can scarcely imagine a state of society in which the excise officer was superintending the preparation of a gallon of tea, and charging his eighteen-pence. The exciseman and the spy were probably united in the same person. During this period we may be quite certain that tea was unknown, as a general article of diet, in the private houses even of the wealthiest. But it was not taxation which then kept it out of use. The drinkers of tea were ridiculed by the wits, and frightened by the physicians. More than all, a new habit had to be acquired. The praise of Boyle was nothing against the ancient influences of ale and claret. It was then a help to excess instead of a pre- ventive. A writer in 1682, says : — ' I know some that celebrate good Thee for preventing drunkenness, taking it before they go to the tavern, and use it very much also after a debauch.' One of the first attractions of ■ the cup which cheers but not inebriates ' was as a minister of evil. The tax upon liquid tea would not work ; and then came heavy customs duties on dry tea. For more than half a century, in which fiscal folly and prohibition were almost convertible terms, tea gradually forced its way into domes- tic use. In a 'Tatler' of 1710 we read, *I am credibly informed, by an antiquary who has searched the registers in which the bills of fare of the court are recorded, that, instead of tea and bread and butter, which have prevailed of late years, the maids of honour in Queen Elizabeth's time were allowed three rumps of beef for their breakfast.' Tea for breakfast must have been expensive in 1710. In the original edition of the ' Tatler ' we have many advertise- ments about tea, one of which we copy : — 440 ONCE UPON A TIME. From the ■ Tatler' of October 10, 1710. 'Mr. Fary's 16s. Bohee Tea, not much inferior in goodness to the best Foreign Bohee Tea, is sold by himself only at the Bell in Gracechurch Street. Note, — the best Foreign Bohee is worth 30s. a pound ; so that what is sold at 20s. or 21s. must either be faulty Tea, or mixed with a proportionate quantity of damaged Green or Bohee, the worst of which will remain black after infusion.' ' Mr. Fary's 16s. Bohee Tea, not much inferior in good- ness to the best Foreign Bohee Tea ' was, upon the face of it, an indigenous manufacture. ' The best Foreign Bohee is worth 30s. a pound/ With such Queen Anne refreshed herself at Hampton Court : — ' Here thou, great Anna, whom three realms obey, Dost sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea/ When the best tea was at 30s. a pound, the home con- sumption of tea was about a hundred and forty thousand pounds per annum. A quarter of a century later, in the early tea-drinking days of Dr. Johnson, the consumption had quadrupled. And yet tea was then so dear, that Gar- rick was cross even with his favourite actress for using it too freely. * I remember,' says Johnson, ' drinking tea with him long ago, when Peg Woffington made it, and he grumbled at her for making it too strong. He had then be- gun to feel money in his purse, and did not know when he should have enough of it.' In 1745 the consumption was only seven hundred and thirty thousand pounds per annum. Yet even at this period tea was forcing itself into common use. Duncan Forbes, in his Correspondence, which ranges from 1715 to 1748, is bitter against * the excessive use of tea ; which is now become so common that the meanest'families, even of labouring people, particularly in boroughs, make their morning's meal of it, and thereby wholly disuse the ale which heretofore was their accustomed drink ; and the same drug supplies all the labouring women with their afternoons entertainments, to the exclusion of the twopenny.' The ex- cellent President of the Court of Session had his prejudices ; and he was frightened at the notion that tea was driving out beer ; and thus, diminishing the use of malt, was to be the DEAR AND CHEAP. 441 ruin of agriculture. Some one gave the Government of the day wiser counsel than that of prohibitory duties, which he desired. In 1 746 the consumption of tea was trebled. The duty had been reduced, in 1745, from 4s. per lb. to Is. per lb., and 25 per cent, on the gross price. For forty years after- wards the Legislature contrived to keep the consumption pretty equal with the increase of the population, putting on a little more duty when the demand seemed a little in- creasing. These were the palmy days of Dr. Johnson's tea triumphs — the days in which he describes himself as ' a hardened and shameless tea-drinker, who has for many years diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fas- cinating plant ; whose kettle has scarcely time to cool ; who with tea amuses the evenings ; with tea solaces the midnights ; and with tea welcomes the morning.' In 1785 the Government boldly repealed the excise duty ; and im- posed only a customs' duty of 1 2 \ per cent. The consump- tion of tea was doubled in the first year after the change, and quadrupled in the third. The system was too good to last. The concession of three years in which the public might freely use an article of comfort was quite enough for official liberality and wisdom. New duties were imposed in 1787 ; the consumption was again driven back, and, by additional duty upon duty, was kept far behind the increase of the population. Yet the habit of tea-drinking had be- come so rooted in the people, that no efforts of the Govern- ment could destroy it. The washerwoman looked to her afternoon ' dish of tea,' as something that might make her comfortable after her twelve hours' labour ; and balancing her saucer on a tripod of three fingers, breathed a joy be- yond utterance as she cooled the draught. The factory workman then looked forward to the singing of the kettle, as some compensation for the din of the spindle. Tea had found its way even to the hearth of the agricultural labourer. He ' had lost his rye teeth ' — to use his own expression for his preference of wheaten bread — and he would have his ounce of tea as well as the best of his neighbours. Sad 442 ONCE UPON A TIME. stuff the chandler's shop furnished him : no commodity brought hundreds of miles from the interior of China, chiefly by human labour ; shipped according to the most expensive arrangements ; sold under a limited competition at the dearest rate ; and taxed as highly as its wholesale cost. The small tea-dealers had their manufactured tea. But they had also their smuggled tea. The pound of tea which sold for eight shillings in England, was selling at Hamburg for fourteen pence. It was hard indeed if the artisan did not occasionally obtain a cup of good tea at a somewhat lower price than the King and John Company had willed. No dealer could send out six pounds of tea without a permit. Excisemen were issuing permits and examining permits all over the kingdom. But six hundred per cent, profit was too much for the weakness of human nature and the power of the exciseman. Under our recent system of taxation our consumption of tea was enormous, although the duty, upon an average, was half of the retail price. With a tax of 2s. 2 \d. a pound, it is clear that, if sound commercial principles, improved navigation, wholesale competition, and moderate retail profits, had not found their way into the tea-trade, since the abolition of the East India Company's monopoly in 1833, the revenue upon tea would have been stationary, instead of having increased a million and a half sterling. All the manifold causes that produce commercial cheapness in general — science, careful employment of capital in profitable exchange, certainty and rapidity of communication, exten- sion of the market — have been especially working to make tea cheap. Tea is more and more becoming a necessary of life to all classes. Tea was denounced first as a poison, and then as an extravagance. Cobbett was furious against it. An Edinburgh Keviewer of 1823 keeps no terms with its use by the poor : * We venture to assert, that when a labourer fancies himself refreshed with a mess of this rtffff, sweetened by the coarsest black sugar, and with azure-blue milk, it is only the warmth of the water that soothes him for the moment; unless, perhaps, the sweetness may be DEAR AXD CHEAP. 443 palatable also.' It is dangerous even for great reviewers to ' venture to assert.' In a few years after conies Liebig, with his chemical discoveries ; and demonstrates that coffee and tea have become necessaries of life to whole nations, by the presence of one and the same substance in both vegetables, which has a peculiar effect upon the animal system ; that they were both originally met with amongst nations whose diet is chiefly vegetable; and, by contri- buting to the formation of bile, their peculiar function, have become a substitute for animal food to a large class of the population whose consumption of meat is very limited, and to another large class who are unable to take regular exercise. Tea and coffee, then, are more especially essential to the poor. They supply a void which the pinched labourer cannot so readily fill up with weak and sour ale ; they are substitutes for the country walk to the factory girl, or the seamstress in a garret. They are ministers to temperance ; they are home comforts. Mrs. Piozzi making tea for Dr. Johnson till four o'clock in the morning, and listening contentedly to his wondrous talk, is a pleasant anecdote of the first century of tea ; the artisan's wife, lingering over the last evening cup, while her husband reads his news- paper or his book, is something higher, which belongs to our own times. There is a contrast as striking between the coffee-houses to which Clarendon sent his spies and those of our own day, as between Mrs. Pepys making tea, and Mrs. Gamp preparing the same refection for her interesting friend of the sick room. Aubrey tells us of Sir Henry Blount, * When coffee first came in he was a great upholder of it, and hath ever since been a constant frequenter of coffee- houses, especially Mr. Farres', at the Eainbow, by Inner Temple-gate.' Does the spirit of Mr. Farres linger about the Kainbow, as Goldsmith's Dame Quickly lingered about the Boar's Head? At the Eainbow, where there is still abundant company, and merry converse, Barclay's stout has driven out tea and coffee. Old Sir Henry Blount told 444 ONCE UPON A TIME. his stories, and played his hoaxes, at the Rainbow till he was eighty years of age, denouncing strong drinks, and eulogising the ' executions at Tyburn, which work more upon the people than all the oratory in the sermons.' But if his spirit be permitted to wander, he would find in London that coffee-houses have been exalted and the gallows laid low. He was a bold cavalier ; ' a shammer,' as Aubrey calls him, by which he means ■ one who tells falsities, not to do anybody an injury, but to impose upon their understanding.' Would he rejoice that there are now some two thousand coffee-houses in London, where the artisan, who has seldom any disposition to be * a shammer,' may have his cup of tea or coffee for three-halfpence or twopence, and read the newspapers and the best periodical works? This is, perhaps, something better for human happiness than the old palmy days of Tom's and Will's, — of White's and the Grecian. In the days of Edward II., the villagers who dwelt within a few miles of London daily surrounded its walls with their poultry and eggs. The poulterers were forbidden to become their factors ; but unquestionably it was for the interest of both parties that some one should stand between the producer and the consumer. Without this, there would have been no regular production. Perhaps the production was very irregular, the price very fluctuating, the dearth often intolerable. This huckstering had to go on for centuries before it became commerce. It would have been difficult, even fifty years ago, to imagine that eggs, a frail commodity, and quickly perishable, should become a great article of import. Extravagant would have been the assertion that a kingdom should be supplied with sea-borne eggs, with as much speed, with more regularity, and at a more equalised price, than a country market town of the days of George HI. It has been stated that, before the Peace of 1815, Berwick-upon-Tweed shipped annually as many eggs to London as were valued at £30,000. Before DEAR AND CHEAP. 445 the Peace, there were no steam-vessels ; and it is difficult to conceive how the cargoes from Berwick, with a passage that often lasted a month, conld find their way to the London consumer in marketable condition. Perhaps the eaters of those eggs, collected in the Border districts, were not so fastidious in their tastes as those who now despise a French egg which has been a week travelling from the Pas de Calais. But the Berwick eggs were, at any rate, the commencement of a real commerce in eggs. In 1820, five years after the Peace, thirty-one millions of foreign eggs found their way into England. They princi- pally came from France, from that coast which had a ready communication with Kent and Sussex, and with the Thames. These eggs, liable as they were to a duty, came to the consumer so much cheaper than the Berwick eggs, or the Welsh eggs, or the eggs even that were produced in Middlesex or Surrey, that the trade in eggs was slowly but surely revolutionised. Large heaps of eggs made their appearance in the London markets, or stood in great boxes at the door of the butterman, with tempting labels of * 24 a shilling,' or * 20 a shilling.' They were approached with great suspicion, and not unjustly so ; for the triumphs of steam were yet far from complete. But it was discovered that there was an egg-producing country in close proximity to London, in which the production of eggs for the metropolitan market might be stimulated by systematic intercourse, and become a mutual advantage to a population of two millions, closely packed in forty square miles of street, and a population of six hundred thousand, spread over two thousand five hundred square miles of arable, meadow, and forest land, with six or eight large towns. This population of the Pas de Calais is chiefly composed of small proprietors. Though the farms are larger there than in some other parts of France, some of the peculiarities of what is called the small cuKure are there observable. Poultry, especially, is most abundant. Every large and every small farm-house has its troops of fowls and turkeys. The pullets are carefully fed and housed; the eggs are 446 ONCE UPON A TIME. duly collected ; the good wife carries them to the markets of Arras, or Bethune, or St. Omer, or Aire, or Boulogne, or Calais : perhaps the egg-collector traverses the district with his cart and his runners. The egg-trade with England gradually went on increasing. The import of foreign eggs amounted, in 1852, to one hundred and eight millions. In 1825, the commercial intercourse between Great Britain and Ireland was put upon the same footing as the coasting trade of the ports of England. Steam navigation between the two islands also had received an enormous impulse. The small farmers and cottiers of Ireland were poultry-keepers. Too often the poor oppressed tenants were wont to think — ' The hen lays eggs, they go into the lord's frying-pan.' Steam navigation gave a new impulse to Irish industry. Before steam-vessels entered the Cove of Cork, an egg, at certain seasons, could scarcely be found in the market of that city. England wanted eggs ; steam- boats would convey them rapidly to Bristol; the small farmers applied themselves to the production of eggs ; Cork itself then obtained a constant and cheap supply. The Irish exports of eggs to England have become a great article of commerce. And yet, what a trifling matter an egg appears when we talk of large culture and extensive commerce. Out of such trifles communities have grown into industrious and frugal habits and consequent prospe- rity. There was a time when the English farmer's wife would keep her household out of the profits of her butter, her poultry, and her eggs; when she duly rose at five o'clock on the market-day morning, rode with her wares some seven miles in a jolting cart, and stood for six hours at a stall till she had turned all her commodity into the ready penny. The old thrift and the old simplicity laid the foundations of scientific production. Making a reasonable estimate of the number of foreign eggs, and of Irish and Scotch eggs, that come into the port of London — and putting them together at a hundred and fifty millions, every individual of the London population DEAR AND CHEAP. 447 consumes sixty eggs, brought to his own door from sources of supply which did not exist thirty years ago. Nor will such a number appear extravagant when we consider how accurately the egg consumption is regulated by the means and the wants of this great community. Eapid as the tran- sit of these eggs has become, there are necessarily various stages of freshness in which they reach the London market. The retail dealer purchases accordingly of the egg mer- chant ; and has a commodity for sale adapted to the pecu- liar classes of his customers. The dairyman or poulterer in the fashionable districts permits, or affects to permit, no cheap sea-borne eggs to come upon his premises. He has his eggs of a snowy whiteness, at four or six a shilling, 4 warranted new-laid ;' and his eggs from Devonshire, cheap at eight a shilling, for all purposes of polite cookery. In Whitechapel, or Tottenham Court-road, the bacon-seller 1 warrants ' even his twenty-four a shilling. Tn truth, the cheapest eggs from France and Ireland are as good, if not better, than the eggs which were brought to London in the days of bad roads and slow conveyance — the days of road- waggons and pack-horses. And a great benefit it is, and a real boast of that civilisation which is a consequence of free and rapid commercial intercourse. The cheapness of eggs through the imported supply has raised up a new class of egg consumers. Eggs are no longer a luxury which the working man of London cannot reach. It is not only in disturbing the old relations between ' cheap ' and ' dear,' that commerce exhibits its wondrous effects, but in the manner in which it gives an extension to the comforts of a nation, and raises up new branches of industry of which the existence could never be contem- plated. The applications of gutta percha and of caout- chouc belong to our own day. And yet how soon they created new wants by new supplies — at first expensive supplies, and then, when an entire population joined in a demand, supplies in which the principle of absolute cheap- 448 ONCE UPON A TIME. ness was one of the most remarkable elements. Take the example of caoutchouc. About a hundred and twenty years ago the artists of Europe received a valuable contribution — a vegetable pro- duct of South America and India — which would remove pencil-marks with neatness and expedition. A few bottles of a substance something like leather, — black, polished, marked with lines which seemed indented,— constituted this new importation of a useful curiosity. Its first use determined its name, India-rw&for. In the year 1735, some scientific Frenchmen, travelling in South America, ascertained what this substance was, and sent an account of its production to the French Academy of Sciences. It was a substance possessing very peculiar properties, — elastic, and insoluble in water. The natives of South America made waterproof boots of it, and rendered cloth impervious to moisture by applying the gum in its liquid state. Could European science do nothing with it but rub out pencil marks ? For about a century, nothing else was done — nothing but rubbing ; — and then a sudden start was made, and India-rubber, or more properly Caout- chouc, became a great material of manufacture. We now defy the rain with an India-rubber over- cloak ; we keep our feet dry with India-rubber over-shoes ; we obtain an easy seat with an India-rubber air-cushion ; we lie upon an India-rubber water-bed more softly than upon down, and without a particle of external moisture ; our gloves cling round our wrists with an India-rubber band ; we move freely with India-rubber braces and straps, that hold our clothes tightly about us, and yet yield to every muscular exertion ; we have not shod ' a troop of horse with felt,' but stables and courtyards are paved with India-rubber, and carriage-wheels made noiseless by it ; we stop our bottles with India-rubber, to render them air-tight; we hold our papers in order with little stretching bands, so that official men, as we may hope, will cease to be called red-tapists, and under wholesome public opinion will be at once as firm and as elastic as their India-rubber rings ; wo DEAR AND CHEAP. 449 bind the broken limb with India-rubber ligatures ; we give safety to the voyager by India-rubber life-preservers ; the soldier's tent is rendered dry as a pent-house by India-rub- ber ; we build boats of India-rubber ; we make hammock- nettings of India-rubber ; the buffers of railway-carriages are India-rubber. What, in fact, are the limits to the application of India-rubber? We import annually from 600,000 to 700,000 lbs. of India-rubber,— a small quantity in the gross, but very large when we consider how readily it enters into combination with other materials, and imparts to them its own peculiar character of elasticity and imper- viousness to moisture. It seems, indeed, as if it were all- penetrating. Upon the sheet of paper on which we are writing, there are a few of the minutest black spots, and so there will be, we fear, on the sheet printed with these words. They are India-rubber spots. The substance gets into the rags of which paper is made — the dirty coarse rags which modern chemistry bleaches into purity. No care can wholly remove it. The smallest bit of braid will be pounded to atoms in the paper-mill, but the atoms are in- destructible, for they are incapable of solution. I remember (early remembrances are more durable than recent) an epithet employed by Mary Wollstonecraft, which then seemed as happy as it was original : — ■ The iron pen of Time.' Had the vindicatress of the ' Eights of Women ' lived in these days (fifty years later), when the iron pen is the almost universal instrument of writing, she would have bestowed upon Time a less common material for recording his doings. , Whilst I am remembering, let me look back for a moment upon my earliest school-days — the days of large text and round hand. Twenty urchins sit at a long desk, each in- tent upon making his copy. A nicely-mended pen has been given to each. My own labour goes on successfully, till, in school-boy phrase, the pen begins to splutter. A bold effort must be made. I leave the form, and timidly address 2 G 450 ONCE UPON A TIME. the writing-master with 'Please, sir, mend my pen.' A slight frown subsides as he sees that the quill is very bad — too soft or too hard — used to the stump. He dashes it away, and snatching a feather from a bundle— a poor thin feather, such as green geese drop on a common — shapes it into a pen. This mending and making process occupies all his leisure — occupies, indeed, many of the minutes that ought to be devoted to instruction. He has a perpetual battle to wage with his bad quills. They are the meanest produce of the plucked goose. And is this process still going on in the many thousand schools of our land, where, with all drawbacks of imperfect education, both as to numbers educated and gifts imparted, there are about two millions and a half of children under daily instruction ? In remote rural districts, probably ; in the towns, certainly not. The steam-engine is now the pen- maker. Hecatombs of geese are consumed at Michaelmas and Christmas ; but not all the geese in the world would meet the demand of England for pens. The supply of pates defoie gras will be kept up — that of quills, whether known as primes, seconds, or pinions, must be wholly inadequate to the wants of a writing people. The ancient reign of the quill-pen was first seriously disturbed about thirty years ago. An abortive imitation of the form of a pen was produced before that time ; a clumsy, inelastic, metal tube fastened in a bone or ivory handle, and sold for half-a-crown. A man might make his mark with one — but as to writing, it was a mere delusion. In due course came more carefully-finished inventions for the luxurious, under the tempting names of ruby pen, or dia* mond pen — with the plain gold pen, and the rhodium pen, for those who were sceptical as to the jewellery of the ink- stand. The economical use of the quill received also the attention of science. A machine was invented to divide the barrel lengthwise into two halves; and, by the same mechanical means, these halves were subdivided into small pieces, cut pen-shape, slit, and nibbed. But the pressure upon the quill supply grew more and more intense. A DEAR AND CHEAP. 451 new power had risen up in our world — a new seed sown — the source of all good, or the dragon's teeth of Cadmus. In 1818 there were only one hundred and sixty-five thou- sand scholars in the monitorial schools — the new schools, which were being established under the auspices of the National Society, and the British and Foreign School Society. Fifteen years afterwards, in 1833, there were three hundred and ninety thousand. Ten years later, the numbers exceeded a million. Even a quarter of a century ago two-thirds of the male population of England, and one- half of the female, were learning to write ; for in the Keport of the Registrar-General, for 1846, we find this passage: — • Persons when they are married are required to sign the marriage-register ; if they cannot write their names, they sign with a mark : the result has hitherto been, that nearly one man in three, and one woman in two, married, sign with marks/ This remark applies to the period between 1839 and 1845. Taking the average age of men at marriage as twenty-seven years, and the average age of boys during their education as ten years, the marriage-register is an educational test of male instruction for the years 1824 — 28. But, during the last fourteen years, the natural desire to learn to write, of that part of the youthful population which education can reach, has received a great moral impulse by a wondrous development of the most useful and pleasurable exercise of that power. The uniform penny postage has been established. In the year 1838, the whole number of letters delivered in the United Kingdom was seventy- six millions; in 1852 that annual delivery had reached the prodigious number of three hundred and eighty millions. In 1838 a Committee of the House of Commons thus denounced, amongst the great commercial evils of the high rates of postage, their injurious effects upon the great bulk of the people : — ' They either act as a grievous tax on the poor, causing them to sacrifice their little earnings to the pleasure and advantage of corresponding with their distant friends, or compel them to forego such intercourse altogether ; thus subtracting from the small amount of their 2 g 2 452 ONCE UPON A TIME. enjoyments, and obstructing the growth and maintenance of their best affections/ Honoured be the man who broke down these barriers ! Praised be the Government that, for once, stepping out of its fiscal tram-way, dared boldly to legislate for the domestic happiness, the educational pro- gress, and the moral elevation of the masses ! The steel pen, sold at the rate of a penny a dozen, is the creation, in a considerable degree, of the Penny Postage stamp ; as the Penny Postage stamp was a representative, if not a creation, of the new educational power. Without the steel pen, it may reasonably be doubted whether there were mechanical means within the reach of the great bulk of the population for writing the three hundred and eighty millions of letters that now annually pass through the Post Office. Let me add, that I saw the wondrous human machine of the General Post Office on an evening of November, 1853 ; and that the Inspector told me that the labour of sorting the letters was now comparatively small, from the improvement in the writing of the whole community. Othello's sword had ' the ice-brook's temper ;' but not all the real or imaginary virtues of the stream that gave its value to the true Spanish blade could create the elasticity of a steel pen. Flexible, indeed, is the Toledo. If thrust against a wall, it will bend into an arc that describes three- fourths of a circle. The problem to be solved in the steel pen, is to convert the iron of Dannemora into a substance as thin as the quill of a dove's pinion, but as strong as the proudest feather of an eagle's wing. The furnaces and hammers of the old armourers, could never have solved this problem. The steel pen belongs to our age of mighty machinery. It could not have existed in any other age. The demand for the instrument, and the means of supplying it, came together. The commercial importance of the . steel pen was first manifested to my senses a few years ago at Sheffield. I had witnessed all the curious processes of converting iron into steel, by saturating it with carbon in the converting furnace ; — of tilting the bars so converted into a harder sub- DEAR AND CHEAP. 453 stance, under the thousand hammers that shake the waters of the Sheaf and the Don ; of casting the steel thus converted and tilted into ingots of higher purity ; and, finally, of milling, by which the most perfect development of the mateiial is acquired under enormous rollers. About two miles from the metropolis of steel, over whose head hangs a canopy of smoke through which the broad moors of the distance sometimes reveal themselves, there is a solitary mill where the tilting and rolling processes are carried to great perfection. The din of the large tilts is heard half a mile off. Our ears tingle, our legs tremble, when we stand close to their operation of beating bars of steel into the greatest possible density; for the whole building vibrates as the workmen swing before the tilts in suspended baskets, and shift the bar at every movement of these hammers of the Titans. We pass onward to the more quiet rolling department. The bar that has been tilted into the most perfect compactness has now to acquire the utmost possible tenuity. A large area is occupied by furnaces and rollers. The bar of steel is dragged out of the furnace at almost a white heat. There are two men at each roller. It is passed through the first pair, and its squareness is instantly elongated and widened into flatness; — rapidly through a second pair, — and a third, — and a fourth, — and a fifth. — The bar is becoming a sheet of steel. Thinner and thinner it becomes, until it would seem that the work- men can scarcely manage the slight substance. It has spread out, like a morsel of gold under the beater's hammer, into an enormous leaf. The least attenuated sheet is only the hundredth part of an inch in thickness ; some sheets are made as thin as the two-hundredth part of an inch. And for what purpose is this result of the labours of so many workmen, of such vast and complicated machinery, destined ? — what the final application of a material employ- ing so much capital in every step, from the Swedish mine to its transport by railroad to some other seat of British industry ? The whole is prepared for one Steel-pen Manufactory at Birmingham. 456 ONCE UPON A TIME. ' certain that he had himself heard a mandrake shriek when he pulled it up — (on purpose to hear it) : and he was quite sure that there were only three Queen Anne's farthings coined, and that he had got one of them. As the old alchy- mists obtained some knowledge of chemistry in their search after gold, so our schoolmaster obtained a smattering of history and philosophy in his search after those crotchety points of learning which history and philosophy have deter- mined to throw overboard ; and thus, upon the whole, he managed to pass with the world as a very wise man, and his school nourished. There were some matters, however, with all his learning, which puzzled Jedediah Jones exceedingly. One of these dark and important questions was a source of perpetual irritation to him. He took long walks on half-holidays, and generally his face, on these occasions, turned towards London ; for he had a secret conviction that his ultimate vocation was to be in that mighty metropolis, and that he should be summoned thither by a special degree of the Royal Society, or the Society of Antiquaries, and be humbly requested to solve some great enigma, of which all mankind, except himself, had missed the solution. In these long walks he was constantly reminded by the milestones that there was one point of learning as to which he still remained in absolute ignorance. This was grievous. These mile- stones had proclaimed to him, from the days of his earliest recollections, that it was seven miles, or six miles, or five miles, or four miles, or three miles and a half, 'from the spot where Hicks's Hall formerly stood.' Now> in all his books he could find not an iota about Hicks, or Hicks's Hall. For ten tedious years had he been labouring at this riddle of Hicks's Hall. It was his thought by day, and his dream by night. Who was Hicks ? How did Hicks obtain such a fame that even the milestones were inscribed to his memory ? What was his Christian name ? Was he General Hicks, or Admiral Hicks, or Bishop Hicks, or Chief-Justice Hicks ? Or was he plain Mr. Hicks ? and if so, was he M.P., or F.R.S., or F.A.S., or M.R.I.A. ? Why did Hicks SUBURBAN MILESTONES. 457 build a hall ? Was it a hall like ' the colleges and halls ' of Oxford and Cambridge, or like the Guildhall in King- street, Cheapside ? Perhaps it was a hall for public enter- tainments; — perhaps Hicks was a member of one of the City companies, and built a hall which the company in gratitude called after his name. How long ago was Hicks's Hall built? Was it in the Gothic or the Roman style of architecture ? Was it of biick or stone ? Had it a carved roof? When did Hicks's Hall cease to exist? Was it burnt down ? Was it pulled down by the mob ? Was it taken down to widen the street ? Was it suffered to go to decay and fall down? Was anybody killed when it fell down? Are the ruins still to be seen? Has anybody written the History of Hicks's Hall ? Has anybody written the Life of Hicks? Shall I, Jedediah Jones, write this work which the world must be so anxiously looking for ? Such were a few of the perplexing and yet inspiriting thoughts which had for years passed through Jones's mind, as he walked from Barnet, Highgate-ward. His difficulties at last became insupportable. He took up his resolution, and he was comforted. A week still remained of the Christmas holidays. He would set out for London, and not see his house again till he had penetrated the mystery of Hicks's Hall. W T ith his trusty staff in his right hand, and a small bundle containing his wardrobe in a pocket-handkerchief under his left arm, Mr. Jones sallied forth from Barnet, under the auspices of the New Weather Almanac, on a morning which promised to be ' fair and frosty,' in January, 1838. The morning was misty, with rain, which occa- sionally became sleet, driving in his face. He courageously marched on through Whetstone, and crossed the dreary regions of Finchley Common, — without meeting a highway- man, — which was a disappointment, as he had an implicit belief in the continued existence of those obsolete contri- butors to the public amusement. He at length reached the northern ascent of Highgate Hill, and his spirits, which were somewhat flagging, received a new impulse. The 458 ONCE UPON A TIME. milestone proclaimed that he was only five miles ' from the spot where Hicks's Hall formerly stood.' Onward he went, over Highgate Hill, till he arrived at the stone which told him that he was only ' four miles ' from the shrine to which his pilgrimage was dedicated. But here was a new attraction — an episode in his journey of discovery. He had reached Whittington's Stone, — and there he read that this redoubted thrice Lord Mayor of London had passed through these repetitions of glory in the years of our Lord 1397, and 1406, and 1419. Here then Whittington had sat — here he had heard Bow Bells — here he had thought of his faithful cat — here he had returned to cherish his cat once more, and to win all the riches of which his cat was the original purveyor. But then a thought came across him as to which was the greater man, Whittington or Hicks ? If Whittington had one stone raised to his memory, Hicks had twenty; Hicks, therefore, must be the greater man. Who was Hicks ? Where was Hicks's Hall ? He was only four miles ' from the spot where Hicks's Hall formerly stood ;' the problem would be soon solved. He at length reached Islington Green, stopping not to gaze upon the suburban gentility of Holloway, nor going out of his way to admire the architectural grandeur of Highbury. He was now only 'one mile from the spot where Hicks's Hall formerly stood.' The stone which pro- claimed this great truth reared its proud head, unencum- bered by houses, at a distinguished distance from the foot- pavement and the high road. It seemed, as he approached the scene of Hicks's glories, that there was an evident dis- position to call attention to the name of the immortal man, whoever he might have been. He was persuaded that he should now learn all about Hicks ; — the passers-by must be full of Hicks ; — the dwellers must reverence Hicks. He went into a pastrycook's shop opposite the triumphal stone. He bought a penny bun, and he thus addressed the maiden at the counter : — ' Young woman, you have the happiness of living near the spot where Hicks's Hall formerly stood. I have walked ten miles to see that place. Which is the SUBURBAN MILESTONES. 459 road?' The young woman replied, 'Hicks, the green- grocer, lives over the way ; there is no other Hicks about here.' This was satisfactory. Hicks, the greengrocer, must be a descendant of the great Hicks ; so he sought Hicks, the greengrocer, and, bowing profoundly, he asked if he could tell him the way to the spot where Hicks's Hall formerly stood ? Now Hicks, the greengrocer, was a wag, and his waggery was increased by living in the keen atmosphere of the ■ Angel ' at Islington, and by picking up something of the wit that is conveyed from the West to the East, and from the East to the West, by the omnibuses that arrive every three minutes from the Exchange at one end, and from Paddington at the other. To Jones, therefore, Hicks answered by another question, ■ Does your mother know you are out ?' * This was a difficult question for Jedediah to answer. He had not communicated to his mother — good old lady — the object of his journey; she might have disapproved of that object. How could Mr. Hicks know he had a mother ? How could he know that he had not told his mother all his anxieties about Hicks's Hall ? He was unable to give a reply to Hicks, the green- grocer; so Hicks, the greengrocer, recommended him to get into an omnibus which was standing opposite the door. Into the omnibus Jedediah Jones accordingly went, and he desired the gentleman called a conductor, to put him down at the spot where Hicks's Hall formerly stood. The gentleman grinned ; and something passed between him and another gentleman, called a cad, which had better be trusted to the immortality of their unwritten language than be here inscribed. On went the omnibus, and after a tedious hour Jedediah Jones found the carriage deserted, and the conductor bawled out ' Elephant and Castle, Sir.' During his progress our worthy schoolmaster had put sundry questions to his fellow-passengers touching Hicks's Hall, but he found them of an ignorant and perverse generation; they knew nothing of Hicks — nothing of * The favourite mode of salutation in the streets in the year 1837. 460 ONCE UPON A TIME. Hicks's Hall — nothing of the spot where Hicks's Hall formerly stood. The ignorance of the people, he thought, was beyond all calculation ; and he determined that not a boy of Bamet should not, henceforward, be thoroughly informed of matters upon which mankind were called upon, by the very milestones, to be all-knowing. At the Elephant and Castle our traveller had lost all traces of Hicks's Hall. The milestones had forgotten Hicks and his hall. They were full of another glory — ' the Standard in Cornhill. 9 What was the Standard in Cornhill ? Was it the Eoyal Standard, or was it the Union Jack? Perhaps it might be the new standard of weights and measures. He was clearly out of the region of Hicks, so he would make his way to the Standard in Cornhill. Who could tell but he might there find the standard of the English language, which he had long been searching for? At any rate they would there tell him of the place where Hicks's Hall formerly stood. By the aid of another omnibus our painstaking Jedediah was placed in the busiest throng of the London hive. He was in Cornhill. Jones was somewhat shy, according to the custom of learned men, — and he, therefore, knew not how to address any particular individual of the busy passengers, to inquire about the Standard at Cornhill. He did, however, at last venture upon a very amiable and gentlemanly-looking man, — who politely offered to snow him the desired spot. The" promise was not realised; in a moment his friend slipped from his side, — and Jedediah found that his purse, containing two pounds seven shillings and sixpence, had vanished from his pocket. He forgot the Standard in Cornhill; and in despair he threw himself into a Hampstead stage, resolved not to give up his search after Hicks's Hall although he had only a few shillings in his waistcoat pocket. In a melancholy reverie Jedediah arrived in the Hampstead stage at Camden Town. He knew that he ought not to go further, unless he was quite prepared to abandon the original object of his inquiry. It was SUBURBAN MILESTONES. 461 a bitter afternoon. The rain fell in torrents. He had a furious appetite,— he had lost his purse, — yet still he would not sleep till he had found the spot where Hicks's Hall formerly stood. He left the Ham pstead stage, and there was light enough for him to ascertain whether the milestones were t still faithful to Hicks. A new difficulty presented itself. The milestone in Camden Town informed him that he was two miles from St. Giles's Pound. What was St. Giles's Pound ? Why did a saint require a pound ? If it was a pound sterling, was there not a slight anachronism between the name of the current coin and the era of the saint ? If it were a pound for cattle, was it not a very unsaintly office for the saint to preside over the matter of strayed heifers? He was puzzled; — so he got into a cab, being disgusted with the ignorance of the people in omnibuses, for the opportunity of a quiet colloquy with the intelligent-looking driver.* ' My worthy friend,' said Jones, ' we are only two miles from St. Giles's Pound— what sort of a pound is St. Giles's Pound ?' ' For the matter of that,' said the cab-driver, ' I have driv here these ten years, and I never yet seed St. Giles's Pound, nor Holborn Bars, — no, never, — though ve always reckons by them.' ■ Wonderful !' replied Mr. Jones, — ' then please to drive me to the Standard in Cornhill.' ' The Standard in Cornhill, — that's a good one ! — I should like to know who ever seed the Standard in Cornhill. Ve knows the Swan with Two Necks in Lad Lane, and the Golden Cross, and the Vite Horse Cellar in Piccadilly, but I never heard of anybody that ever seed the Standard in Cornhill.' * Then, Sir,' said Jones, breath- lessly, ' perhaps you don't know the place where Hicks's Hall formerly stood?' 'As for Hicks's Hall,' said the cabman, ' it's hall ahum. There's no such place, — no more than the Standard in Cornhill, nor Holborn Bars, nor St. Giles's Pound, — and my oppinnun is, there never wor such places, and that they keep their names on the mile- stones to bilk the poor cabs out of their back carriage.' * In 1837 the cab-driver and his fare rode lovingly together side by side. 462 ONCE UPON A TIME. Jedediah Jones was discomfited. He did not quite understand the cabman's solution; and he had a vagne notion that, if the milestones were placed with reference to the Post Office, or St. Paul's, or some place which did exist, the hack carriage and other carriage of cabmen and hackney-coachmen would be better regulated. He, how- ever, made the best of his position. He spent one of his remaining shillings upon a very frugal dinner; and, wending his way back to Islington, he bestowed the other upon the coachman of a Holyhead mail to convey him to Barnet without further loss of time or property. ( 463 ) AN EPISODE OF VATHEK. [In the year 1822, the world went mad about Fonthill. Salisbury Plain became populous, with May Fair and Cheapside travelling to see Mr. Beckford's wonders. No profane eyes had ever looked upon his towers and pinnacles — his domes and galleries. There was mystery, then, to combine with what was really worth seeing at Fonthill. Its exhibition and its auction produced as much excitement as a Crystal Palace upon a small scale. The towers of Fonthill are in the dust, with its magnificent builder. They might have fallen, without a revival of my old recollections, had I not con- sidered that the public curiosity to see their works of art was an anticipation of the feeling of a better period. The people saw nothing of Art in those days, but the dingy Angerstein Gallery in Pall Mall ; and the state-rooms of Hampton Court and Windsor, at a shilling a head for the showman. The nobility kept their pictures locked up ; and Poets' Corner was inaccessible except to sixpences. Other days have come. Fonthill belongs to the Past.] The taste for tower-building, and for other architectural absurdities, of which Vathek had set the example, became infectious in the country about Samarah. This monarch was at first indignant that his subjects should presume to copy his extravagances ; but his vanity was stronger than his pride, and he left them in the quiet possession of their follies. His most ambitious rival was the merchant Bekfudi. The riches of this superb person were enormous. His caravans every year brought him silks and jewels that would have rivalled a princess's dowry, and the slaves that cultivated his groves of cinnamon might have formed the rear-guard of a sultan's army. He became dizzy with his wealth, and fancied that he was descended from the Assyrian kings ; — though his grandfather had carried a basket in the streets of Bagdad. Bekfudi had a handsome palace and extensive grounds ; the hills and the valleys of a little province were his ; a 464 ONCE UPON A TIME. broad lake lingered in his groves of citrons and palms ; and the apricots of his garden almost rivalled those which Vathek so prized from the isle of Kirmith. The ladie$ of his seraglio were as numerous and as beautiful as the harem of the grand vizier, and the other furniture of his palace was equally rare and costly. But Bekfudi began to be satiated with the pleasures and the magnificence of ordinary- mortals : in an evil hour he pulled down his palace and sold his women. He built an impenetrable wall round his extensive gardens, and vowed to raise, upon the highest hill which this barrier enclosed, a palace upon a new fashion. Bekfudi had no violent reverence for the religion of his country ; and he therefore considered it a sinless profanation to make his dwelling-place like a mosque, and his tower resembling a minaret, though he modestly proposed it to be only ten times higher than the minarets of Bagdad. It was the extravagance of his ambition which prompted him to shut out all the world till he should have finished his mosque ; and when his tower rose above the highest pines of the neighbouring hills, he solaced himself with the hope that the peasants who gazed at an awful distance would believe that within its walls dwelt one of the sons of men, as powerful as the Genii, and as mysterious as the Dives. Bekfudi possessed abundance of taste. His command of wealth enabled him to engross the rare productions of art which were sometimes too costly even for emirs to acquire ; and he lavished his gold upon those who could best apply their talents to the excitement of his self-admiration. All the ornaments of his palace had reference to his ancestors ; but though the artists, who recorded in fit emblems the mighty deeds of his progenitors, had an especial regard to truth, they sedulously avoided all allusion to 'the basket- bearer. In a word, the mosque was a very magnificent place. It was the handsomest monument that taste ever reared to pride ; and though Bekfudi in his arrogance had tried to make his tower* rival the dome of the great mosque at Damascus, and had only been stopped in his pre- AN EPISODE OF VATHEK. 465 sumptuous aspirings by the equally insolent hurricane, which twice blew it down, — and though in his profaneness he had built his dormitories like the cells of the most pious santons, and had constructed studies and refectories after the models of sanctuaries and shrines, — still the palace was gorgeous and elegant, and such as no subject ever before raised in the dominions of the Commander of the Faithful. Bekfudi went on for many moons building and embel- lishing his mosque, — heaping stones upon his tower till the uncivil blasts gave him hints where to stop, and hanging up new draperies of Persian silks till the limited art of the dyer forbade any further change. The superb merchant lived away in a round of selfish enjoyment ; his slaves racked their inventions to prepare him viands of the most costly materials ; and as his health would not allow him always to drink the red wine of Shiraz, he took care, under the fatal necessity of resorting to so common a beverage as water, to render it palatable by sending caravans and escorts to bring it from a fountain at a hundred leagues' distance. The great Mahomet, who had commissioned the Genii to mature and then pull down the presumptuous darings of the caliph Vathek, also resolved to crush the ambition of the merchant Bekfudi. But as the pride and power of the mosque-builder were bounded by natural limits, it was unnecessary to work any miracles for his instruction. He lived on in his round of luxuries ; and as his caravans came duly over the desert, and his ships were seldom lost upon the sea, he thought that the spices and the fruits of his fertile isles would last for ever. But there was a sudden change in the fashions of Samarah. The cooks began to make their comfits without cinnamon, and the green dates of their native plains came into request, to the exclusion of the dried fruits of our wealthy merchant. His spices and his figs lay rotting in his warehouses, and, for the first time in his life, he began to think that his mine of wealth was not inexhaustible. 2 H 466 ONCE UPON A TIME. Thirty moons had passed before Bekfudi ceased to pull down and build up the apartments of his mosque, or to send a hundred leagues for his water. The pastry-cooks were inexorable, and his own household even could not endure the flavour of cinnamon. He at length discharged his masons and his carpenters, and, as a great effort of eco- nomy, abridged his table of one of the fifty-two dishes with which it was daily covered. But all these privations were unavailing ; Bekfudi was in debt, and his creditors would not wait for a change in the taste for spices. He resolved to invite all Samarah to see his mosque, and to purchase his curiosities. For three moons all Samarah went mad. Away ran the idle and the busy, to scramble up Bekfudi's tower, — to wander about his long galleries upon carpets from Cairo, — to touch his gold censers, or to pore upon his curious pictures. As to his books, Bekfudi carefully locked them up. He was a great commentator, and his relish for theological speculations led him to fear that his performances might introduce him to too close an ac- quaintance with the mufti and the cadi. Amongst the mob who had been to see Bekfudi's tower, was a clever little Persian Jew, who had the reputation of being one of the most discreet dealers in Samarah. Did a courtier require a thousand piastres to bribe a judge, our little Jew would raise the sum in a moment, upon the pledge of the courtier's carbuncle ; or did a lady of the seraglio desire a pound of gold dust to fee an eunuch, our little Jew would furnish it upon the most moderate interest. His warehouses were full of the moveable treasures of all the great men of the palace, from the grand vizier to the principal mute ; and everybody vowed that he was the honestest Jew in the world, and it was a great pity so useful and so clever a trader should be a dog of an infidel. Bekfudi had a hatred of all Jews ; but, nevertheless, our little factor contrived to approach him. ' He had come to proffer his services to the great merchant; he humbly proposed to purchase his matchless curiosities, and his AN EPISODE OF VATHEK. 467 magnificent furniture.' * What ! he, the giaour from Persia? he presume to offer a price for rarities that monarchs might covet ?' ' Yes : and moreover, he would purchase his books and his paintings, his vessels of gold and of silver, his wine, his .' The merchant was in a rage, and drove the Jew from his presence ; but he quickly recalled him. ' Slave/ cried Bekfudi, * I will hold a moment's parley with thee. How much wilt thou give for my topaz cup, and my goblet set with emeralds ?' * I will not purchase these alone,' said the Jew, ■ but I will purchase thy lands, and thy mosque, and thy silken dra- peries, and thy woven carpets, and thy golden vessels, and thy jewels, and thy books, and thy pictures, and all that thy palace contains ; and here, without, I have twenty dromedaries laden with four hundred thousand sequins, which shall be thine.' Bekfudi was in a rage, but the eloquence of the dromedaries prevailed ; and that night the little Jew locked up the mosque with the airs of a master. The mob from Samarah was soon dispersed; and Bekfudi prepared with many a sigh to leave a palace of which he had so long been the uncontrolled lord. The little Jew haunted him from gallery to gallery, and from the gloom of the sanctuary to the sunlight of the "great lantern. With the most provoking malice he dwelt upon the beautiful proportions of this pavilion, and the mag- nificent furniture of that saloon ; and swore that none of the monarchs of the world could rival the great merchant in taste and splendour. ' And what will you do with this unequalled palace ?' said Bekfudi. ' I have bought it for a dealer in sulphur,' replied the Jew. The pride of Bekfudi was ground into the dust ; but he was curious to see the rival of his wealth and the inheritor of his possessions. It was agreed that they should meet at dinner. The hour came, and Bekfudi appeared in the grand saloon, attired in a splendid vest; — the aigrette of his turban was composed of the largest diamonds, and the. plume that it bore was from the wing of a bird of paradise* 2h2 • 468 ONCE UPON A TIME. His delicate hands were washed with the choicest essences, and the perfumes of his garments plunged the senses into a languor which nothing but the excitements of the most exquisite viands could dissipate. He expected to have met, in the dealer in sulphur, a personage vhose riches would have procured for him some of the refinements which belonged to the dealer in spices; — but how was he humiliated when a miserable old man presented himself, as ugly as a faquir that had been doing penance for fifty 3 T ears, wrapped round with a wretched robe of dirty cotton, and his head surmounted with a beastly turban, that all the waters of Rocnabad could never purify ! The forehead of this captivating personage was covered with knots and wrinkles, his blear eyes twinkled in their little pursed-up sockets, his enormous mouth exhibited three teeth of the most delicious blackness, and his rheum was freely bestowed upon those whom the flavour of his breath did not keep at a respectful distance. Bekfudi shrieked and shouted for his dwarf; but the obsequious Jew called in a loud voice for dinner, and the unhappy merchant was con- strained by his politeness to take his seat at the board. The new possessor of the mosque was equally attractive in his diet; a ragout of garlic was served up for his especial pleasure ; and as he dipped his grimy hands into the golden dish, Bekfudi would have fainted at the odour of the savoury steams, had not his faithful dwarf thrown the reviving attar over his forehead, and forced a cup of sherbet down his throat. The mouth of the dealer in sulphur distended into an audible grin, and he pledged the dainty merchant in execrable brandy. Their conversation at length became interesting. The man of sulphur had a most agreeable collection of oaths ; and as he swore by Solomon and Eblis, by the sacred camel and the dog of the seven sleepers, the man of spice perceived that he had a high reverence for the mysteries of theology ; — and a wonderful sympathy in this particular grew up between them. They embraced and parted ; but Bekfudi never forgot the garlic. AN EPISODE OF VATHEK. 469 The little Jew soon applied his master's purchase to good account. Within a week the superb merchant began to indulge a wish for the possession of some of his former most splendid baubles; he bethought him that his free habit of expressing his thoughts in the broad margins of his beautiful manuscripts might one day cause some awkward inquiries ; and he was desirous of securing some pictures, of which he thought none but himself knew the peculiar value. He of the dirty hands was as ready to comply with these reasonable wishes, and Bekfudi began to think that his turban and his garlic might in time be endurable. The articles were selected, but the little Jew had yet to name the price. Bekfudi raved and tore his hair when a fourth of his four hundred thousand sequins were demanded for what had cost even him not a tenth of the sum. He raved and tore his hair ; but the Jew and the sulphur-merchant were calm. Bekfudi had not yet learned to subject his desires to his circumstances; and two dromedaries marched off with their costly, load. The Jew and his merchant passed the winter very industriously. From his warehouses in Samarah, this active dealer brought all the glittering pledges which the misfortunes of his clients had left unredeemed; and he decorated the mosque, like a grand bazaar, with a great many new curiosities, and a great many rare commodities with fine names from the east and the west, which the artists of Samarah could manufacture as well as those of Persia or China. The little Jew knew where to find expert limners, who could imitate the paintings even of the celebrated Mani, so as to deceive the most critical eyes ; clever copy- ists, that would transcribe the tales and poems of Arabia with a correctness that would enchant the most exquisite connoisseurs ; and acute chemists, that would give to the se- cretly pressed grape-juice of the gardens of Bekfudi himself, the inimitable flavour of the wines of Shiraz or Kismische. The little Jew had, however, not quite so complete a judg- ment as the builder of the mosque, and he therefore com- mitted a few mistakes with a very enterprising spirit. 470 ONCE UPON A TIME. Amidst the solemn and subdued splendour of the sanctuary, upon which Bekfudi most prided himself, he hung up an enormous mirror which brought all the varied colours of the neighbouring galleries, and all the garishness of day, into the heart of its former deep and impressive gloom ; and in the hall which the spice-merchant had dedicated to the worthies of his country, he stuck up the statue of one of the rebellious princes who had presumed to contend against the justice of the great Haroun al Easchid. But the little Jew was yet a most deserving factor. All Samarah again flocked to the mosque with the great minaret ; and all Samarah came this time with money in their vests, to purchase some relic of the magnificent Bekfudi. Every one was pleased, except the unhappy builder of the palace, for every one was agreeably relieved of his sequins at his own free-will. He alone writhed under the mortifications of his pride, and the outrages upon his taste. He stalked one day into the palace of his splendour, now metamorphosed into one large bazaar, and with a yell of fury he overthrew the statue of the foe of the caliph, and shivered into a thousand pieces the mirror which deformed the sanctuary. He then coolly paid the price which the Jew demanded, and retired to a humble dwelling without a minaret, purposing to pass the remainder of his days in composing treatises on temperance and humility — but ending in building another tower. ( 471 ) THE ETON MONTEM. Amongst the ' Memorable Things Lost ' is the Eton Montem. Kailroads destroyed it : for they made it vulgar. White- chapel turned out for the last Montem, as it turns out for the Lord Mayor's show — and the aristocratic school would no longer indulge the mob with a cheap holiday. Let me remember Montem, as I last saw it in 1820. London gave up its Poet of Mayor's Day a century ago. Eton retained its Montem Poet till he went the way of other immortals. The Poet was a more prominent person- age in the ceremony of Montem than the Head-master of the college. But the reader must permit me to throw my remembrances into a dialogue between three or four friends, who came to look at the triennial show, — to laugh at it, or to defend it : — * Who is that buffoon that travesties the travesty ?' in- quired Frazer. * Who is that old cripple alighted from his donkey-cart, who dispenses doggrel and grimaces in all the glory of plush and printed calico ?' * That, my most noble cynic,' said Gerard, ' is a prodigious personage. Shall birthdays and coronations be recorded in immortal odes, and Montem not have its minstrel ? He, sir, is Herbertus Stockhore ; who first called upon his muse in the good old days of Paul Whitehead, — run a race with Pye through all the sublimities of lyres and fires, — and is now hobbling to his grave, after having sung fourteen Montems, the only existing example of a legitimate laureate. Ask Paterson about him ; — he is writing a quarto on his life and genius.' * He ascended his heaven of invention,' said Paterson, ' before the vulgar arts of reading and writing, which are banishing all poetry from the world, could clip his wings. 472 ONCE UPON A TIME. He was an adventurous soldier in his boyhood ; but, having addicted himself to matrimony and the muses, settled as a bricklayer's labourer at Windsor. His meditations on the house-tops soon grew into form and substance ; and, about the year 1780, he aspired, with all the impudence of Shad- well, and a little of the pride of Petrarch, to the laurel- crown of Eton. From that day he has worn his honours on his " Cibberian forehead " without a rival.' * And what is his style of composition ?' said Frazer. ' Vastly naive and original ; — though the character of the age is sometimes impressed upon his productions. For the first three odes, ere the school of Pope was extinct, he was a compiler of regular couplets, such as — " Ye dames of honour and lords of high renown, Who come to visit us at Eton town. " During the next nine years, when the remembrance of Collins and Gray was working a glorious change in the popular mind, he ascended to Pindarics, and closed his lyrics with some such pious invocation as this : — " And now we'll sing God save the King, And send him long to reign, That he may come To have some fun At Montem once again." During the first twelve years of the present century the influence of the Lake School was visible in his pro- ductions. In my great work I shall give an elaborate dissertation on his imitations of the high priests of that worship ; but I must now content myself with a single illustration : — " There's Ensign Kennell, tall and proud, Doth stand upon the hill, And waves the flag to all the crowd, Who much admire his skill. And here I sit upon my ass, Who lops his shnggy ears ; Mild thing ! he lets the gentry pass, Nor heeds the carriages and peers." THE ETON MONTEM. 473 He was once infected (but it was a venial sin) by the heresies of the Cockney school : and was betrayed, by the contagion of evil example, into the following conceits : — " Behold Admiral Keate of the terrestrial crew, Who teaches Greek, Latin, and likewise Hebrew ; He has taught Captain Dampier, the first in the race, Swirling his hat with a feathery grace, Cookson the Marshal, and Willoughby, of size, Making minor Sergeant-Majors in looking-glass eyes." But he at length returned to his own pure and original style ; and, like the dying swan, he sings the sweeter as he is approaching the land where the voice of his minstrelsy shall no more be heard. There is a calm melancholy in the close of his present Ode which is very pathetic, and almost Shaksperean :— " Farewell you gay and happy throng ! Farewell my Muse ! farewell my song ! Farewell Salthill ! farewell brave Captain !" Yet, may it be long before he goes hence and is no more seen ! May he limp, like his rhymes, for at least a dozen years ; for National Schools have utterly annihilated our hopes of a successor ! ' Paterson finished his apostrophe at a lucky juncture; for the band struck up, and the procession began to move. We have reached the foot of the mount at Salthill, —a very respectable barrow, which never dreamt, in its Druidical age, of the interest which it now excites, and the honours which now await it. Its sides are clothed with mechanics in their holiday clothes, and happy dairy-maids in their Sunday gear; — at its base sit Peeresses in their barouches, and Earls in all the honours of four-in-hand. The flag is waved; the scarlet coats and the crimson plumes of the Etonians float amongst us— ' the boys carry it away, Hercules and his load too,' — and the whole earth seems made for the enjoyment of one universal holiday. * And is this all ?' said Frazer, in a tone of querulous 474 ONCE UPON A TIME. contempt, which became almost positively mournful in his Doric dialect ; — ' is this all that these thousands of silken ladies and silly clowns are come to gaze upon ? Out upon such tomfoolery, whose origin is as obscure as its end is pointless.' Paterson at once took up the cudgels. — ' And I say, out upon your eternal hunting for causes and reasons. I love the no-meaning of Montem. I love to be asked for " Salt," by a pretty boy in silk stockings and satin doublet, though the custom has been called " something between begging and robbing." I love the apologetical " Mos pro Lege" which defies the police and the Mendicity Society. I love the absurdity of a Captain taking precedence of a Marshal ; and a Marshal bearing a gilt baton, at an angle of forty -five de- grees from his right hip ; and an Ensign flourishing a flag with the grace of a tight-rope dancer ; and Sergeants paged by fair-skinned Indians and beardless Turks ; and Corporals in sashes and gorgets, guarded by innocent Polemen in blue jackets and white trousers. I love the mixture of real and mock dignity — the Provost, in his cassock, clearing the way for the Duchess of Leinster to see the Ensign make his bow ; or the Head Master gravely dispensing his leave, till nine, to Counts of the Holy Eoman Empire and Grand Signiors. I love the crush in the cloisters and the mob on the Mount — I love the clatter of carriages and the plunging of horse- men — I love the universal gaiety, from the peer who smiles and sighs that he is no longer an Eton boy, to the country- girl who marvels that such little gentlemen have cocked hats and real swords. Give me a Montem with all its tom- foolery — I had almost said before a coronation — and even without the aids of a Perigord-pie and a bottle of claret at the Windmill.' * If there were some association,* replied Frazer, • which could, in the slightest degree, connect the pageant with the objects of a royal school of learning — (I had expected at least to have heard a Latin oration) — I would not so much reprehend it ; but for a procession in pumps, along a dusty road, to end in the College Exercise of a King's Scholar THE ETON MONTEM. 475 waving a banner, is too absurd for any fancy to dress up a vindication.' ' A vindication of a ceremony that makes twenty thousand people happy !' exclaimed Gerard : * the very scene before the window furnishes a ready answer to every objector. Here is folly enough in conscience j but it is the folly of an age when folly sits easily and gracefully upon us. Did you ever see an installation ? The mantles are not much finer than little Sutton's, and the plumes are not much more exalted than lofty Piatt's ; and then, for a procession, we beat them hollow. Look at the eight beautiful boys that attend the Captain — their ages and figures are pretty equal, and their eyes beam with a joy which sparkles like their spangles — is not this something more natural and pleasing than a train of decrepit Dukes or hobbling Mar- quises, where the flowing mantle but ill conceals the shrunk calf, and the ostrich-feathers nod over sunken eyes and wrinkled cheeks ?' ' I think/ quoth William Payne, as they moved to the Windmill garden — (he had, till that moment, been a listener to the rival opinions) — * I think Montem may be defended upon very reasonable grounds ; it encourages the arts and manufactures of the country, improves the revenue, and is altogether consonant with the soundest principles of politi- cal economy.' 4 A fig for your political economy !' exclaimed Gerard, as they entered the garden, — " here's a scene ! What but Montem co^d have brought together so many divine shapes, such beaming eyes ? How gracefully they lounge through the shadowy walks ! how they stud the lawn with hues more delicate than the lilacs ; how they beat time with their eloquent fingers to "Love among the roses!" how they smile upon the slim lads, who, after the sixth glass, come amongst them to make conquests ! It is a right English scene; there is the staymaker's wife from Thames-street elbowing a Cavendish, and a gentleman- commoner of Cambridge playing the agreeable to the 476 ONCE UPON A TIMET. farmer's pretty daughter from Cippenham-green. Frazer, Frazer, abandon your heresy!' ' It is, indeed, an English scene,' said Paterson. * Be- neath that elm stands one of our great Etonians ; he is evidently pleased. There is a smile of pensive joy play- ing about his lips, and his eyes are lighted up with a fond recollection of happiness that is past away. I dare be sworn that George Canning, the first of living orators, the statesman whose genius is piercing its way through the dark clouds of Europe's destiny, is even now looking back with more real pleasure to the triumphs of Gregory Griffin, than to the honours of the most successful policy ; and is feeling, with a true philosophy, that the swords and plumes of Montem are worth as much — perhaps much more— than the ribbons and stars of a riper age — " a little louder, but as empty quite." ' * And there,' said Holyoake, * stands his fearless and all- knowing rival ; — and he, too, is pleased. I see no frown gathering like a whirlwind about the brows of Henry Brougham. He is chatting with a happy little hero of buckles and silk-stockings, as delighted himself as if he were perfectly unconscious of briefs and Brookes's. Mon- tem for ever, say T, if it were only that it can make two such men forget the cares and passions of their ordinary life, even for a few hours.' * Come,' said Gerard, * politicians are every-day persons on such occasions as these ; I can see these " foremost men of all the world " for half-a-crown, any night between this and the prorogation. Look yonder — there is a mother kiss- ing her boy who is just arrived to the dignity of the fifth form, and the privilege of a Corporal's coat — while his lovely sister gazes on him with a speechless admiration, and wishes that " heaven had made her such a man." That trio alone redeems Montem from all its folly.' *I can behold such a piece of the pathetic any day,' said Frazer, 'at an "establishment" at Islington, or a *' seminary " at Camden Town.' THE ETON MONTEM. ■ 477 * I will not attempt to reason with Frazer,' said Gerard, ' about the pleasures of Montem ; but to an Etonian it is enough that it brings pure and ennobling recollections — calls up associations of hope and happiness — and makes even the wise feel that there is something better than wis- dom, and the great that there is something nobler than greatness. And then the faces that come about us at such a time, with their tales of old friendships or generous rivalries. I have seen to-day fifty fellows of whom I re- member only the nicknames ; — they are now degenerated into scheming M.P.'s, or clever lawyers, or portly doctors ; — but at Montem they leave the plodding world of reality for one day, and regain the dignities of sixth-form Etonians.' 478 ONCE UPON A TIME. ITEMS OF THE OBSOLETE. The changes that are constantly going forward in the ex- ternal aspects of society require the lapse of a generation or two to make a due impression upon our senses and our reason. One form of life so imperceptibly slides into another, that we observe no striking contrasts till we look back from our age to our youth, or study, with a purpose of comparison, the pictures which the novelists or dramatists of one period have painted, and then turn to the same occa- sional records of another period, by the same class of true historians. Thus we see distinctly that Defoe lived in a condition of society very different from that in which Fielding lived, and that Smollett was describing scenes and characters which could never have offered themselves to the observation of Dickens. It is the same with the painters. Hogarth's men and women are essentially unlike those of Gillray, and Gillray's notabilities never to be con- founded with those of Doyle or Leech. As a boy, I was familiar with Hogarth. But as pictures of a life that was patent to me, how could I comprehend the cassocked par- son on his lean horse, and his daughter alighted from the York Waggon ? * A fine lady beating hemp in Bridewell was equally incomprehensible.! I had never seen such a smart industrious apprentice working at a hand-loom as Hogarth showed me ; nor such an idle one, gambling with blackguards upon a tombstone, while sober people were going to church. Never beheld I a little boy in a laced cocked-hat, :£ nor saw a bonfire in the middle of the streets on a rejoicing-night.§ Grenadiers wore other caps than I * Harlot's Progress, plate 1. t Harlot's Progress, plate 4. X Evening. § Night. ITEMS OF THE OBSOLETE. 479 observed in ' The March to Finchley ;' and in the stage- coach of my early days there was no literal basket hung behind, in which sat an old woman smoking a pipe.* As a painter of living manners Hogarth was obsolete in the first decade of this century. But how priceless as a painter of domestic history ! I look back upon my native town as I remember it as a schoolboy.! How changed is it in its everyday life — in a hundred minute changes that are not peculiar to my birth- place, but which belong to the universal revolutions of fifty years ! How obsolete are many of the familiar things that seemed a part of my early being ! A mere list of them would suggest many thoughts not unprofitable to those who know that the progress of a generation is to be read in other memorialists than Hansard. Windsor was an ill-built town — a patchwork town of encroachments upon the castle, and of lath and plaster tenements run up cheaply upon collegiate and corporate leaseholds. There was nothing ancient in the town, except the church, which was swept away some thirty years ago. 1 Mine host of the Garter ' had no antique hostelry ; and • Heme's Oak ' was a very apocryphal relic. Inns there were, with historical signs ; but the ' Royal Oak ' of Charles II., ' The Queen's Head ' of Anne, and ' The Duke's Head ' of the Culloden executioner, were only antique in premature decay. The usual neglect of all country towns clung to Windsor — filthy gutters and unswept causeways. J My native town was a Corporate Borough. The Corpora- tion was no abstract authority. It was on all possible occasions visible to the public eye, in solemn processions of red gowns and blue, with the mace-bearer in the front, * Country Inn-yard. t In 1 Windsor, as it was,' I have attempted a picture of the Court-Windsor — the Castle. The present paper has reference solely to the Borough. Windsor, as I knew it as a youth, was a singular mixture of the poetical and the prosaic — of the poetical in its antiquities and its regalities — of the prosaic in its mean modern town and its very narrow society. X Of its ancient Black Ditches I have spoken elsewhere, p. 417. 480 OXCE UPON A TIME. and the beadle in the rear. The Corporation marched to church in toged state ; and three times a year it astonished the children by this array of grandeur, when it proclaimed a gingerbread fair at street corners, and not a hot spice-nut could be sold till the mace-bearer had shouted ' Oh yes !' I fear all this glory is departed from the land. Elective corporators now go to church in frock coats; and the charter of Charles II., which bestowed upon the Borough three fairs and two market-days, and regulated the buyers and sellers, is held to be as little worth preservation as the edict of Jack Cade that ' seven halfpenny loaves should be sold for a penny.' The market-bell ! Is that rung now ? I fear not. There was something deeply impressive in that bell. It spoke loudly of the majesty of the law, which then aspired to re- gulate some domestic as well as all foreign commerce. The stalls were duly set. The butchers had hung up their joints ; the farmer's wife had spread her fowls and her butter upon a white cloth ; onions and apples stood tempt- ingly on the pavement side. But not an atom could be sold till the market-bell had rung. There were laws then against ' forestalling,' with cognate crimes termed ■ badgering,' ' regrating,' ' engrossing.' But in the seventh and eighth years of Queen Victoria such statutes were repealed, as being ' made in hinderance and in restraint of trade.' What a solemn thing it appeared to my juvenile understanding to be assured that it was unlaw- ful even to handle a goose till the bell said, ' you may bar- gain !' There was a board exhibited, which told of heavy penalties, if early housewives were disobedient to the mandates of that bell, and dared to chaffer before other housewives were awake. I used to ponder upon the wis- dom of our ancestors, that so regulated the common affairs of life ; and forbade the lieges to buy and sell in the same market, which was * regrating ;' or to buy wholesale at all, which was ' engrossing ;' or to buy before the whole world was awake and ready to buy, which was 'forestalling.' That market-bell is silent for ever, even though Black- ITEMS OF THE OBSOLETE. 481 stone proclaimed how wise were the laws of which it was the voice. And then there was the Pie-Powder Court, upon the evening of the- fair. In the Town Hall sat the justices in state till midnight. There was a supper, no doubt; but they sat there for the public good, that offenders might be summarily dealt with before the dust of the feet — piedpoudre — was shaken off. That was the interpretation which the learned imparted to me — the official etymology, which showed what a noble instrument was the law, when mayor and aldermen kept out of their beds to make offence and punishment go together. A truer etymology shows that the Pie-Powder Court was the court to determine disputes be- tween pedlar and pedlar, the pied puldreux, of Scotland as well as England. The ' dustifoot ' himself is nearly gone ; and the court of the • dustifoot ' is gone before him. Yet it was an inoffensive court. Like Chancery it did little ; but unlike Chancery it charged little. The shops of the Borough were not in those days very brilliant. The window-panes were small ; and the show in the windows not greatly attractive. There were no tempt- ing tickets of * this chaste article only 14s. 10d.' Customers went to the shop for what they wanted, and seldom disputed the price if they had an account. Everybody had an ac- count ; for there was a very queer and limited currency. A guinea was a rarity ; and so was a shilling with a visible King's head. The sixpences, shillings, and half-crowns were thin pieces of metal, not always silver, which passed rather as counters than as money. Intrinsically, when good, they were worth about half their nominal amount. How has my boyish heart rejoiced at the useless gift of a pretty shilling, — that is, a shilling with a perfect obverse and reverse ! I would put such a rarity to my small store of handsome half-crowns of the first and second Georges, which we used to call ' pocket-pieces,' and gaze at them as sacred things, which it would be profanation to employ as money . It is difficult to look back upon such a state of affairs and comprehend how the business of life went on. Cautious 2 I 482 ONCE UPON A TIME. tradesmen would rather ' book ' your purchases than take your doubtful silver ; and there was a sort of Lynch law amongst some, that when a bad coin was tendered, con- sciously or unconsciously, the hammer and .nail were ready to pin the offensive thing to the deal counter, as a terror to all evil-doers. Payments of some amount were often made in copper penny-pieces. A Bank of England one-pound note was a suspected thing, for forgeries were by no means un- common, even though periodical hangings of the forgers and utterers were holiday spectacles throughout the land. The dirty local notes were the one currency — though sometimes a bank stopped payment. The country banker would also receive very small sums upon interest — for there were no Savings'-banks ; and then, when a crash came, great and wide-spreading was the misery. The dirty one-pound note is gone ; and so is the worn-out money. No school-boy now values a new shilling, except as an exchanger ; and if his grandmother were to give him ' a pocket-piece,' it would not remain long in his pocket. My native town, I am afraid, did not contain a very industrious population. It had no manufactures except that of Ale — Windsor Soap had retired to Staines. Few of the community were wealthy, but most of them took life easily, and enjoyed themselves with a good deal of heartiness in their own fashion. There was always some gala to relieve the monotony of the provincial existence — a race, a revel, a review. I think the bells were always ringing. There were about twenty royal birthdays in a year — and the bells pealed out their ! triple bob-majors ' from morn to dewy eve. On all these rejoicing days there were what we called illuminations. A ragged boy or two would carry about illumination candlesticks — such a candlestick being a lump of clay with a hole in it — and these elegant light-bearers were stuck in the windows, and their thin candles flamed away for an hour or so, till they guttered out. The illumi- nation, however, was useful as well as pleasant, for the few public lamps gave small light ; and then on the gala nights the maid with a lantern, who ordinarily went before her ITEMS OF THE OBSOLETE. 483 mistress to the card-party, saved her labour. I think these clay candlesticks and that lantern are passed away. The town-guns, which duly emulated the bells, are gone also, I suppose, in this business-like age. I loved the bells, as I loved the chimes. It was the dream of youth, perhaps, but they had a charm for me which is also amongst the obsolete. The daily ■ toll ' of St. George's Chapel, which ' tolled in ' few worshippers, was a pleasant sound, which came over the ear soothingly. In London, the chimes and the church- bells arrest no passer-by. A worthy magnate of Paternoster Eow used to say that he never heard Saint Paul's bell, though it rang out daily. I have heard it, but I never heeded it. Not so my native bells : — Sabbath bells ! ye duly chime For worship, over hill and lea ; I think that once ye peal'd that time In tones that went more cheerfully. Speak ye not now of formal kneelings, Cold hearts, dull voices, souls asleep ? Mourn ye not now for bygone feelings, For zeal to praise, for penitence to weep ? Matins' bell, how deeply booming Thy summons to the passing crowd ! I see the vast cathedral looming, Its cross in sun, its dome in cloud : Fills not the temple with those feet, Those thousand feet, that onward race ? — The choir hath room ; six paupers meet The solitary clerks in God's deserted place. Holiday bells ! ye rarely sing Of gladness in the labourer's way, And say that man may rest, and fling His cares behind him for a day. I hear not now your call to Maying, Ye shout not out the Whitsun-time ; • The merry bells ' — 'tis an old saying, Belied by your unpractis'd, dissonant chime. Sabbath bells, and matins' bell, And bell that tolls for earth to earth, And holiday bells — I miss your spell, The spell that gave your sounds a worth : 2 i 2 484 ONCE UPON A TIME. I heard ye speak of Faith and Love, — Of Hope .ye spake to hearts in sorrow, — Your mirth seem'd echoed from above — When will to-day's dull bells ring in a happier morrow ? The out-door amusements of the Borough were not of a very varied character. ' The horses ' came sometimes ; and with the horses came the shilling lottery, in which there were real prizes of cotton gowns and legs of mutton — and, more attractive still, 1 Where silver spoons are won, and rings of gold.' I just remember to have seen a mountebank — a real mounte- bank, who set up his bills, ' That promised cure Of ague or the toothache,' amidst jokes and compliments, which would go farther to cure some diseases than the gravity of the whole College of Physicians. Where is the mountebank gone? We must now take the physic without the jest. Newspapers have annihilated the mountebank. Advertisements usurp the office of the Merry Andrew. And thus we flee to ' Parr's Life Pills.' The Bull-bait was a ceremony at which I was never per- mitted to assist ; but I have seen the bull, as Gay saw him, — and I have seen his companion, too : 1 With slow and solemn air, Led by the nostril, walks the muzzled bear; Behind him moves, majestically dull, The pride of Hockley-hole, the surly bull.' The bear and the monkey were harmless exhibitions in my day. I never asked, as Slender asked, ' Why do the dogs bark so ? be there bears in the town ?' But I have heard the bull-dogs bark. The fashion of cruelty was changed. I should have thought that the bull-bait had gone out at the beginning of the century, had I not before me a corre- spondence between the Under-Secretary of State and our Mayor, by which it seems that the sport was fashionable as late as 1818. Lord Sidmouth had heard of* an intention ITEMS OF THE OBSOLETE. 48i Bear- ward.— Hogarth. to create a mob at Windsor, on Monday next, under colour of a wish to ascertain the life of His Majesty,'* and he called upon the mayor to quell any disturbance. It was not the first plot that Lord Sidmouth had sniffed from afar. The Mayor had no apprehension of such a mob ; but he writes : 1 It is said that a bull is to be baited on Monday next, in a piece of ground adjoining this town — a brutal amusement which has too frequently occurred at this place, which I would gladly suppress were I possessed of sufficient authority ;' and he adds, 'whenever a bull-bait has taken place here, a very large portion of the military have joined in the amusement.' Alas! for authority. The law then permitted bull-baits. Windham had defended them. But if they had been illegal, authority was very weak to en- counter them. The municipality had four watchmen and three constables to keep the peace. The peace was very often broken — and so were the lamps. A burgess brought home his bride ; and marrow-bones and cleavers rent the * George III. was dead to the external world. 486 ONCE UPON A TIME. air till midnight came and the watchman had a drunken delinquent in the cage. A cobbler beat his wife, — and the clangour of pots and the yells of women frighted the street from its propriety — the offender was rough -musicked. An informer — a name in those days as odious as a tax-gatherer — was hunted through the alleys, and tarred and feathered. Bread riots were not uncommon, and great, then, was the terror of the bakers. The good people, with the most benevolent intentions which nobody could blame, set about augmenting the inflictions of scarcity in the true old fashion. The moment that high prices of bread arrived, we were accustomed to take to a gratuitous distribution of bread ; — we established soup kitchens and rice coppers, that a few clamorous mouths might be fed, at the expense of a still higher increase upon prices, to be paid by the many who were not clamorous. We did upon a small scale what the government of Paris does upon a large scale. I don't know how we managed to live through all these troubles of high prices, and excessive taxes — the exciseman poking his nose into every shop — and Napoleon at Boulogne, ready to harry the ' nation of shopkeepers.' But we did get on, and were merry nevertheless ; and ' the tight little island ' was encored at every public dinner; and there were whist clubs and assemblies, as if there were no want and no fear in the land. About these assemblies, I have a grievance of which I must speak fully. The Country-Dance is obsolete, as obsolete as the dancing costume of the last century. I shall never forget the night when the seeds of one of the great revolutions of these times were sown in our assembly-room. Thirty couples stood up for the accustomed country-dance. Louisa W. had to call, and I was her delighted partner. The eager hands were clapped, the discordant strings were screwing up into tune, and we were debating with the venerable leader of our band the relative merits of 'The Honeymoon' and * Speed the Plough/ With the most correct taste, Louisa had decided for 'right and left,' in preference to 'la poussette,' — we were ready. At that ITEMS OF THE OBSOLETE. 487 instant a handsome officer of dragoons — the coxcomb — advanced to Louisa, and in the most humble tone — the puppy — ventured to recommend a quadrille. Louisa's eyes consulted mine, and I boldly consulted the leader. I knew the range of his acquirements, and I was safe ; — we went down with * The Honeymoon ;' but the evil was rooted. Within a fortnight there was a special meeting of the subscribers to our assembly-room to discuss an important question. It was convened at the particular desire of a lady of fashion, so called, who had become a temporary resident amongst us. I knew there was mischief brooding, and, as I was petulant, I stayed away. Poor Kit, the master of our band, and his faithful followers, were dis- missed after thirty years' duteous service ; and four fiddlers, from Paine's, I think they said, came from London by the coach — fine powdered fellows in silk stockings; but no more to compare with Kit's crew for strength and untiring execution than a Jew's harp to a hand-organ. But they were wonderfully applauded ; and Louisa, seeing that I would not sanction them, recommended me to take lessons. I would as soon have learned to speak High Dutch. From that time I was left to solitude, when the ball-room was lighted up with twenty oandles in tin sconces. I sat at home, and mused mournfully ; and thus I mused : 4 Departed visions of the dear country -dances of my boy- hood, to what foreign land are ye fled ? Are ye gone to thrust out waltzes from Germany, or fandangos from Spain — are ye departed to unnationalise other feet, as the detest- able quadrilles have corrupted ours? Ah, no — ye have not the subtlety of your hateful rival — like your unhappy countrymen, ye must give place to the cuckoo tribe who drive you from your nests. It is only ten years since I learned to dance at school, and my knowledge has become obsolete. To outlive one's old friends is the most painful feeling in earth's pilgrimage — and I have done this long before I am grown gray. " The Jolly Young Waterman," and " Money Musk," and " The Devil among the Tailors," and " Drops of Brandy," and " Off She Goes," and M Mother 488 ONCE UPON A TIME. Casey," and " Molly put the Kettle on," and " Lady Mont- gomery," are with the things before the flood — and I will weep for them. But I will never abandon my early faith for " La Poule," or " L'Ete," or— Psha ! I hate myself for knowing even these execrable names. I will practise, even with my own chairs, " up the middle and down again, swing comers, hands four, and right and left," till the gout over- takes me — but I will never prostitute myself to " dos-a-dos, chassee en avant, balancer, tourner les dames," or "chaine- Anglaise," — no, not if I could secure myself an exemption from crutches till my eightieth winter. I have too much patriotism in my blood. But I may live to see a reaction — quadrilles may descend to the kitchen; — and so " Sir Eoger de Coverley " may again find his true place in the drawing-room.' It may seem a strange transition from Balls to Beggary, but we never passed into the Town Hall, our great As- sembly-room, without looking upon the Stocks, which seemed a part of the grandeur of that edifice. So, also, stood the Stocks at the east entrance of St. George's Chapel, and might appear to the profane a part of its ceremonial — more for show than use. I believe the Town Stocks were rarely employed in my time. The Pillory had hung up in the Market House untouched for half a century. We had, on the whole, a mild administration of the laws. Vagrants, if very rude and dirty, were threatened with the Stocks, and then passed on. The Stocks were an item of the obsolete in my native town. It was not so in other parishes, where the Stocks were occasionally useful, as in the time of Canning's knife-grinder. ' Story, God bless you, I have none to tell, sir ! Only last night, a drinking at the Chequers, Justice Oldmixon set me in the parish Stocks for a vagrant.' To this ingenious machine were the labourers of England once doomed, if they dared to venture out of their own parish, even when in their own parish they, the natives, had eaten up all the parish could give them. Other ITEMS OF THE OBSOLETE. 489 humane devices to prevent the desire for wandering, and to reconcile them to starvation at home, were derived from the good old times of branding and whipping. By degrees, however, these exertions to prevent the labourers wander- ing were in great part superseded by the merciful consider- ation of the old poor-law functionaries, who employed a great portion of theirrtime, and a larger portion of the public money, in carrying the labourers about from one end of the kingdom to the other. In this gentle manner we — a courtly race — dealt with our Eogues and Vagabonds. There was perpetually a nice journey for the constable to pass a pauper to his settlement, and so the Stocks became obsolete. I believe the Stocks of my ancient parish are rooted up. I think I missed them lately, when I looked upon the changed haunts. ' I went to the place of my birth, and I said, The friends of my childhood, where are they ?' We had a very social place of confinement, which was doubtless more agreeable than the Stocks, called a • Cage.' It was not deemed any great disgrace to be put in the Cage. The Jail was a serious thing, which looked like the law being in earnest. But the Cage was a small room with a barred window looking into the street; and there the pleasantest conversation went on between the lively people within, and their friends outside. The birds of the Cage soon fluttered again in the free air — for they were petty delinquents, such as those whom women swore their lives against. The Jail was for the higher offenders — the starving beggar who stole a penny loaf, or the maid-of-ail-work whose box was searched for her mistress's thimble. For these there was the terror of the Quarter Sessions. That, indeed, was a solemn affair; and sometimes there were terrible punishments in store for the convicted. A public Whipping at the Cart's Tail was the mode in which Justice now and then proclaimed that she did not sleep. It was a brutal spectacle. I think it generally provoked a great deal of hissing when the jailer (for he was the executioner) struck hard, and some mirth when he touched the culprit's back lightly. I suppose the 490 ONCE UPON A TIME. Cart's Tail is gone to rest, with the Stocks and the Pillory. Our system of secondary punishments may be an imperfect one ; but it is a vast improvement upon the disgusting exhibitions which were not uncommon forty years ago. My boyish acquaintance with the course of justice in our Borough gave me a very insufficient notion of the fearful things that were going on then in the land, under the highest sanction of the law. I knew that the King, on certain days, went to London to receive 'the Eecorder's Report ;' but I had a very vague notion of what that meant. People talked then of hanging as a thing of course, and absolutely necessary for the good of society. I have a dim recollection of a man who had been in our prison being hanged at Reading; and of being told that our jailer's daughter had been to see the execution, and to receive the benefit of the dead man's warm hand being passed over her throat for the cure of a wen. Such stories, true or not, came over the childish ear with few terrors. For the child, the abstract idea of death has no fears ; and ' sad tales best for winter ' are pleasurable around the warm hearth. I heard many such tales. I knew of haunted houses. I knew where a witch lived; and why the horse-shoe was nailed over the cottage door. But I had never been face to face with the horrible. I was about ten years old, when a servant with a led pony came to fetch me from school. We had to cross Hounslow Heath by the Staines Road. He proposed to show me something I should like to see. Gracious Heaven ! Close by a clump of firs was a gibbet, on which two bodies hung in chains. The crow perched on a skull. The rags fluttered, and the irons rattled, in the breeze. My heart sickened. The first day of my holidays brought no pleasure. It perhaps brought some wisdom. My hatred of the atrocious criminal laws of those times was fixed for life. Some years later I was present at a trial when a culprit, about to be sentenced, was told, ' kneel down, and pray your Clergy.' The solemn mockery ! And these relics of barbarism are gone — The Gibbet, and the Neck- Verse. ITEMS OF THE OBSOLETE. 491 But I must get away from these painful remembrances, to look at my borough, and its dignitaries, under more pleasurable aspects. The mayor's feast. There really was nothing vulgarly ostentatious or contemptible in the mayor's feast — no gilt coach, no tawdry chariots, no men in armour. There was no interruption to the daily business of life. The chief magistrate gave a good English dinner in his hall, and he asked the best people he could find amongst his neighbours. Patriotic toasts were drunk ; and old English glees and catches, recommending ' wine, rosy wine ' — and vowing, ' we'll turn the night into the day,' were enthusiastically applauded. These exhortations to good fellowship were scarcely necessary ; but they were pleasant. With the exception of the two members for the borough, who always said the same things from year to year, the company were not disturbed by any oratory. They went on carousing till midnight ; and no one rose to depart except one alderman, who had filled his pocket with peaches, and was anxious to present them to his helpmate. The mayor's feast is gone. That peach-abstracting alderman, I recollect distinctly, had very large pockets, with great flaps, on the outside of his coat. He was not a genteel alderman ; and his costume was unvarying. Most others, in those times, had best clothes, and everyday clothes. Let me endeavour to jot down a few items of the obsolete costumes of my town. I have a very obscure remembrance of two cocked -hats. Of course I do not include the beadle's cocked-hat — may it live a thousand years ! Under the cocked-hat was neces- sarily the wig ! The cocked-hat and wig generally came out in the afternoon. In the morning a red cap covered the bald pate. Down to comparatively recent times there was a lady — but she was a foreigner — who walked abroad with her powdered toupet under her silken caleche. The cocked-hat soon passed out of my view, except in one re- markable instance. It was at the beginning of the century that a notable personage was to be daily gazed at amongst the sights of 492 OXCE UPON A TIME. Windsor. One of my earliest recollections is of this singular man. I see him now, as he appeared to my childish curiosity, mysteriously creeping by the first light of a winter's morning through the great gate of the lower ward of the castle into the narrow back streets of the town. He then constantly wore a large cloak, called a roquelaure, beneath which appeared a pair of thin legs encased in dirty silk stockings. If the morning was wet, his cloak was not his only protection from the weather. He had a formidable umbrella; and, what was most wonderful, he stalked along upon pattens. Often have I watched him creeping out of his solitary house in the castle, and most carefully locking doors behind him, as he went on his morning errands. There he lived, in one of the houses of the Military Knights, then called Poor Knights, to which body he belonged : it was the house next to the governor's. No human being, it was imagined, had for some years entered that house except its eccentric possessor. The wise man, he held, was his own best assistant; and so he dispensed with all domestic service. In the morning, then, he duly went forth to make his frugal purchases for the day— a faggot, a candle, a small loaf, perhaps a herring. All luxuries, whether of meat, or tea, or sugar, or butter, were renounced. He had objects to be attained, and for whose attainment he laboured for years, which required money. His income in money, derived from his office, besides his house, was about sixty pounds. Regular attendance upon the service of St. George's Chapel was his duty ; and the long blue mantle which the Poor Knights wore covered the faded finery beneath, as well as the roquelaure which hid the loaf and the farthing candle. But when the oifices of the morning had been performed, and the sun, perchance, shone brightly, out came another creature. Wherever crowds were assembled, — wherever royalty was to be looked upon, and the sounds of military music summoned the fair ones of Windsor and Eton to the gay parade, — there was Sir John Dinely. The roquelaure was cast aside, and then were disclosed the treasures which ITEMS OF THE OBSOLETE. 493 it concealed — the embroidered coat, the silk-flowered waistcoat, the nether garments of faded velvet, carefully meeting the dirty silk stockings, which terminated in the half-polished shoe surmounted by the dingy silver buckle. The old wig, on great occasions, was newly powdered, and the best cocked-hat was brought forth with a tarnished lace edging. There walked, then, on Windsor Terrace, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, one who might have sat for the costume of the days of George II. All other days were to him as nothing. He had dreams of ancient genealogies ; and of alliances still subsisting between himself and the first families of the land ; and of mansions described in Nash's ' History of Worcestershire,' with marble halls and 'superb gates;' and of possessions that ought to be his own ; which would place him upon an equality with the noblest and the wealthiest. A little money to be expended in law proceedings was to make these dreams realities. That money was to be obtained through a wife. To secure for himself a wife was the business of his existence; to display himself properly where women ' most do congregate ' was the object of his savings ; to be constantly in the public eye was his glory and his hope. The man had not a particle of levity in these proceedings. His face had a grave and intellectual character; his deportment was staid and dignified. He had a wonderful discrimination in avoiding the tittering girls with whose faces he was familiar. But perchance some buxom matron, or timid maiden who had seen him for the first time, gazed upon the apparition with surprise and curiosity : he approached. With the air of one bred in courts, he made his most profound bow; and taking a printed paper from his pocket, reverently presented his Advertisement ' For a Wife,' and then withdrew.* Was this man mad ? He had a monomania certainly ; but in other matters he was the shrewdest man I ever knew. He was reserved and sarcastic to most persons, — * See Portrait, p. 388. 496 ONCE UPON A TIME. practical anachronisms only occur in country towns. The queue long survived the cocked-hat and the buckle. ' Play out the play. I have much to say on behalf of that ' queue. Thirty years ago there were only two queues extant in my town. I sighed, then, as I thought how many of my old queue -bearing friends, who used to smile when I, wanton rogue, climbed up their chairs and reverently laid their queues upon their powdered shoulders, how many had passed into jthe oblivious grave ! Even now, I some- times see their venerable shades in my day-dreams, with their ample rouleaus of- curls around their temples, and their neatly twisted queues behind their backs. They passed away, and were succeeded by a cropped and dege- nerate race. I just remember the ' decline and fall ' of the empire of queues. Faithful companions, duteous followers, ye suc- cumbed to the tyranny of the greatest of Tories. The fatal tax upon hair-powder exterminated you. Slowly and sadly did ye decay ; and one by one did ye depart from the cares of this transitory life ! Frail and innocent beings, ye were untimely plucked, and cut off from your abiding-place and your inheritance ! In a few short years I saw ye almost all yield to the avarice of those who should have cherished you. They cast you off in the hollowness of their friendship ; and they went shorn into the world, bleak, honourless, comfortless, queueless. I could never entirely tolerate the volunteer mania ; for it completed the destruction of the persecuted queues. There was only one officer in our corps, of glorious memory, who had the magnanimity to bear his queue without a blush. Methought it gave 'him the look of those who knew 1 how fields were won.' But there was a corporal who did not partake of my reverential feelings. As the veteran marched in advance of the battalion, the mischievous subaltern (he was a tailor) would perk the queue in his lieutenant's face. I could have brought the corporal to a court-martial ; it was flat mutiny, and unparalleled in the annals of warfare. ITEMS OF THE OBSOLETE. 49 1 There were four queues in my native place who survived the oppression of the times ; but they owed their existence to a rare combination of favourable circumstances. They were trimmed and watered by an ancient professor of queues, who had commenced his practice not very many years after the disunion of the two illustrious occupations of barbery and surgery. The professor was necessary to the wearer of the queues ; and the four queues were a quiet and obedient family, that he loved with a complete and unmingled devotion. He was not a vulgar and everyday professor. He had saved a small fortune in the happier times of curls and toupets, and he despised the ordinary clients of the later days of unpowdered pertness. He received an annual guinea from each of his queue-bearers ; and he resigned himself exclusively to the cultivation of this his small estate in tail. The hour of his morning visit was an hour of happiness : it was a full hour. It was his to spread the flowing hair over the ample shoulders ; to smooth out the broad black ribbon, which he carefully renewed when its lustre was sullied ; to gather up the scattered locks into a solid girth of leather ; and then to bind them fast roundly and taperingly, till his power should again give them a temporary freedom. Poor Fuller ! he sang ' Time has not thinned,' with an exquisite tremulousness ; and he told the scandal of his profession with a sly and solemn air, which at once bespoke his discretion and his sincerity. He loved his queue-bearers alike, and he left to each of them a ring. Top-boots. I am by no means sure that top-boots are obsolete in my native town. Egalite Orleans and the Prince of Wales are painted in top-boots ; and the tops lasted till Wellingtons and trousers drove them out. Why should I particularise the top-boot wearers ? Yet I must say that I never saw the Queen's apothecary in the streets — he never rode — without his top-boots and spenser. It was a sober costume, and grave burgesses wore them, unless they were soberer still in long drab gaiters. The top-boots of those days were not the smart, white-topped boots that 2 K 498 ONCE UPON A TIME. one now sees at the hunting 'meet.' They were of a respectable brown, varying from the colour of ochre to that of liquorice. Before they were extinct they had a race of rivalry to run with the Hessians. These indeed were jaunty things. How bright was their polish ! how splendid were their tassels ! And then the spur on the heel ! That spur had nothing to do with horses. It was, however, a dangerous thing for a stranger civilian to wear that spur at Windsor. He stalked into St. George's Chapel. No matter what the choristers were chanting — in an instant the spur was detected ; and the distracted man, as he left the nave, after a little gazing at the painted windows, was surrounded by a bevy of white surplices demanding spur-money. The custom was as old as the days of James I. : ' Be sure your silver spurs clog your heels, and then the boys will swarm about you like so many white butterflies ; when you, in the open quire, shall draw forth a perfumed embroidered purse, and quoit silver into the boys' hands.'* Has the custom gone out as well as the spurs ? The law, perhaps, is not dead, and may revive when men shall resume distinctions in dress, and not hide their legs in trews, and their bodies in sacks. I hope they will not revive. The distinctions were too often false — and it is as well they are gone. There was no distinction in those days between frock- coats and dress-coats. The morning coat and the evening were the same. But for the evening party, the unspeakable gentility of the knee-breeches, and the silk stocking ! The varieties, too, of that portion of the dress. The white kerseymere, and the white stocking ; the black, and the black. Then young men were really dressed, and were fit for ladies' society. I have said something of Assemblies. They were the great occasions for display of the tight pump and the spotless hose. But they did not come often. There were no improvised dances on the carpet in those times. There was the genteel tea-party ; when the half-pay colonel ordered a shilling's worth of biscuits, and a quarter of a * Dekker : ' Gull's Hornbook/ c. 4. ITEMS OF THE OBSOLETE. 499 pound of sixteen shilling hyson. There was the vulgar tea and supper, at which there was much mirth, and some gambling at ■ speculation ' and * commerce.' At neither was there music ; except some unhappy young lady, just come out, was asked by Mamma to play * The Battle of Prague.' Oh that ' Battle of Prague !' The ■ cries of the wounded,' expressed by the harpsichord, were nothing to the groans of the listeners to its discordance. The singing too, — but why should I quarrel with that, when I recollect ' Ye banks and braes of bonnie Doon,' which brought tears into my eyes, and love into my heart ? I remember a good deal of foolery in those days ; with much cordiality. We were not made unsocial by pretences to wisdom. We might not be very wise. I am sure we were not. We had a good deal of old superstition lingering about us. We looked rather pale when we saw a winding- sheet in the candle. We did not know that a time would come when the old candles would be obsolete, and wicks would be made that would weave no winding-sheets. When a coal flew out of the fire, we examined whether it were a purse or a coffin. We made no talk of gas in the coal, for we knew nothing about it. We showed each other the gifts on our nails ; and it was pretty to look in the tea- cup and see by the grounds that a stranger was coming, — at which Emily blushed. After supper we broke the merry-thought, and had some sixteenth-century joke — softened, of course — which went with the mystical bone's name. I believe I have heard a very sensible matron con- fidingly observe, at a christening dinner, that the dear little thing was thriving on its bit of roast pig. All this is gone, no doubt. I am not sure that we are wiser or better now. I almost believe that the polite ladies who mentioned ' Old Scratch,' or ' Old Harry,' without emotion, were not bad Christians after all. I think the dumb-waiter may be counted amongst our obsolete items. It belonged to a time when there were fewer domestic servants, who now represent the existence of many artificial wants. The dumb-waiter was a conve- 2 k2 500 ONCE UPON A TIME. nient piece of furniture. The husband could froth up the wife's glass of ale, and hand the cruets, without any abate- ment of dignity, or any outstretching of the arm. I cleave enough to the obsolete to believe that our present perpetual ' waiting ' is the bane of modem sociability. I want to help my fair neighbour to wine, and I resent the intrusion of the footman. And yet I must bear with this mal-admini- stration to my dinner wants — for if I should come back to the old times, I should come back to some matters for which the age is too ' picked.' I should come back — not perhaps to the family in the sanded kitchen — but to the parlour for the week-day, and to the drawing-room for Sundays. I should not expect wine as a matter of every-day occurrence. I should have the ' one solid dish ' for ' the week-day's meal,' and the ' added pudding ' for ' the Lord's.' I should have mince-pies and beef at Christmas, as of old ; but I might be compelled to eat furmety on Midlent Sunday, and my pancakes would be limited to Shrove Tuesday, to be tossed in the pan with ceremonies that are quite as well obsolete. It might be better if society had not grown too luxurious in some of these matters. But it is no part of my creed to go back : and so we must deal with progress as we find it. The manners and material things of the dining-room are capricious. Let us get into the kitchen. Item : The Tinder-box. "When I was young, the process of obtaining fire, in every house in England, with few exceptions, was as rude, as laborious, and as uncertain, as the effort of the Indian to produce a flame by the friction of two dry sticks. The night-lamp and the rushlight were for the compara- tively luxurious. In the bedrooms o£ the cottager, the artisan, and the small tradesman, the infant at its mother's side too often awoke, like Milton's Nightingale, * darkling/ but that nocturnal note was something different from 1 harmonious numbers.' The mother was soon on her feet ; the friendly tinder-box was duly sought. Click, click, click ; not a spark tells upon the sitlien blackness. More ITEMS OF THE OBSOLETE. 501 rapidly does the flint ply the sympathetic steel. The room is bright with the radiant shower. But the child, familiar enough with the operation, is impatient at its tediousness, and shouts till the mother is frantic. At length one lucky spark does its office — the tinder is alight. Now for the match. It will not burn. A gentle breath is wafted into the murky box ; the face that leans over the tinder is in a glow. Another match, and another, and another. They are 'all damp. The toil-worn father ' swears a prayer or two;' the baby is inexorable; and the misery is only ended when the good man has gone to the street door, and after long shivering, has obtained a light from the watch- man. The tinder-box and the steel had nothing peculiar. The tinman made the one as he made the saucepan, with hammer and shears ; the other was forged at the great metal factories of Sheffield and Birmingham ; and happy was it for the purchaser if it were something better than a rude piece of iron, very uncomfortable to grasp. The nearest chalk- quarry supplied the flint. The domestic manufacture of the tinder was a serious affair. At due seasons, and very often if the premises were damp, a stifling smell rose from the kitchen, which to those who were not intimate with the process, suggested doubts whether the house were not on fire. The best linen rag was periodically burnt, and its ashes deposited in the tinman's box, pressed down with a close-fitting lid, upon which the flint and steel reposed, The match was chiefly an article of itinerant traffic. The chandler's shop was almost ashamed of it. The mendicant was the universal match-seller. The girl who led the blind beggar had invariably a bundle of matches. In the day they were vendors of matches — in the evening manu- facturers. On the floor of the hovel sit two or three squalid children, splitting deal with a common knife. The matron is watching a pipkin upon a slow fire. The fumes which it gives forth are blinding as the brimstone is liquefying. Little bundles of split deal are ready to be dipped, three or four at a time. When the pennyworth of brimstone is used 502 ONCE UPON A TIME. up, when the capital is exhausted, the night's labour is over. In the summer, the manufacture is suspended, or conducted upon fraudulent principles. Fire is then need- less ; so delusive matches must be produced — wet splints dipped in powdered sulphur. They will never burn, but they will do to sell to the unwary maid-of-all-work. About twenty years ago chemistry discovered that the tinder-box might be abolished. But chemistry set about its function with especial reference to the wants and the means of the rich few. In the same way the first printed books were designed to have a great resemblance to manu- scripts, and those of the wealthy class were alone looked to as the purchasers of the skilful imitations. The first chemical light-producer was a complex and ornamental casket, sold at a guinea. In a year or so there were pretty portable cases of a phial and matches, which enthusiastic young housekeepers regarded as the cheapest of all treasures at five shillings. By-and-by the light-box was sold as low as a shilling. The fire revolution was slowly approaching. The old dynasty of the tinder-box maintained its predomi- nance for a short while in kitchen and garret, in farm-house and cottage. At length some bold adventurer saw that the new chemical discovery might be employed for the produc- tion of a large article of trade — that matches, in themselves the vehicles of fire without aid of spark and tinder, might be manufactured upon the factory system— that the humblest in the land might have a new and indispensable comfort at the very lowest rate of cheapness. When chemistry saw that phosphorus, having an affinity for oxygen at the lowest temperature, would ignite upon slight friction, — and, so ignited, would ignite sulphur, which required a much higher temperature to become inflammable, thus making the phosphorus do the work of the old tinder with far greater certainty ; or when chemistry found that ctfilorate of potash, by slight friction, might be exploded so as to produce combustion — a blessing was bestowed upon society that can scarcely be measured by those who have had no former knowledge of the miseries and privations of the ITEMS OF THE OBSOLETE. 503 tinder-box. The penny box of Lucifers, or Congreves, or by whatever name called, is a real triumph of science, and an advance in civilisation. Item : the Pewter Plate. In Chop-houses in the City the pewter plate is a luxury. In 1512, the Earl and Countess of IS'orthumberland used wooden trenchers, except when pewter plates were 'an ornamental addition to their table on great holidays.' * I remember pewter plates in many kitchens, ranged in shining rows. They were a great nuisance in my father's kitchen, for a day in each week was devoted to their scouring, and they were never used. I think they would have been scoured out of existence, had not a fire luckily taken place, and melted them all. But the dinner-service of Delft was not then a cheap thing. The yellow- white plate had not then been superseded by the well-known willow pattern, which is now common in every cottage. AVhat a blessing Wedgwood was to his country ! Let any housewife now consider what her existence would be without her crockery. I will not grieve over the pewter plate. Item : the Jack and Weight. Did any of the present generation ever see a great leaden or iron weight slowly travelling down the outer wall of a house — perhaps with a pear-tree blossoming by its side? That weight was the power that moved the jack, tthat moved the chain, that moved the spit, that moved the sirloin, within. It was always travelling on a Sunday. The smoke-jack of aristocratic houses gave no outward demonstration of its work. The common jack was for the plebeians. But there was dignity in that symbol of what was going on in the kitchen. It said that the joint had not been ignobly sent to the bakehouse. It said something, too, of the great mechanical capabilities of a scientific age. The age of turnspits was passed. But lo ! mechanism now applies itself to the diffusion of comfort j * ' Northumberland Household Book/ preface, p. xv. 504 ONCE UPON A TIME. and a little instrument, called a bottle-jack, turns the great unwieldy monster, with its wheels, and its chain, and its fly, and its weight travelling down the wall, out of every kitchen. Item : the Bellows. 1 Gently stir, and blow the fire, Lay the mutton down to roast/ What a machine was the bellows ! It was always at work. You heard it in the morning, as you were dressing. You heard it when the fire was low, and the dinner-hour was at hand. You heard it, most especially, in the aim twilight hour, when the kettle was on the hob, and Susan had put on her clean apron, and drowsily puffed, and gazed into the grate, as the coals began to glow beneath the music of her bellows. It was not an occasional friend, but it was ever a constant companion to the fender on which Susan rested her worsted-stockinged feet. What innovations have driven out the bellows ? In those days there was a bundle of green sticks called a kindler, which no power but that of the bellows could make burn. There were no boilers then which yield warm water without any trouble. Everything, too, in the days of the bellows, was to be forced to the boiling-point in the rude cookery. The notion of cookery excluded any of those foreign devices which required a slow heat. But very few higher things were then left to nature. No process could be perfect without perpetual interference with ordinary physical powers. There was no ' laissezfaire *■ in the cabinet ; and why in the kitchen ? The bellows was an emblem of the State, that was always making a great noise to stimulate society to the white heat of prosperity. But the State, like the bellows, sometimes put out the fire ; and the fire always burnt dully after the stimulus. Item : the Sand-box. Did Goldsmith see ' the nicely sanded floor ' in England ? At the end of the seventeenth century it was not common in the midland counties. Ilenry Teonge, who came from ITEMS OF THE OBSOLETE. 505 Warwickshire, thus writes in his Diary, about Deal : ' The other thing which was strange to me was, that in all places else wherever I yet was, the chiefest care of the neat housewife was to keep the rooms clean from all manner of dust, by sweeping, washing, and rubbing them. But here, clean contrary; for having first swept them clean, they then strew them all over with sand, yea, their very best chambers.'* I never saw the sanded floor in our ' best chambers,' — for then the carpet luxury had crept in. But the delight of the presiding goddess of the kitchen in her sanded paradise ! When the sand first was strewed it was not very agreeable — for the sandman, who duly travelled with his cart from house to house, sometimes delivered it rather wet. But it was strewed — and the bellows-quickened fire soon dried it. Day by day it was sifted, when the cooking toils were over. And then, what lady's bower could be so perfect ! The shutters were closed ; the twinkling candle was lighted ; the pewter and the brass glistened ; the cat purred ; the thread-paper was brought out ; and the tidy lass in the stuff gown, who thought her wages of six pounds ' riches fineless,' was as happy — I hope she was happier — than the modern ■ professed cook/ who stipulates for twenty-five pounds a year and a kitchen- maid, and puts on her silk gown when the dessert is gone in. I think there was not much reading in that ' nicely- sanded ' kitchen, although books were accessible. The honest occupant had her own favourite books — but they were few, and not costly. I should like now to have a complete collection of such as I remember to have seen ; — for Time, which has made them obsolete, has given them a factitious value. They were what we term ' Chap- Books.' Susan had a considerable collection of them in her box. There was 'The History of Valentine and Orson ;' — ' The Seven Champions of Christendom ;' — and ■ The History of the London 'Prentice.' That London * Diary of Henry Teonge, p. 10. 506 ONCE UPON A TIME. ! 'Prentice, who was called 'Aurelius,' went to Turkey, destroyed two lions that were prepared to devour him, and married the Emperor's daughter. I see him now, as he is represented in the surprising woodcut, thrusting his hand down one lion's throat, while the other is howling on his back. 'The History of the Lancashire Witches' was there — real witches who rode on winds ; and there, too, * The History of Mother Shipton.' ' Jack the Giant-Killer ' was undoubtedly in Susan's collection, and so ' Fortunatus.' But the book on which my early friend most pored was the k Fortune Book,' which told young men and maids their fortune by drawing cards, and also the signification oi moles, and the interpretation of dreams. They are gone —all. My native town had a very considerable collection of Almshouses. I was fond of talking to some of the old women who dwelt in thjem; for they were cleanly and gossiping crones — upon the whole contented with theii lot. One of them had a wonderful cat, which had out- lived all other cats, having been preserved by the kind- ness of a predecessor, who had also an equally kind prede- cessor. The cat was endowed by an old maid with a shilling a week, and there was a corporate trustee. Pope's line was no mere imagination : — 1 Die, and endow a college or a cat.' To take care of this cat with nine lives was pleasant occu- pation. But the greater part of the Alms- women were employed at the Spinning-wheel. There was a spinning charity in the borough, — a bequest in times before Ark- wright ; and it was the duty of an officer of the corpora- tion to buy flax, and give out flax to be spun, and pay the spinners week by week, and have the flax woven into sheets, which were distributed to poor people according to their deserts. What records of changes are our old charities ! How many obsolete bequests to companies and corporations, which time has put aside ; and which have, in our enlightened metropolis at least, resolved ITEMS OF THE OBSOLETE. 507 themselves into the husks of ■ Epicurus' sty !' I suppose my old Spinners are gone. If the Spinning-wheel remains, under the protection of * vested interests,' the Hour Glass, by which the old spinner used to measure out her little day, is gone. Time has broken his own emblem. But the moral of the pretty antique hour-meter remains, in spite of electric telegraphs. One generation succeeds another. Dynasties perish. Manners change. Be the glass turned once in an hour, or once in a century, the sand is always running out, and always heaping up. To-day is the child of yesterday. 508 ONCE UPOX A TIME. THE FIKST STEP INTO THE WOELD. In the early Spring of 1812, I stepped for a month or twc out of the little world in which I had been living, to come face to face with great public things. I had a friend whc was the editor of two daily newspapers, a morning and an evening. What a wonderful man I thought him ! I see him now, as I often saw him, sitting in his back office, in a dingy dressing-gown and unshorn beard, dashing off his leader for the evening paper. At two o'clock he dressed, and he kindly took the youth from the country with him for a walk through the Strand, and along the Mall in the Park. The Park was a queer unfashioned place then, with a long dirty pond where Charles II. fed his ducks — no plantations — no gravelled walks — no gas-lights. But we walked happily enough ; and my kind friend told funny Irish stories, and notable anecdotes of Mr. Sheridan and Mr. Ponsonby, with whom he boasted an intimacy. Yet, of the real life about him he knew very little, although he was the editor of two daily papers. To edit a paper then was not very difficult. Many of the thousand complicated social and commercial questions, that have grown up during our long Peace, were then scarcely known. Parlia- mentary Keform was considered a dream. If the war was blamed, no one could uphold Napoleon. The tone of the paper was settled by the tone of the party. There were very rarely expresses from great provincial towns — and their local intelligence was mostly left to their own journals. Intercourse with foreign States was almost impossible, except through the Government messengers ; and they went and came at the cost of several hundred pounds a journey. My good friend's intellect was not greatly FIRST STEP INTO THE WORLD. 509 tasked. When we had taken our walk, he had a comfort- able dinner ; drank a bottle of port, sometimes two ; had a nap in his chair undisturbed by the hackney-coaches in the Strand ; at nine o'clock, strolled down to the House to know what was going on ; wrote his morning leader ; and went to bed in very decent time. I was to have a short training for the still easier life of a country editor, by a month or two in ■ The Gallery.' The first day I went down was a terrible trial of endurance. There was a call of the House ; and it was absolutely necessary for the reporters to go in before the general public. There was no accommodation whatever for their admission, and no facilities for their "work. It was all crush. At these calls the Strangers' Gallery was locked when the Speaker went to prayers, and all further ingress was prohibited. At twelve, then, I was in the gallery or its lobby ; and I stayed there till four o'clock next morn- ing. It was to me a wonderful scene, and I had no desire to . leave it. At that call of the House, there were all the great ones of the day— how few have not obeyed a higher call !— Abbott, Speaker ; Gibbs, Attorney-General ; Brougham ; Burdett ; Canning ; Castlereagh ; Croker ; Grattan ; Horner ; Palmerston ; Peel ; Perceval ; Pon- sonby ; Komilly ; Sir W. Scott ; Sheridan ; Tierney ; Whitbread ; Wilberforce. There were illustrious names called in that February, 1812. I take down 'Hansard;' aud I look to see the sort of things I heard debated in that ' Tenth Session of the fourth Parliament of the United Kingdom.' How obsolete some of the opinions read now ! What antiquated states of society they represented ! Is it a Parliament of the Kegency, or a Parliament of some un- dated period of ' Once upon a Time ?' Take a specimen or two. The nightly watch of the Metropolis. — There had been murders in London, by which two whole families had been completely exterminated; and Mr. Secretary Eyder moved for a committee to inquire into the state of the nightly watch. Romilly asked where was the daily watch, 510 ONCE UPON A TIME. and whether all the precautions of the nightly watch would provide a remedy against the daring highway robberies committed in the open day ? Death Penalties. — Romilly withdrew his bill for the amendment of the criminal laws, with one exception. He brought in a bill to repeal the Act of Elizabeth, under which soldiers and sailors found begging were punishable with death. But the legislature restored the balance in this session, by hastily passing a bill which made frame- breaking a capital crime, instead of being a transportable offence. Flogging in the Army. — * With respect to the man who had been spoken of, he might have died after receiving two hundred and twenty-four lashes, but they could not be the cause of his death.' By way of illustration of the condition of society in this year 1812, I open 'The Annual Eegister,' and in 'The Chronicle' under the date January 1, I find it recorded that the body of John Williams, who had committed one of the family murders referred to in Parliament, and who had died by his own hand in prison, was placed on a platform six feet high, having on 'a clean white shirt, very neatly frilled.' The mall and chisel with which he committed the murders were placed on the side of the head. And thus, in solemn procession, with headboronghs and constables to the number of three hundred, the car was drawn to the house in Ratcliff Highway, where one murder was committed ; and the body was turned so that the face of the dead man might be ' directly opposite the scene of atrocity.' Again the procession moved, and again it stopped for another quarter of an hour before the house where another murder had been committed. It finally proceeded to the New Road, where the body was cast into a hole, ' amidst the acclamations of thousands of spectators.' Here is a pleasant exhibition to begin the year with, for the edification of a London that in every other mode of instruction was utterly neglected. Page after page of the 1 Chronicle ' furnishes details of robbery and murder, riot FIRST STEP INTO THE WORLD. 511 and slaughter. The terrors of fanaticism were added to those of natural fear. On the 20th of February a dis- senting minister appeared in a boat on the Thames, dressed in a white linen robe, with his long hair flowing over his shoulders, and proclaimed that the Seven Vials of the Book of Eevelations were to be poured out upon the city of London. Crime seemed to have lost all dread of the law. On the 22nd of March the Judge at the Assize at Reading, coming out of the church in grand procession, was hustled and robbed of his gold watch and seals. The punishments of the law were horribly unequal. A farmer near Ashford, finding some boys trespassing in ^his orchard, strikes one of them over the head with a stake. The boy kneels and begs for mercy; but the farmer repeats the blow, and fractures the skull. It was sworn on the defence ' that the skull was so remarkably thin that a very slight blow would fracture it;' and so, upon this scientific evidence, the farmer was fined a shilling and discharged. Hanging was so common that it became a joke amongst the people. A police-officer saw two men upon a wall in the Hampstead Road, and shortly after one of the two was hanging to a lamp-post. The short man had turned off the tall man ; they having, after an agreeable day of drinking and gambling, tossed up which should hang the other. Amidst all this lawlessness, the Prince Regent gave the most magnificent entertainment on record at Carlton House. To crown the horrors of the spring of 1812, Mr. Perceval was assassinated on the 11th of May, in the lobby of the House of Commons. I was for two months in London in a time that is now fearful to read about. But the world went on as usual then ; and looking back upon my own limited experience, I do not recollect a merrier season than that first year of the Regency. That session was one of high political importance : — The settlement of the Royal Household; Orders in Council; Catholic Emancipation ; the War in Spain. There was great eloquence in the Commons — the grace of Canning— the vehemence of Brougham — Romilly, grave and earnest 512 ONCE UPON A TIME. — Perceval, mild and persuasive — the silver voice of Wilberforce— the manly ardour of Whi thread. But what a corps of Keporters ! There was ability enough amongst them ; but nobody seemed to feel that he was engaged in a grave duty. They were a merry set in the Exchequer coffee-house. A head peeps in, ' Now, Flaherty.' ' Who's up V ' Creevey.' ' Oh, I know all he can say — no hurry. You were observing ' — « Waiter, another bottle of that old port.' And then the Saturday evening oratory of the same set that I had met in the gallery, at the * Eccentrics,' in May's Buildings. There is a great gathering. A charge against Mr. Howley has been announced at a previous meeting.- The charge comes on. Mr. Grant brings the charge — that Mr. Howley is a poet. Mr. Davis is called as witness. He proves that Mr. Howley was an elegiac poet ; that he was a lyrie poet, — that he wrote an Ode to Winter, beginning 1 All hail ;' that he had answered an advertisement to the effect that ' any person competent to write ballads of a superior description, and in serious style, might hear of occupation;' — that he was a descriptive poet, and had written a tender piece, commencing with 1 How beautiful the country doth appear, At this time of the year !' Then various wits spoke for and against the charge ; and Mr. Sheil gave an oration upon poetry in general ; con- cluding with a peroration touching the magnificent calm of the poet while there is war, and want, and tumult, and sorrow all around him. * Oh ! there is an earthquake under his feet, and the soil heaves with a tremulous impatience, and the seas rush from their beds, and the air is darkened, and the vulture screams, and the palaces and the temples rock with a wide-spreading and all-involving fury ; but he stands erect amidst Ihe convulsion, creeps out of the ruins, sings his song of gladness in the desert, and comes once more into the breeze and the sunshine.' And then Mr. Quin, the editor of * The Day/ rushes from his FIRST STEP INTO THE WORLD. 513 seat to embrace Mr. Sheil, and says— 'Sir, I honour ye. Dine with me to-morrow.' Then, during that brief intimacy with the renowned and the influential, I had the free admissions of the theatres. What a privilege was that ! Drury was in ashes. But there was Oovent Garden, with the two Kembles and Young. O'Neil and Kean were nut as yet. But there were Munden, and Fawcett, and Emery. They tell me there are no actors now. Perhaps not. I cannot judge. There are some things that look to me ever fresh, as of old— the face of nature, the smile of love, the gush of poetry, the wisdom above all wisdom. But for meaner things, surely < Life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.' And with this brief experience I went back to my native town, to be one of those who bore the honoured name of ' best public instructor.' My range of pupils was very limited. I had little honour in my vocation, and less profit. The world in which I lived was a very singular one. There was the Court atmosphere ; and the Collegiate atmosphere ; and the Corporate atmosphere — all very much opposed to a free inflation of that air which was called the Liberty of the Press. Yet I was resolved to be inde- pendent, and I was unaffectedly patriotic. I hated Napoleon with a true English fervour. That covered some of my sins in not having an undoubting faith in the rulers of the day, with their 4 ex-omcio informations. I had some compliments to soothe me. Sir William Herschel came to thank me for telling the people that they were blockheads for attributing the high floods to him ; — and the vicar once quoted my leader in a fast-day sermon. 514 ONCE UPON A TIME. SAINT JOHN'S GATE. When Samuel Johnson first saw St. John's Gate, he ' beheld it with reverence,' as he subsequently told Boswell. But Boswell gives his own interpretation of the cause of this reverence. St. John's Gate, he says, was the place where the ' Gentleman's Magazine ' was originally printed : and he adds, * I suppose, indeed, that every young author has had the same kind of feeling for the magazine or periodical publication which has first entertained him.' He continues with happy naivete, * I, myself, recollect such impressions from the " Scots' Magazine." ' Mr. Croker, in his valuable notes to Boswell's * Johnson,' has a very rational doubt of the correctness of this explanation : * If, as Mr. Boswell supposes, Johnson looked at St. John's Gate as the printing- office of Cave, surely a less emphatical term than reverence would have been more just. The " Gentleman's Magazine " had been, at this time, but six years before the public, and its contents were, until Johnson himself contributed to improve it, entitled to anything rather than reverence ; but it is more probable that Johnson's reverence was excited by the recollections connected with the ancient gate itself, the last relic of the once extensive and magnificent priory of the heroic knights of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, suppressed at the dissolution, and destroyed by successive dilapidations.' More than a century is passed away since Johnson, from whatever motive, beheld with reverence the old gate of the hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. There it still remains, in a quarter of the town little visited, with scarcely another relic of antiquity immediately about it. Extensive im- provements are going forward in its neighbourhood ; and saint john's gate. 515 it may probably be one day swept away with as ruthless a hand as that of the Protector Somerset, who blew up the stately buildings of the hospital to procure materials for his own palace in the Strand. May it be preserved from the most complete of all destroyers — the building speculator ! It has, to me, a double interest. It is the representative of the days of chivalrous enthusiasm on the one hand, and of popular improvement on the other. The Order, which dates from the days of Godfrey of Bouillon, has perished, even in our own time — an anomaly in the age up to which it had survived. The general desire for knowledge, which gave birth to the * Gentleman's Magazine,' is an increasing power, and one which depends upon no splendid endow- ments and no stately mansions for its maintenance and or- nament. Cave, the printer, was the accidental successor of the Prior of the Hospital of St. John. But, representing the freedom of public opinion, he was the natural successor of the despotic power of a secret society. At any rate, the accident invests St. John's Gate with an interest which would not otherwise belong to it ; and in its double charac- ter we may not be ashamed to behold it ' with reverence.' It was in 1841 that I first saw St. John's Gate. Turning out of St. John's Street to enter St. John's Lane — a narrow street which runs obliquely from that wide thoroughfare — the Gate presented itself to view, completely closing the road, and leaving a passage into St, John's Square only through the archway. The large masses ot' stone of which the gate is composed were then much decayed ; but the groined arch had recently been restored. A huge board which surmounted the archway informed the few passers- by that they might here solace themselves with the hospi- talities of the ' Jerusalem Tavern ;' and, lest they might dread to be subjected to any of the original notions of absti- nence which a pilgrim might once have been expected to bring within these walls, a window of a house or bulk on the eastern side of the gateway displayed all the attractions of bottles with golden labels of ' Cordial Gin,' ' Pine-apple Rum,' and ' Peal Cognac' Passing under the arch, I per- 2l2 510 ONCE UPON A TIME. ceived that the modern hospitium ran through the eastern side of the gateway, and connected with premises at either end. Invited ' To the Parlour,' I entered. A comfortable room was that parlour, with its tables chequered with many a liquor-stain ; and genius had here its due honours, for Dr. Johnson's favourite seat was carefully pointed out. But the tavern had then higher attractions than its parlour fireside with Dr. Johnson's corner : it had a ' Grand Hall,' where the ' Knights of Jerusalem ' still assembled in solemn conclave every Monday evening. It was long before I ventured to ask whether any uninitiated eyes might see that Grand Hall ; but I did take courage, and most obligingly was I conducted to it. I ascended the eastern turret by a broad staircase (but certainly not one of the date of the original building), and was soon in the central room of the Gateway. It was a fine lofty room, and if there were few remains of ancient magnificence — no elaborate carvings, no quaint inscriptions, nor 1 storied windows,' — the spirit of the past had been evoked from the ruins of the great military order, to confer dignities and splendours on the peaceful burghers who were wont here to congregate. Banners, gaudy with gold and vermilion, floated upon the walls ; and, if the actual ■ armoury of the invincible knights ' were wanting, there were two or three cuirasses which looked as grim and awful as any * Bruised arms hung up for monuments.' Nor were the fine arts absent from the decoration of that apartment. Sculpture had here given us a coloured effigy of some redoubted Hospitaller ; and Painting had lovingly united under. the same ceiling the stern countenance of Prior Dockwra, the builder of the Gate, and the sleek and benign likenesses of the worshipful founders of the modern order. History records not their exploits, and I shall be silent as to their names. They were quiet lawgivers, and not rampaging warriors. They had done the wise thing which poetry abhors — changed ' swords for ledgers.' In- stead of secret oaths and terrible mysteries, they invited SAINT JOHN'S GATE. 517 all men .to enter their community at the small price of two- pence each night. Instead of vain covenants to drink nothing but water, and rejoice in a crust of mouldy bread, the visitor might call for anything for which he had the means of payment, even to the delicacies of kidneys, tripe, and Welch rabbits. The edicts of this happy brotherhood were inscribed in letters of gold for all men to read ; and the virtuous regard which they displayed for the morals of their community presented a striking contrast to the re- puted excesses of the military orders. The code had only four articles, and one of them was especially directed against the singing of improper songs. Here, then, was mirth with- out licentiousness, ambition without violence, power with- out oppression. When the Grand Master ascended the throne which was here erected, as the best eminence to which a modern Knight of Jerusalem might aspire, wear- ing his robes of state, and surrounded by his great com- manders, also in their ■ weeds of peace,' no clangour of trumpets rent the air ; but the mahogany tables were drummed upon by a hundred ungauntleted hands, and a gentle cloud of incense arose from the pipes which sent forth their perfumes from every mouth. Would I had par- taken of that inspiration ! After the third hour the dimen- sions of the ' Grand Hall ' of the Jerusalem Tavern would have expanded into the form and proportions of the ■ Great Hall ' of the Priory of St. John. The smoke-coloured ceil- ing would have lifted itself up into a groined roof, glorious with the heraldry of many a Crusader or Knight of Ehodes. The drowsy echoes of ' tol de rol ' or ' derry down ' would have melted into solemn strains of impassioned devotion ; and the story, three times told, how Jenkins beat his wife and was taken to the police-station, would have slided into a soft tale of a Troubadour discovering his ladye-love who had followed him through Palestine as a pretty page. Slowly, but surely, the green coats and the blue, the butcher's frock and the grocer's apron, would have become shadowed into as many black robes ; and in the very height of my ecstasy the white cross would have grown on every 518 ONCE UPON A TIME. man's breast out of its symbolical red field. Then the ' order, order ' of the chairman would have become a battle- cry ; the knock of his hammer would have been the sound of the distant culverin ; the hiccups of the far-gone sipper of treble-X ale would have represented the groans of the wounded. I should have fallen asleep, and have dreamt a much more vivid picture of the ancient glories of the Priory of St. John of Jerusalem than can be presented with the aid of obscure chronicles and perishing fragments — the things which the antiquary digs up, and, when he has brought them to light in his erudite pages, has the satisfaction to be called ' one of those industrious who are only re-burying the dead.'* I went again to Saint John's Gate in 1853. I turned down the quiet unchanged street — what a contrast to the associations of modern Smithfield ! — and there stood the Gate, apparently unchanged also. But there was a change. The east side of the arch was covered with a mighty 'oil- painting, of canvas large enough to have satisfied poor Haydon, or any other enthusiastic professor of ' high art ' — the subject, Knights of Saint John going forth to a Tour- nament. The old * Parlour ' looked invitingly ; and I could not resist the temptation of the inviter. There was a change, however, in its decorations. On one side of the 'room was a great collection of frowning portraits of the Grand Masters of the Order, cut out of one of its famous histories ; on the other, a series of some eighty pages of a modern work on the antiquities of the Gate, framed page by page. The spirit of Cave had descended upon the present landlord of the Tavern — and he had compiled this ' History of the Priory and Gate of St. John of Jerusalem,' and illus- trated it with really beautiful engravings. Honoured be the labours of the landlord of St. John's Gate ! There were other intellectual attractions in the old Parlour — Hogarth's ' Industry and Idleness ' — portraits of Johnson, and Garrick, and Cave— Prior Dockvvra's signature in lithograph, — and * Horace Wnlpole (of Gough) in a letter to Cole, 1773. SAINT JOHN'S GATE. 519 notices of ' A Discussion Class.' T again went up to ' the Grand Hall.' The portraits of the modern Knights of St. John had vanished. I fear they had not maintained the fame of their great predecessors, Fulk de Villaret, or Pierre d'Aubusson. Other changes had taken place in twelve years. The Knights of St. John had given place to a Musical Society, whose amateur concerts delighted Clerken- well twice a week. I thought much of these changes, and went home, musing. The first star was out in heaven, as I sat that evening in my quiet study, and called up the memories that were associated with St. John's Gate. I possess a silver tankard, with St. John's Gate and *E. C engraven on its side. Good old Cave, according to Sir John Hawkins, ' that he might avoid the suspicion of pride in setting up an equipage, displayed to the world the source of his affluence, by a representation of St. John's Gate, instead of his arms, on 520 ONCE UPON A TIME. the door panels,' and ' causing it to be engraven on all his plate.' The old-fashioned cup was filled for me that summer evening. The ' twilight interim ' gradually slid into dark- ness — and my musings grew dream-like. I sat in the chair of the Discussion Class in, the parlour of the Jerusalem Tavern. We are bold in dreams. I had no fear that I might offend the honourable company by my presumption. Prior Dockwra was there ; but he seemed to me somewhat edged out of the places of honour by rather obscure personages. There was Mr. Moses Browne, ' in a cloud of tobacco-smoke,' who obtained Cave's great fifty- pound prize for a poem in the ' Gentleman's Magazine ;' and who subsequently wrote ' Sunday Thoughts,' upon which Johnson observed ' he had a great mind to write and publish " Monday Thoughts." ' There was Mr. John Duick, who not only used his pen as one of Cave's poets, but was a • pen-cutter ' in Clerkenwell. Mr. Webb, from Mr. Wat- kins's Academy in Spital Square, tendered a new enigma to 'a man of large stature, not only tall but bulky.' Another large man ' in a loose horseman's coat, and a great bushy uncombed wig,' said • Pooh ' to the enigma. I rather trembled before that large man, whom I well knew. But a jaunty little man, with a comical face, said, ■ Let him earn his half-crown — he was call-boy when I played the "Mock Doctor" up-stairs.' And so I was president of a club at which the Prior of St. John's, Edward Cave, Samuel Johnson, and David Garrick were the choice spirits. I must be the Boswell of the party. The Prior. — Hush ! I hear the lutes and duloimers pre- luding for even-song. Johnson. — Your reverence mistakes. How dare you laugh, Davy! I have learnt something of musio since I asked Bumey, when I had the dropsy in my legs, to teach me the gamut. I know those mechanics up-stairs are playing a Sonata of Beethoven. Garrick. — We have all learnt something since then. I now know that I didn't act Shakspere, when I made the side-boxes weep ; and that Mr. Phelps does play Shakspere 521 to the apprentices at Sadler's Wells. But I am afraid of this levelling. What have artisans to do with Beethoven ? and why do they want Shakspere's Lear ? Tate's brought down the pit ; and you boasted that ' Cordelia, from the time of Tate, always retired with victory and felicity.' Johnson. — Sir, I talked some nonsense then, and wrote some too. Why do you talk nonsense now when you know better ? It is in an age when there is great general igno- rance, and partial refinement, that botchers like Tate dare to meddle with such as Shakspere. Those violins that we hear up-stairs tell us that taste is spreading, and knowledge too. Cave. — We sold fifteen thousand of the 'Gentleman's Magazine ' when you, Sir, wrote the Debates. The number is not so large now. Johnson. — No, Sir, how should it be? Your Magazine was then to the public what newspapers have become since — but how wretchedly we supplied the want ! Cave. — Ah, Mr. Johnson — I beg pardon, Doctor — they have never anything in their newspapers equal to your Debates, ' for felicities of expression, for the structure of sentences, happy at once for point, dignity, and elegance.' My worthy successor in the Magazine truly described your Debates. Johnson. — Don't make me wretched, Mr. Cave. I was penitent, even in the body, for imposing on the world, in making arguments and conjuring up answers for speakers in Parliament. There was no truth in them, Sir. But now — Prior, may I trouble you for ' The Times.' Look here, Mr. Cave. There are twenty columns that would fill two of your Magazines, and not a word there printed was spoken at this time yesterday; and the reporters have invented no lies, as we invented. Garrick. — But they polish a bit — and put in what looks to me very like the prompter's work. And after all, there is not much eloquence. Johnson. — Sir, a great, earnest, busy people have no time for eloquence. They want facts, Sir, facts. The reporters 522 ONCE UPON A TIME. may properly polish. There is an essential difference between speaking and writing. There are redundancies to prune away — connecting words to supply. They do their work well, those reporters. Cave. — Don't you think, Sir, that Parliament was right to prevent us publishing the debates ? Johnson. — Wise, as the Stuarts were ; but not wise for the time when you kept the press going over the way. The days of public opinion were coming quickly ; and to imagine five hundred gentlemen sitting at Westminster to legislate in secret, when a whole nation was beginning to read, is to imagine a ship becalmed in a North-wester. The safety-valves of opinion have been opened — never again to be closed. Cave. — But the Magazine, Sir. It lives yet. It ought to sell thousands, where I sold hundreds. Johnson. — That is, that caviare should sell better than potatoes. The people want good things, but they want cheap things. They want things of universal application. They don't want your pretty verses to Pastora — your charades, your rebuses, your tombstone learning, your dissertations on a Eoman urn, by Dr. Pegge. They want what they can understand and take an interest in. Sir, if I had the power to act in this world, I would set up a new halfpenny magazine, and you should print it, — and we would sell millions, Sir, millions. Cave. — You would not lower yourself to the multitude ? Johnson. — Lower myself? I would try to elevate myself. Do you think that if I had known my trade, we should have sold only five hundred of the ' Rambler ?' I was speak- ing to the multitude then. But I could not speak to the middle and working classes as writers speak now. I talked grand, Sir ; and the few readers said, ■ great moralist,' and went to sleep. Garrick. — Would you write a novel, now ? Johnson. — Yes, Sir. Do you think that I couldn't have written a novel if I had chosen to descend from what I thought my dignity ; when you, and I, and Savage, knew saint John's gate. 523 the town and all its queer ways as well as Defoe, and better than Smollett? Goldy wrote a novel. It is the most popular book in the language. And chiefly because Goldy wrote that book, for which I got him a hundred pounds, his peach-blossom coat is immortal. His Life — Garrick. — I don't observe that any one has written my Life since Tom Davies. I cannot help feeling — Johnson. — ' As much feeling as Punch ' — forgive me, Davy. Poor Goldsmith's vanity was mortified enough in this wicked world ; but he has his consolations now. Here he comes, as gay as ever, — with Eliza on one arm, and Fanny on the other. The tobacco-smoke vanished — and with it, Mr. Moses Browne. My place was changed. I sat at a tea-table with the ladies opposite me. Madame D'Arblay. — Is your tea agreeable, Doctor? Johnson. — Excellent, Madam. Vastly good. Cheaper than ever, I hear. Mrs, Carter. — Everything is cheap, Sir — even books are cheap. I saw my * Epictetus ' on a stall for half-a-crown. The subscription price was a guinea. Goldsmith, — Yes ; there is an American Life of me for a shilling. Johnson. — And a far better English Life. That generous * Biography ' by Mr. Forster is worth something, after the * natural shocks that flesh is heir to.' Goldsmith. — I like the shilling popularity. Johnson. — If you were to write' another book as good as * The Vicar,' you would rather grumble to find the people of a mighty continent, who speak and read our noble English, contributing nothing to your reward for the in- estimable pleasure which you supply them. But, in truth, the robbery has become mutual; hence, your shilling popularity. Goldsmith. — I don't understand political economy. Johnson. — Nor did I, when I wrote the last four lines of your ' Deserted Village ' — ' Teach him,' — Yes — 524 ONCE UPON A TIME. ' That trade's empire hastes to swift decay,' As ocean sweeps the labour 'd mole away ; While self-dependent power can time defy, As rocks resist the billows and the sky.' Goldsmith. — Excellent ! Johnson. — No, Sir ; there is no such thing in civilisation as ' self-dependent power.' The savage might have been self-dependent before Columbus ; but wherever the needle travels, trade makes even the savage an exchanger. I may have imagined a period when our quays and our docks shall be desolate and ruinous as the choked-up harbours of Carthage or Venice. It was a dream. ' Trade's proud empire ' is going forward to such a conquest as the world never yet saw. Its empire is built upon knowledge. The ends of the earth are brought together by science. Some of the words which you and I wrote, my friend, have winged their way to mighty regions, which were being discovered when you and I talked commonplaces about 1 trade's proud empire.' I was angry with Maurice Morgann, for writing of Shakspere — ' When the hand of Time shall have brushed off his present editors and com- mentators, the Apalachian mountains, the banks of the Ohio, and the plains of Scioto, shall resound with the accents of this barbarian.'* He was right, Sir. We shall all — if there is anything good in us — live with the extension of our language ; and that extension is the work of trade — » Another cup, if you please, Fanny. Madame D'Arblay. — Do you think they are reading 1 Camilla ' on the banks of the Ohio, Doctor ? Goldsmith. — Decidedly so — a nation that adores the ladies. Johnson.— Don't flatter, Goldy ; for to flatter is to degrade. Fanny, much as I- love her, described an ephemeral life, which she had never very accurately observed herself. Nothing can last in literature that is built upon fashions and individualities. Your Doctor Primrose is a representa- tive of humanity, whether in villages of Yorkshire or the new cities of the plains of Scioto. * Essay on the Character of Falstaff. saint john's gatk; 525 Goldsmith. — Your ' London ' was a picture of a 'particular period and locality, yet that lives. Johnson. — It was historically true, Sir ; and the iocal did not forget the universal. I don't want men to write as if they had no dwelling-place and no social habits. But they must feel there is a wider circle than home. All literature is tending to the universal, and the free intercourse of nations will confirm that tendency. Suddenly the tea vanished. I was alone in the parlour with that man of large stature, Edward 'Cave ; and there, he sat opposite me, with his own silver tankard between us. Cave. — My service to you, Sir. I help myself freely out of my household cup. You value this ? Dreamer. — Certainly. I bought it from a descendant of yours, who was not so well off as you could have wished ; and I cherish it as a memorial of one who had worked well for popular literature. Cave. — Ay— those mills! Johnson said of me, — 'The fortune he left behind him, though large, had been yet larger, had he not rashly and wantonly impaired it by innumerable projects, of which I know not that ever one succeeded.' — For a kind man he judged hardly. Dreamer. — You are past minding those losses now, Mr. Cave. You did some good in the world, and that is better worth looking back upon, be we dead or alive, than large estates. Cave. — True, Sir. You think I did some good ? Dreamer. — Every man who, in his generation, honestly does his best to advance the intelligence, and promote the happiness, of his countrymen, does some good. Cave. — I am glad you think so. Since my ashes rested in Rugby churchyard, I have heard many opinions against making knowledge too common. Dreamer. — Heed them not, — they will vanish. Mr. Cave vanished— for I heard a railway-whistle. Bless me ! I've been dozing. Again I dozed ; and the same scene, with other anachro- 526 ONCE UPON A TIME. nisms, such as the waking mind never heaps together, came before me. The Prior had shifted his place. He was in the Presi- dential chair. The room was filled with unsubstantial figures, in dresses in which the white cross mingled with the laced waistcoat and the fall-bottomed wig, but nothing determinate. A tall man emerged from the gloom, with the gold surtout over the glittering mail. The Prior frowned. Prior. — Edward Seymour, what do you here? Are you come to triumph over the ruin you have made ? Get you back to Somerset House, and see what you will find of the grandeur of which you stripped my poor Priory. There is not a stone of your Palace left. I have my Gate still. Somerset. — Peace, good Prior. Your House fell, because it was out of harmony with the age. Mine fell, for the same cause. Prior. — Yes. You carted away the stones of my great Bell-tower ; but your head soon paid for the spoliation. And then a Queen lived in your Palace, and the Mass was sung 'once more, and there was masque and music, and a stern man had his ears cut off for speaking plain words about ' women actors ' there. And then another Queen came, whose husband cared nothing for Mass or Liturgy ; and thought the ' women actors ' were pleasanter com- panions than his wife. And then your Palace descended to the hangers-on of St. James's. Behold now — it is gone ; and your place of glory is filled with a legion of clerks, who record the gathering of as much tax in one year as would have trebled the revenues of all the Priors and Abbots in the land. Why couldn't you have left us to feed the poor at our gate ? Somerset. — Because you kept the people poor by your luxuries and your alms. I look in upon the clerks of my old palace-ground now and then, and I find them doing better work than they used to do. If they did not, their Somerset House would go too, like mine House, and thine, Prior. 527 Prior. — You pretended to build schools out of the ruins of our old nests. Somerset. — Yes, we did something. I wish those who came after us had done as much. We did little enough, I know. We taught some. Prior. — And hanged many. Somerset. — Very true. There were two grand instruments of education — the grammar-school and the gallows. But who is this fellow — with his white cravat and black wig ? Prior. — Oh, a neighbour of mine, who comes here some- times to smoke his pipe— Mr. Aris, late Governor of the House of Correction. Aris. — A word in your ear, Protector. We are all equal now, and we may as well be sociable. Somerset. — Sociable ! Why, you were denounced in Par- liament as a cruel jailer, who whipped and tortured in secret within your strong walls yonder. Aris. — It was our way, Protector. The soothing system was unknown then. Mr. Hogarth will tell you that we did in the beginning of this century pretty much as his good friends of the Fleet did sixty years before. That's the gentleman, making a sketch of your Highness on his thumb-nail. Somerset. — Good evening, Mr. Hogarth. I suppose Mr. Aris reformed the Idle Apprentice, and encouraged the Industrious, after your fashion of showing the Lord Mayor's Coach in one picture, and Tyburn in the other. Hogarth. — No doubt, Protector. It was the old safe rule. Naughty boy, gallows ; good boy, riches. But in those times we had not quite so many naughty boys as now. We had our Gin-lanes, where the young and the old soon drank themselves dead ; and our Blood-bowl-houses, where murder was the rule. But we had no swarms of little wretches, creeping forth from dirty hovels, and becoming thieves out of the cruel neglect of society. Our prisons were not many; and they were not filled with childish pilferers. Thieving then was a profession ; and the infants in the schools of thieving were creditably maintained by the masters of the craft till they were proficient. 528 ONCE UPON A TIME. -Am.— Why," Mr. Hogarth, you talk like the great moralist who was here just now. A good time, that ! Somerset. — Go on, painter. Hogarth. — I was a great moralist. I painted vice as I saw it. I lived in a state of things in which there was a vast deal of open profligacy, high and low. The laws were cruel, and the people were brutal. Now, all people profess decency — except the poor victims who hide in stinking alleys — neglected and despised. It is not mere poverty that is their bane. They are outside the pale of humanity. They are not received into Brotherhood. How can the children of these haunts do other than find their way into prisons — and find their way out again. — to be again rejected by Society ? Prior. — Had my House been standing, I would have taken the poor creatures in, and fed them. Hogarth. — There are many houses in the land where the destitute child is clothed and fed, and is better educated than some of his rich neighbours. The country has prisons enough, and workhouses enough. It wants decent dwell- ings for those who work, and reformatory schools for those who beg and thieve. Somerset. — Decent dwellings! Why, I wander about London, and sometimes in other places, and see more com- fortable houses for the citizens, and better furnished, tYiaii nobles possessed in my day. Hogarth. — Oh, yes ; such houses pay for building. But the poor man must pay at a double rate, and die of bad air in cellars, and put his children, four in a bed, in vile garrets. Somerset. — You ought to be working at this day, Mr. Hogarth, to tell the rulers these truths in pictures more eloquent than words. Hogarth. — There is plenty of eloquence, and no wantof pic- ture satire, and other satire, about such things. I have suc- cessors. But the rulers seldom do anything now, as you did in the despotic days. When an evil grows enormous it may be swept away. But they never move to prevent the evil. If anything is done, the people do it themselves. There is plenty of good feeling at work — no want of knowledge. SAINT JOHN S GATE. 529 Prior. — What are the preachers about ? Hogarth. — Your reverence must excuse me saying that even in the days of a powerful Church there was more thought of forms than of religion. I painted the ' Sleeping Congregation ;' and I painted ' Fanaticism.' Indifference and Credulity were antagonists in my day. Indifference had the worst of the fight, and things seemed mending. But Credulity put on another garb ; and we may have — but I forget how near we are to Smithfield. Somerset. — You seem a good Protestant, Mr. Hogarth. Hogarth. — I am an Englishman. I am more tolerant of foreigners and friars than when I painted ' Calais Gate ;' but when I see old superstitions as rampant as when you took a hand in putting them down, I am apt to say, ' Oh, for an hour of — I was going to compliment you — but I would rather say, Oh, for an hour of that Protector who, when intolerance put on her face of persecution, said— 1 The sound of my cannon shall be heard in Rome.' Somerset. — A vigorous Protector was that brewer of Huntingdon. We have had some talk lately. Falkland and Hampden, he says, are in the New Parliament House ; but he, the greatest, has no place. This is a queer genera- tion, Mr. Hogarth — rather timid and servile, I opine. Hogarth. — Kings — Arts. — Come, Sir, no sedition. Hogarth. — Sedition ! Is not the name of ' King ' to be mentioned without coupling it with sedition? But you are right. You speak from the remembrance of your own dungeons. Things are changed in England, Mr. Aris. Somerset. — True. I thought my Edward would have changed fear into love. But three centuries were to roll over before that secret of government was understood. Victoria — Dreamer. — Three cheers ! There was a rattle as of multitudinous applause. Cave's tankard had fallen on the floor ; — and I fairly awoke. 2 M 530 ONCE UPON A TIME. THE TAIL-PIECE. The last design of Hogarth was a tail-piece to his works. He made an allegory of ' The End.' Time is prostrate on the earth. His scythe is snapped in two ; his hour-glass smashed ; his will, bequeathing all things to Chaos, is in his palsied hand ; the last whiff from his broken pipe curls up into 'Finis.' Arpund him lie the shoemaker's last; the cobbler's end; a torn purse ; a battered crown; a frac- tured musket ; a cracked bell ; a worn-out besom ; the capital of a column ; a broken palette. The landscape is composed of a ruined tower ; a tumble-down hovel ; a withered tree ; and the sign of ' The World's End.' In the distance are a gallows and a foundering ship. Phoebus is falling from his chariot ; the moon is darkened. In this emblematic print, while we admire the ingenuity of the artist, we see the limited range of his art. Material objects are poor exponents of abstract ideas. But they may tell something. It was a fashion of the minor poets of the seventeenth century to write verses which they called [ Advice to a Painter,' or, 'Directions to a Painter.' If I were to give suggestions to a designer for a tail-piece to ' Once upon a Time,' I should say — sketch a pendant to Hogarth's k Finis.' Raise Time into the noblest attitude of Wisdom — one, foot on the earth, the other lifted, as if springing to the «kies. Let his scythe be in one hand — in the other, the seed which he is beginning to scatter ' broadcast o'er the land.' Let Time be the sower as well as the reaper. Let him outstretch his glorious wings, as he prepares to leave THE TAIL-PIECE. 531 behind him, in the dimmest distance, the emblems of past ignorance and misrule — the ruined hovel, the rampant gibbet, and the farm-yard in flame. Let him look before him, at the vast school, and the narrow prison ; at vene- rable temples of pure worship, and stately towers of good government. Be there, the Crystal Palace, the National Museum, the Free Library, the Public Park. Let the statues of the Poet and the Philosopher stand in the porticos of the Halls of Commerce. Let the plough and the steam- engine be the companion symbols of Industry. Let the cannon be thrown down at the foot of the printing machine. Let the sun break through the dispersing clouds ; and let the rainbow sp'an the farthest hill-tops. THE END LONDON : FEINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. 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